The Providence Journal newspaper reports that Rhode Island Governor Chafee will no longer appear on “talk radio” since it is “ratings-driven, for-profit programming.” (Read the article) He even goes so far as to forbid state employees from appearing on talk radio shows while on the job.

This is clearly an idiotic position to take. A governor needs to communicate with his constituents and instead of using a radio program to do this I guess he can spend taxpayer funds to send newsletters or send letters to answer constituent questions that otherwise could have been answered on air. After reading the article, I continued reading the comments and was struck by the following, very astute, response.

News flash Chafee camp: ALL media is “ratings driven, for-profit programming” (unless it’s tax-payer funded NPR), otherwise it would not have the funds to exist, pay salaries, etc. If media doesn’t have any ratings that means no one listens, reads, watches. So I guees we can infer that the Gov will speak to non-ratings driven media which no one cares about. Or is he just not going to talk at all? Oh, one last thing: what’s wrong with making a profit in the media business? This is pretty unbelievable.