ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996              TAG: 9612160017
SECTION: CURRENT                  PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 

LETTERS

No commendations for killing creatures

I was shocked to see the picture taken of the hunter in the Current and the unique little albino deer he'd harvested.

Do they have to kill everything that runs, flies, creeps, crawls? Pity it wasn't given to a petting zoo rather than shot and being bragged about.

I see nothing, nothing commendable about it.

Mary B. Simmons

Check

We deserve better from public radio

My pet peeve with WVTF, the public radio station, has to do with the creeping commercialization of public radio. Over the years, as Republican lawmakers have stripped its public support in an effort to privatize public radio, stations like WVTF have instituted more frequent and longer fund-raisers, and more frequent and longer "acknowledgments" for corporate sponsors. Such acknowledgments, they say, are not advertisements, but this is a "distinction without a difference."

Frequently heard on WVTF these days is an "acknowledgment" of a downtown men's clothing store in which the available merchandise is described, and even the number of floors in the store! And then there are all those "cute" slogans of the corporate giants, like Archer Daniels Midland, which bear no relation at all to what these international conglomerates are really about.

Our culture is awash enough in Orwellian newspeak; we deserve better from public radio. If advertisements are necessary, it is more honest just to admit it.

Michael L. Bentley

Salem

LENGTH: Short :   39 lines