As a media critic, I've often felt like kicking KHOW talk radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, but I restrain myself.

I know that violence against talk radio hosts is the worst form of media criticism. And it's illegal.

It's true that kicking journalists was popular among media critics during the early Neanderthal era, but this is the year 2008.

Plus, in the case of Caplis and Silverman, I like their show more often than not. It airs 3-6 p.m. on 630 AM.

They'll take on the most serious issues (e.g., the Iraq war) and the most trivial (e.g., Britney Spears' pregnant sister). It's fun and intelligent, mostly because of the disagreements between these two very smart hosts about even the dumbest topics.

I wish they wouldn't latch on to stuff like Ward Churchill, but their core job is entertainment, and they obviously find trivial matters in Boulder more entertaining than I do.

It also bugs me that Caplis is a right-wing Republican and Silverman is a centrist Democrat - which creates the perception that the political spectrum starts with centrism and ends with social conservatism.

Caplis is among Denver's most right-wing pundits. If he ran for governor, as he's threatened to do, he'd get Focus on the Family founder James Dobson's support in a heartbeat.

Silverman outlined his history of Democratic centrism in a letter to me that's posted on my blog (Bigmedia .org). He writes that he has an open mind, but in reality he rarely strays from the Democratic center. When he does, he usually tilts right, not left.

Surprisingly, Silverman refused to answer a single question from a long list I sent him, covering basic stuff like "Do you favor elimination of the estate tax?"

Caplis wrote me that because he and Silverman don't "walk lock step with either political party, we cover a much broader portion of the spectrum than the typical hard-left vs. hard-right show."

Hardly. Imagine if a local radio talk show pitted a real progressive against a guy like Caplis.

By a real progressive, I mean someone who supports these kinds of things: raising the federal minimum wage to $11 per hour; a ban on construction of new coal-fired power plants; a government-run health-care system; the free distribution of condoms in public high schools; gay marriage; an increase in the capital gains tax; troop withdrawal from Iraq within six months; and the legalization and taxation of marijuana.

Silverman shouldn't be replaced with a progressive host. He and Caplis have a good thing going.

But Denver needs more progressive voices on talk radio. Jay Marvin (mornings on 760 AM) is the only local progressive talk radio host on English-language commercial radio - while the right wing has five local talkers, whose falsehoods and distortions are chronicled by Colorado Media Matters.

A dual-host show with a wide ideological spread between the hosts could be successful and bring some ideological balance to Denver's talk radio landscape.

Harvey to retire? Good news from KOA. Kris Olinger, Clear Channel's AM program director, e-mailed me that Paul Harvey, narrator of two radio features, "will most likely retire soon."

She also wrote that Harvey is "without question one of our listeners' favorites."

If you like Harvey, you might enjoy Colorado Matters, which airs weekdays from 10-11 a.m. on Colorado Public Radio, 1340 AM. It tries to be a little folksy, like Harvey, but it's infinitely better, with light and serious topics, presented in a long-interview format.

Phantom quotes. "Detractors call him 'erratic' and 'incoherent.' " That's a sentence from a Jan. 6 Denver Post story on Gov. Bill Ritter's first year in office. Despite the quotation marks, the article did not name the actual persons saying these mean things about Ritter.

So you'd think that this is an example of a reporter allowing anonymous sources to level a petty attack.

Not so. Post Managing Editor Gary Clark explained in an e-mail that this "wasn't a case of offering anonymity to a single critic. Instead, it was an attempt to characterize what a number of sources said."

A reporter, or any writer, shouldn't use a quotation in a summary, unless the summary contains an actual quotation. Clark acknowledged that "maybe" they shouldn't have done it.

Health costs? Both dailies have reported that Gov. Bill Ritter is worried about the expense of his goal of providing health care to all Coloradans, regardless of which plan is chosen.

Reporters should challenge this notion by noting that the governor's own Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform states that a single-payer system would actually reduce total state health-care expenditures by $2 billion.

But it would require, according to the commission's report, an 8 percent income tax increase.

Our political leaders should be asked whether the real issue is cost or political will.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.