Seattle Police Officers Guild will air Trump briefings live on social media
Mar 30, 2020, 4:19 PM
Local NPR station KUOW in Seattle declared that they are not going to carry the president’s coronavirus task force briefings live.
KTTH will continue to host the briefings, as will the Seattle Police Officers Guild on their social media channels. President Mike Solan joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss why.
“Well, number one is public safety. This COVID-19 crisis is impacting every one of us in our community, in our state, and across this nation, and we feel it is absolutely egregious for entities to play partisan politics in a time of this national crisis, especially when we’re talking about its impact on public safety in people’s lives,” he said.
“So therefore, I will use whatever necessary means that are available to me to get this critical information out to the public. And let’s be clear, this isn’t going to come from political entities. This is medical advice from medical professionals such as the Surgeon General, and all of this is incredibly important.”
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As Jason noted, we’ve often heard members of the media — particularly on the left — go after Trump by saying that we should listen to doctors and experts instead, but there have been doctors and experts at nearly every one of the briefings, and now listeners won’t hear them after such decisions. It can create a dangerous echo chamber.
“Right now, we don’t need partisan politics to impact the public safety message of COVID-19. … We’ll do everything we can to provide up-to-date information to the public to assist law enforcement officials, medical professionals, and getting this much needed information out there.”
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Some people will say in opposition, “But you’re not airing the Governor Inslee press briefings.”
If KUOW decided that they were not going to carry the Inslee briefings, would Solan air them as well?
“I would air any information that is being blocked by any public platform on our platform to get information out there, regardless of politics. We’re not in the playing political game when it comes to public safety.”
Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.
