Welcome to another weekly review of Iowa Press. If you’re new here, you may not know that I can’t let an Iowa Press episode go by without comment.

And before you decide I’m exaggerating about their favoritism of Republicans over Democrats, I did a head count of every Iowa Press episode so far in 2023, January through October.  I counted seventeen Republican guests on the show during that time period compared to only nine Democratic guests.  That’s almost twice as many Republicans as Democrats appearing as guests on the Iowa Press program.And twice when there was a Democrat on the show, there was also a Republican. Of the nine appearances by Democrats, two of those were shared with Republicans. So Democrats only had seven shows to themselves and Republicans had fifteen shows with no Democratic counterpart. That’s more than double.

Well, you may argue that of course they have  more Rs on the show because Iowa has so many more Republican electeds than Democrats! But you can bet if the situation was reversed, they would feel compelled to find a way to equal things out.  There are plenty of Democrats Iowa Press could invite on the show if they wanted to. By the way, when was the last time the state auditor was on the program? I didn’t come across an appearance on Iowa Press by Rob Sand this year. Huh.

I did not count issue episodes where the party of the guest was unknown; I did not count reporters roundtable episodes. On the Iowa Press website there is a gap between February 17 and March 10 where I couldn’t find two episodes. This gap also was present on YouTube so I was unable to determine who was on the show during those dates. Perhaps there were Democrats on both missing episodes in which case I would be incorrect in my tally.

But today’s rant is about the most recent episode featuring the Republican governor of North Dakota who is obviously, according to Kay, running for president. Why Iowa Press felt his appearance on the program would be of value to most Iowans I have no idea. It was a half hour of free campaign time for a crackpot, if you ask me.

Iowa Press apparently invited this Republican so-called presidential candidate on the show to do nothing but bash President Biden.  Joe Biden was the first name he mentioned, who he said was responsible for all our current problems. Next he blamed President Obama. Funny he didn’t mention Trump. The panel didn’t bring up Trump’s name either which is highly, highly unusual for them, until very late in the show.  Kay asked the governor a good question about whether he considered his candidacy an indictment of Donald Trump.  He declined to answer, which of course you can easily get away with on this program if you have an R behind your name.  Instead, the so-called presidential candidate responded that even though he’s in the Republican primary, he’s running against Joe Biden.

His presence on the program suggests Iowa Press believes there needs to be an alternative to Trump, but instead of mentioning Trump is currently spending a lot of time in court facing criminal charges, and Trump lawyers and staff are pleading guilty and copping deals on a daily basis, they seemed happy enough to allow a filibuster length bashing of President Biden throughout the program.

Really, Iowa Press, was this a good choice of programming for Iowa at this time? Does Iowa Press only care about what Republicans are saying?  Do you tell yourselves it’s okay because Democrats have an incumbent president and hey, we have nothing but Republicans in Iowa, seemingly, if one was to draw a conclusion from watching your weekly show.

I saw no value in your conversation with this Republican so-called candidate for president. That is unless you like Biden bashing and the usual Republican point of view, as if we don’t get enough of that day in and day out with our redder than red “representation” in Iowa.  May I remind you that Iowa’s voter registration is about a third each Republican, Democrat, and no-party. My point is that Iowa is a politically diverse state made up of more than Republicans.  And another thing, you are public television! Is it not true that our tax dollars support you? Maybe if your programming reflected some awareness that  not everyone in Iowa is a MAGA-Republican your ratings might improve.

I’m not posting the episode of the Republican North Dakota Governor wanna be president here. Anyone who would like to watch this episode feel free to find it yourself.

What I will post instead, just to even things out a bit is a re-dux, in case you missed it, of a better than usual episode of Iowa Press where two public school administrators took advantage of the opportunity to educate Iowans about what the Republican school voucher program is really doing to public education in our state.  Click here to read my review posted previously.