John Batchelor

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For other people named John Batchelor, see John Batchelor (disambiguation).

John Batchelor is a writer and host of the "John Batchelor Show" radio news magazine. Based at WABC radio in New York for five years from September 12, 2001, to September 1, 2006, the show was syndicated nationally on the ABC radio network. Batchelor is a 1970 graduate of Princeton University and a 1976 graduate of Union Theological Seminary.

John Batchelor and his original co-host, Paul Alexander, began broadcasting "Batchelor and Alexander" on WABC in New York on the night after the attack on America. ABC News asked the pair to host the show until Osama bin Laden was either killed or captured. [1] However, on or about September 8, 2001, John Bachelor and Paul Alexander were broadcasting on WABC radio, (before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States), under a show name different than their marketing Web site indicates; and had serious discussions concerning both Al-Qaeda and the unanswered U.S. government response to the USS Cole bombing^{[citation needed]}.

Alexander left the show in December 2003, to pursue work as a playwright [2] and biographer. [3]

The show, syndicated nationally, is said to have had the world's best reporting on the war on terror ^{[citation needed]}, and also carried nightly (M-F) the John Loftus report on current, war-related, open-source intelligence. Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily, was also a regular and has served as co-host. The program featured reports from journalists' filing with the world's most respected press outlets and was usually a few days ahead of the news cycle.

Batchelor's show was unique in its content and presentation. Usually featuring multiple guests, shows were preceded and interspersed with news clips and music. The show featured a myriad of topics including politics, the war on terror, nuclear proliferation, the U.N., African civil war, American history, space exploration and even Hollywood scandals. The Jerusalem Post has an audio archive of "Batchelor and Alexander" segments from 2002 and 2003 that deal with Israel and the Middle East. [4]

The blogger known as Pundita has written: "Batchelor's show represents post-partisan, intelligence-based news analysis and reporting. He and his sources unpack background to major news events over days, months, and even years so that the listener develops an in-depth, coherent view of a particular region or issue.^[1]

"First American news program to treat the United States as a superpower nation. First American news program to look at international news from a uniquely American perspective. First news program to integrate daily news coverage with 21st century issues--energy, space exploration, etc.

". . . Analysis of US politics and European/other world region politics--Middle East, China, India, Former Soviet Union, African countries, etc. Reports regularly on State Department, White House, Congress, US intelligence agencies. Nightly in-depth reporting on war on terror. US history discussions, strong on US war history. Cultural trends. Discussions about new books on literary/historical figures." [5]

To report on breaking news, Batchelor and a small staff travelled to Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, and Taiwan, landing in Taipei to broadcast a week before the 2004 elections, when both the president and the vice-president were shot and wounded by an unknown assailant.

1 Show cancellation and possible return
2 Work
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Show cancellation and possible return

On Monday, August 25, 2006, John Batchelor announced on air that his last show on ABC Radio Network would be on Friday, September 1, and that the show would go into hiatus for a few months, returning under an unstated relationship with the Hoover Institute. [6]WABC's Manager Phill Boyce wrote in e-mails to listeners, simply that ABC Radio Network dicontinued syndication with John but Phill didn't give any hint why that happened. One rumor is, that the company which purchased ABC Radio Network, Citadel Radio, didn't like John's extreme focus on Israeli/Jewish topics, although there is no concrete evidence of this.