To: letters@marketplace.org
Subject: A failure in your journalistic duty

Dear Marketplace,

I am writing to let you know that as a MoveOn.org supporter, a member of the US public, and a would-be Public Radio supporter, I am very unhappy about the recent Marketplace segment featuring former Reagan speechwriter Clark Judge. Judge accused MoveOn and its members of hypocrisy for supporting campaign finance reform while accepting matching funds from George Soros. He also called MoveOn Voter Fund ads "negative campaigning". In fact, rather than attacking Bush personally, as Republicans are already doing to presidential challengers, MoveOn ads simply tell the truth about the negative consequences of Bush administration policies.

I am not unhappy because Marketplace allowed a conservative individual to give a highly biased commentary with which I strongly disagree, but rather because Marketplace failed in its journalistic duty to provide appropriate context for this commentary. First, Judge himself was inadequately contextualized: Marketplace did not introduce him as a former speechwriter and special assistant to the Reagan administration, nor did it explain that the "White House Writers Group" is in fact a consulting firm run by Judge and another former Reagan speechwriter. Second, no mention was made of the fact that the money from Soros was in fact a matching grant intended to encourage small donors to participate in the political process: so far ordinary people have given $7.8 million to the Voter Fund in average donations of $35. Judge's simplisitc commentary utterly failed to address the complexities of reforming campaign financing and bringing people back into the political process.

The basic argument for campaign finance reform is that money should not give wealthy people access to decision-makers. Neither the Soros matching grant nor the MoveOn.org Voter Fund are buying anyone access to elected leadership. On the contrary: MoveOn.org is empowering ordinary Americans to affect the direction of our country. This is democracy in action.

Sincerely,

Madeline Althoff

Child offenders are people convicted of crimes committed when they were below the age of 18. In a report issued today, Amnesty International documents executions of such offenders in eight countries since 1990: China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America, and Yemen. Most of these countries have now changed their laws to ban the use of death penalty against children, leaving the USA as the only country which openly acknowledges executing child offenders and which claims for itself the right to do so.

"The USA promotes itself as global human rights champion, yet it accounts for 13 of the 19 known executions of child offenders reported since 1998," Amnesty International continued, "As other violators drop away, the United States could be said to be the least progressive country in the world on this issue." ...

Friends,

I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a "deserter." What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants. In fact, he shot a man in Tucson "just to watch him die."

Actually, what I meant to say up in New Hampshire last week was that "We're going to have Bush for dessert come November!" I'm always mixing up "dessert" and "desert" -- I'm sure many of you have that problem. ...