Beyond the Spin: Week 1

Piece Description

Welcome to the premier broadcast of Beyond the Spin, hosted by Marc Steiner.  Every week, we’ll be taking an in depth look at the issues that are important to our communities during the 2012 election season.  We’ll be going beyond the headlines, beyond the horse race, and beyond the spin to get to the heart of the issues that have the most impact on all of our lives.

We’ll be bringing community radio journalists together in a national conversation on the air, linking the stories and voices of diverse communities around the United States. As public radio journalists, we seek to bring the interests and opinions of communities that are often left out of the national broadcast landscape to the airwaves.

We are building this new show as a dialogue, a conversation between communities about the future of our nation, with people from all parts of the country sharing their unique perspectives. There are plenty of other places to hear pundits from inside the DC beltway, but Beyond the Spin will feature voices from all of the diverse communities that make up our country.

On this week's show, we explore the influence of money on the 2012 elections, and American politics in general.  As the US economy continues to struggle, the amount spent on running a Presidential campaign, let alone any smaller campaign, is staggering.  A CNN report estimates that 6 billion dollars will be spent on the 2012 Presidential campaigns.  Other estimates put the number at 10 billion.  What does it mean for our democracy to have billions of dollars invested in the simple matter of electing our political representatives?

We have 6 guests joining us from around the nation this hour: Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call Radio at KALW in San Francisco, Sally Kane, Executive Director of KVNF in Paonia, Colorado, Shedd Johnson, News Director of WVAS in Montgomery, Alabama, Marge Kalama, Marge Kalama, producer, announcer and host of the weekly program Talking Drum at KWSO on the Warm Springs reservation in Oregon, Sonya Green, News and Public Affairs Director of KBCS in Bellevue, Washington and Ian Masters, host of Background Briefing at KPFK in Los Angeles, California. 

Marc Steiner is also the host of the Marc Steiner Show, broadcast from WEAA, a public radio station at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.