Responding to the criticism that has arisen about the Andy Barnett case, KNSI has posted "the COMPLETE, un-altered interview of two St. Cloud City Council Candidates from Friday, November 2nd 2007." It's a 20 MB file (compression would be nice, guys -- many of us do hour-long podcasts in smaller files), so proceed accordingly.

Andy is posting his story. Speed Gibson comments:

My heart goes out to Andy Barnett, but from what I've read and heard, including Barnett's own account, my head is with the station management on this one. Regardless, the worst behavior by far was that of the complaining candidate(s). I again ask, why are liberals so convinced they're right yet are so uncomfortable defending them in public?

Getting back to KNSI, abortion and same-sex marriage just aren't local issues. Barnett gave a couple of weak examples showing how they could relate to other local issues, but this just isn't good enough. Frankly, I think the intent was there to embarrass the candidates. If Barnett was adamant with management as I think I heard him say he was, then yes, he'd be gone at my station, too.

As I updated in the earlier post on this topic (not sure when it got up on this site, but I had tried to post this without success when our wireless modem went down yesterday), we have to be careful about besmirching the candidate -- as you will hear in the interview, she's adamant about her disapproval of the questions on-air, but that is the only evidence of disapproval we have. Leo has updated his post which started the ball rolling in the blogosphere saying that the station manager, John Sowada, has written to another blogger stating he did not speak to the candidate after the interview, and that in his conversation with Barnett earlier tonight Barnett said he did not see the two speaking, that "several people at Leighton told me." That's consistent with what I've found; it was not my understanding when I spoke with Andy Friday, but that came out in the interview Saturday (podcast now available -- interview begins about 12 minutes in) and confirmed by other discussions.

The part that one has difficulty with is how one goes from on-air debate to fired in four hours; given that Sowada made this decision without speaking with the candidate, one can conclude one of two things -- either it's an overreaction to an uncomfortable interview (to him as well as to the candidate), or there's more here that we do not know. Answer c: Answers a and b are correct, is permitted.

Labels: KNSI, St. Cloud