Sharlet: On NPR’s “On the Media,” I join the show’s Brooke Gladstone and “Media Matter”‘s Paul Waldmanto discuss his new study for the liberal media watchdog organization in which he argues that the news media inflates the importance of religious conservatives and ignores the strengths of religious progressives. It’s a valuable study for the data it collects about the talking heads who talk the most, and its premise — that the media’s characterization of the right as religious and the left as secular is misleading — is sound, but I can’t follow Waldman further than his diagnosis. My problem? “Media Matters”‘ prescription, which seems to be to match the Right’s talking heads with talking heads from a mythical land known as the “center.”

Also on the show, a couple of weeks ago: Former Falwell ghostwriter Mel White and religious right watcher Michelle Goldberg discuss the fallen fat man’s nimbleness in the media.