KTRH's new news team

By Alex Wukman

I’ll admit it, I’m a news junkie. I’m so much of a news junkie that I watch the BBC while reading the AP on my phone. My love of news has put me at odds with people in the past, I was one of the few people who supported UH buying KTRU because I’m selfish and wanted more NPR. And I especially love news radio, both the format and the brilliant sitcom. Listening to KTRH’s headline recap while riding around with my father during hot Houston summers is one of the few good memories I have of him from my childhood. So it saddened me to read today that a station I grew up listening to and relying on, a station that once promised “give us 30 minutes and we’ll give you the world,” has completed it’s transformation into a right wing mouthpiece. This morning Clear Channel announced that J.P. Pritchard and Lana Hughes, who have anchored KTRH’s drive time newscast for 27 years, have been terminated.

Pritchard and Hughes who kept readers informed of local and national matters in an even handed non sensational manner during the hellish morning commutes will be replaced by former Ohio talk jock and Tea Party darling Matt Patrick. Patrick, who has been in radio since 1979, came to national attention last fall after he claimed that Michigan State head football Mark Dantonio suffered a divinity induced heart attack after using a fake field goal to beat Notre Dame in overtime last fall. Patrick is not shy about his conservative leanings, even stating in his resume that it’s his job to “engage, entertain and discuss local and national events from a conservative viewpoint.”

To their credit Hughes and Pritchard recognize that their termination is not personal and that they are just the latest casualty as old media tries to adapt. Sadly, the case can’t be said for KTRH’s AM operations manager Bryan Erickson who told Fox 26, KRIV, that his station has “serve our listeners by being informative and entertaining.” And to accomplish the task of creating drive time infotainment KTRH’s parent company Clear Channel has decided to embrace the always insightful and informative model of Fox Friends.

According Michael Harrison publisher of Talkers magazine, who was quoted in the Chronicle, this new Steve Doocey-esque morning show will be “a more philosophical, conservative approach to morning conversation.” There are a lot of words I’d use to describe Fox and Friends but “philsophical” isn’t one of them. While it is true that Gretchen Carlson did graduate Stanford with honors, attend Oxford and could be considered a violin virtuoso she sure seems to enjoy playing the role of someone who is recovering from a frontal lobotomy.

This would be too easy to make fun of

The one saving grace out of this asinine decision to take a once good news organization and turn it into a wall-to-wall bastion of right wing talk that’s only interrupted by Astros games is that, for once, we can’t blame Michael Berry for fucking up Houston radio news. Although I’m sure we could if we try hard enough.

By Alex Wukman

For some reason a Google Image Search for "Mosque Fire Houston" turns photos of conservative talk show host and all around asshat Michael Berry

In the last two days the Clear Lake Education Center on Sea Lark and Ramada suffered two fires. Local media has reported that Houston Fire Department officials believe that the building was targeted because it is being used by a local Muslim congregation as a Mosque.  The fire is just the latest, and most local, example of a wave of vehement xenophobic sentiment towards Muslims that has spread across the country in the last few years. Like anything reported on by Houston media that involves someone other than a white person in the suburbs, this story has attracted elements of society in our fair city that are just sad in this day and age–and as always local websites can be counted on to rival youtube for comments filled with racism and ignorance. 

I actually thought I was going to have spend hours searching the comment sections of various websites for something that was anti-Muslim, paranoid and birther. How wrong I was, I found it in the fourth comment on the Houston Chronicle’s article about the fire. Chronicle reader Ms. Maizy, who describes herself as “an old southern woman who wears funny hats,” wrote that the fire “doesn’t sound like arson” because the fire did minimal damage to an area that was described as unimportant.

She goes on to write “If this was intentional, the building would be in ash. Looks like Hussein’s muslim brothers are working on something and are trying to advance deflect any criticism.” Ah yes, the old ‘it wasn’t done by real crooks because the execution was incompetent, so it must be a way to build distract the populace and sympathy for our Manchurian Muslim president’s terrorist accomplices’ line of reasoning. I can’t count how many times I’ve used that to convince the electric company not to charge me late fees.

Even the middle of the road, non-offensive newscast that is Houston CBS affiliate KHOU Channel 11, who sources tell me are working on a new slogan “the only newscast that goes well with prunes and oatmeal,” attracted its own brand of closet racist.  TxJimmie wrote that “people don’t want them here and are letting them know it” which is actually a step up, in the sense that someone commented on a KHOU story.

A Houston Chronicle religious blog and Houston’s most boring newscast are all fine and dandy, but if you want to find the classic racist ramblings you can’t keep playing in the kiddie pool, even if it is warm. Over at KTRK Channel 13, Houston’s ABC station, there’s the sweet taste of vintage intolerance. It starts with the actual reporting, KTRK’s Samica Knight is the only reporter to refer to the Clear LEducation Center as “the Islamic Prayer Hall in Clear Lake,” which I highly doubt is the name of the actual ‘Mosque.’

Knight follows up the questionable use of the ‘Mosque’s name’ with a statement that rightwing punching bag, and Glenn Beck boogeyman, the Council on American Islamic Relations has asked the FBI to look into the fire, a completely unnecessary detail only inserted to sensationalize the story. As fun as Knight’s story is, it’s the comments that sell the piece.

From accusations of insurance fraud to prayers for the destruction of Muslims KTRK’s comments section is a hotbed of tolerance and understanding. Even the commenters who try to be understanding can’t help but come across as uneducated. Curmudgeon44 posted “If this fire was set, then someone has done a despicable act. This is true even though I disagree at the most fundamental level with what is taught at that mosque.” He then references Sura 9:29 which he thinks provides instructions to wage war against non Muslims. Depending on the translation, and the interpretation, Sura 9:29 can mean “ You shall fight back against those who do not believe in GOD, nor in the Last Day, nor do they prohibit what GOD and His messenger have prohibited, nor do they abide by the religion of truth – among those who received the scripture – until they pay the due tax, willingly or unwillingly.”

It can also be read as a command to “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture” and some believe that it can be treated as instructions to subjugate Christians and Jews. I understand that the vagaries of translation and interpretation have never stopped anyone from condemning a religion they know almost nothing about. I also bring up interpretation because reading a religious book is one thing, understanding what it says is another and what you take away from that book depends an awful lot on who explained it to you.

By Alan Smithee

Conservative talk show host, former Houston City Councilman and Mayor Pro-Tem Michael Berry opened his mouth and, once again, hurt the image of the City of Houston. On his show last week Berry was answering a caller that he described as “belligerent” who asked about a planned Islamic Cultural Center that was recently approved for construction near ground zero.

Instead of responding that he feels that opening a Cultural Center so close to the site of the World Trade Centers might allow for dialogue on Islam, the perceptions of Islam in the west as well as extremism and fundamentalism in faith; Berry, in his continued attempt to elevate American discourse, responded to the caller by saying,“I’ll tell you this — if you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up.”

He went on to contribute to the ongoing debate about where this country is headed and what it means to be an American by adding, “I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up, and I mean that.”   Berry’s comments have, of course, generated heat from the progressive community. However,  Geoff Berg, host of KPFT’s Partisan Gridlock, has taken a different approach.

Berg is stating that Berry is only cynically portraying a bigot in order to boost ratings. I’ll leave whether or not Berry is portraying an ignorant racist simply to increase listeners alone, I will remind readers that this isn’t the first time that Berry’s big mouth has gotten him home water. In March 2024, when he was still a sitting City Councilman, Berry decided to wade in on the rights of Native Americans.

With his trademark nuance, Berry decided to resolve the vexing problem of what should our role and responsibility to the Native Americans be by saying, “We need to stop wasting all this time and energy apologizing to the American Indian, which we continue to do…we give them casinos, we give them special licenses, we give them special scholarships and why I don’t understand.”

He went on to make his case as an indigenous rights reformer by adding, ” we conquered them, that’s history – Hello ?  You got to be against giving welfare to the American Indians because of the fact , that 200 years ago they were whipped in a war. Lets just call it what it is, they lost a war.” The scary part of Berg’s theory that Berry isn’t a racist and that he only makes racist comments to attract an audience is that Berry is rewarded for this and that people actually agree with him.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in favor of the construction of the Cultural Center. New York Magazine even found the idea of Berry advocating for the destruction of the cultural center to be humorous its idiocy. All I can offer is this: Mr. Berry please keep your mouth shut from now on. You are making the rest of us look bad. Here we are trying to make Houston a place that people want to come to, a place where people from all over the world and from every faith will feel welcome and want to spend money.We’re trying to make this city a place where cool people will be able to do cool things with other cool people without getting any shit for the way they look, who they want to go to bed with or who they voted for. And then you go and say something like this. Something that makes us all look bad and now the cool kids in NYC or LA or Portland will go on thinking we’re a bunch of rednecks.

Thanks Mike, no really. I mean that. We’ve worked so hard to be taken seriously as a civilized city. We have our own indie rock stars with Indian Jewelry, we gave hip-hop the idea to chop and screw the music,  we got a music festival that doesn’t feature Clint Black, hell we even have a lesbian mayor.  All of which will mean nothing if people like you keep shooting their mouths off about things you know nothing about and have no business commenting on. If the people in New York want an Islamic Cultural Center next to ground zero that’s their business.

Hell, if they want to build a 20-foot-tall, red, white and blue dong in the middle of ground zero and cover it wit a banner that reads: “NYC home to more sodomites than the rest of the country put together” that’s their business too. Stick to talking about Houston so the rest of the country can stick to ignoring you and we can stick to improving this city’s image.