Did KQV poll exploit LGBT community?

As many astute radio listeners have figured out, KQV frequently use its “Listener Poll” to increase revenues and audience share through the use of bias toward minorities shared by its audience.

Wednesday’s “Listener Poll,” (Nov 10, 2010) strove to drive a wedge between straight and gay Americans by asking listeners to choose between repeal and continuation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”!

Such a survey, in light of current social and legislative trends, is like asking radio listeners in 1958 Alabama if they favored segregated or integrated lunch counters. It serves no purpose other than to calcify existing prejudices in the face of inevitable change.

It would be one thing if KQV had offered key information on the issue, such as the fact that in the armies of virtually all advanced nations—and in the ranks of one of the most respected of all armies, Israel’s army—gays serve alongside straights with distinction!

But yesterday’s “Listener Poll” was yet another example of KQV’s shameless exploitation of existing prejudices and bigotry to line its pockets by playing to its audience’s sick bias. The poll results were again exemplary of a highly prejudiced audience (as the numbers usually are), and serve to reinforce the audience in their hatreds, and the fact that they are listening to a station that understands (or even condones) their bigotry.

No business should aggrandize itself on the backs of the second class citizenship and misery of other Americans.

As a gay man who served as an Army officer in Vietnam, I regret that my service has indirectly provided KQV the platform to spew its un-American ideals. I think the station is run by small men, and sad men. And no amount of cash lining their pockets will change that.

—John Kichi

Sewickley Hills