Why are people here down on NPR?

[insanity]

NPR kicks my ass. I've always thought of their news being fairly balanced and far more intelligent than cable news.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Because they got taken over by Repub management guy who really

worked hard to make reporters shill for the ** admin on many occasions?

[insanity]

2. They still provided a forum for intelligent people to disagree

Shows like All Things Considered and Fresh Air usually had depth in the conversation about the Administration.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. True, but I think many longtime listeners feel they were a better news source back in the day

[CreekDog]

10. They were

:hi:

(i haven't listened to Morning Edition in particular as often since the leadup to the Iraq invasion)

[DS1]

3. this

^^^

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. That, too

I've been skeptical of them since they started cheerleading for the Gulf War, a feeling that was only reinforced when they started cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.

(In 1988, I heard a talk by a former NPR reporter, who told how the largest corporate underwriters had veto power over news stories.)

I'm also angry that they've cut their classical programming in most places. In Portland, we were lucky that KBPS (AllClassical.org) was available to take up the slack, and in the Twin Cities, NPR still has a classical service. But some entire states have no classical music radio or any other kind of non-commercial music radio.

[1gobluedem]

9. I work for an affiliate

The real change in NPR came with the 104th Congress, led by Newt Gingrich. They failed in eliminating funding for public broadcasting but they succeeded in changing the criteria. Before 1995, stations were federally funded by market size which meant they could be very creative and diverse in their programming. Now they are funded by audience size as determined by Arbitron, a flawed system at best. That's when the homogenization of NPR programming began and the trend toward news/talk -- because it attracts more listeners. Old time NPR listeners really miss the edge the network used to have.

Funding was also cut which meant more reliance on corporate support, something that also irritates listeners.

The Republican management guy GreenPartyVoter is referring to I believe is the former head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is the government funding arm but has no authority over programming.

I think it's the having to jump on 'flavor of the month' issues because of the market size funding that has really hurt NPR; it has hurt underserved audiences a lot. But, compared to commercial media, it's still way, WAY better.

My current gripe is the hosts are too snarky and trying too hard to be clever. They kind of have that stereotypical East/West Coast, inside the Beltway sneery snobbery that doesn't play very well to the rest of the country (before you flame me, note I said 'stereotypical'). For the first time ever I sent a nasty letter to one of the hosts after he sneered at the domestic auto industry, something I've never done in my seventeen years here at my station.

[insanity]

11. That's way interesting

I knew that the 104th tried to gut public broadcasting, but I had no idea how they did it. I grew up on NPR, but I am probably too young to remember the shift.

I also agree that NPR has hosts that try too hard and that it comes off as snobbish.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Thanks for that insider look. Very insightful! Yeah, I can see how slashed funding and increased

need for corporate funds hurt things.

[Crazy Dave]

6. I like NPR

I still contribute but not as much as I was able to during better times.

[PeaceNikki]

7. I very much enjoy WPR.

Regardless of what anyone here thinks or says.

[insanity]

8. I assume it probably varries from service area to service area too

KLCC in Eugene is pretty good

[HamdenRice]

13. Fuck NPR. I've hated them ever since they screwed up on 9/11/01 as it unfolded

Before 9/11, my sister and I often complained about how NPR had become so enamored of whimsy that they really weren't reporting the news -- like they had forgotten how to.

I was in my office in lower Manhattan on 9/11 very early in the morning in my office. I heard the plane screech overhead and then heared a loud boom. A secretary came by and said a plane crashed into the WTC.

I had a radio in my office and tuned into NPR -- the local affiliate is WNYC. Bob Edwards was droning on -- and I'll never forget this -- about the obituary of the guy who invented the supermarket scanner and how that invention had "changed our lives forever." I was flipping between NPR, CBS-News and our Pacifica station, WBAI. Both CBS and WBAI cut all normal programming and focused on the crash. Then when the second plane hit, and both CBS and WBAI had non-stop news coverage about how we were under attack.

NPR did not switch to coverage of the catastrophe for like an hour or more, and Bob Edwards just kept droning on about stupid, silly, whimsical, irrelevant bullshit.

What really outraged me is that the next day (maybe it was a few days later because their antena was destroyed), the local WNYC talk show host, Brian Lehrer, said that they could see it all happening in real time from the window of their studio AND THEY DECIDED NOT TO COVER THE STORY ON THE AIR in real time because NPR in DC controlled that part of the broadcast day. They told NPR in DC what was happening, but NPR in DC kept broadcasting about the FUCKING INVENTOR OF THE SUPERMARKET SCANNER, while people were running around Manhattan listening to the radio trying to figure out WTF to do and how the fuck to get out of the city.

Later on the morning of 9/11, WNYC did a lot of on the street reporting and supposedly won a radio emmy, but no one could hear it in real time because when the towers collapsed their antena was destroyed.

FUCK NPR.

[XemaSab]

20. .

x(

[KamaAina]

22. WNYC-AM's antenna is in the New Jersey Meadowlands

like most of NYC's AM stations.

when the towers collapsed their antena was destroyed.

That would have been their FM antenna.

no one could hear it in real time

They probably had no way to get a signal out of their studios near City Hall.

[HamdenRice]

29. Here's something I found. Can't vouch for its accuracy

http://www.fybush.com/wtc-recovery.html

Radio was also knocked out by the attacks: the Trade Center had been home to Columbia University's WKCR (89.9), Spanish Broadcasting's WPAT-FM (93.1 Paterson NJ), public radio WNYC-FM (93.9) and Clear Channel's WKTU (103.5 Lake Success). Only WKTU had a fully-functional auxiliary site, the recently-completed Conde Nast building at Four Times Square; it shifted smoothly from WTC to that site with no downtime.

WKCR and WPAT-FM would remain silent for several days. WNYC lost more than its FM signal; its studio-to-transmitter link to WNYC(AM) also ran through the Trade Center site, leaving no way to get audio from the station's Municipal Building studios to the otherwise unaffected AM 820 site across the river in Kearny, N.J. To make matters worse, the studios were only a few blocks from the Trade Center, at the top of a tall building that was soon evacuated.

WNYC returned to the air that afternoon from the small NPR studio space in midtown Manhattan; its AM signal was soon restored by sending audio from midtown Manhattan by ISDN to NPR in Washington, where it was uplinked to the NPR satellite. A dish was quickly rushed to New Jersey to receive that signal and get AM 820 back on the air.

Further help for WNYC came that day from WNYE (91.5), the school system's station in Brooklyn, which quickly agreed to begin carrying WNYC programming, an arrangement that began at noon Wednesday and would stay in place well into 2002.

<end quote>

I will say that their vaunted reporting on 9/11 was heard by no one in the NYC area when it mattered.

Fuck them for dereliction of duty before the towers collapsed.

[Greyskye]

23. NPR was how I learned about 9/11

Turned on Morning Edition on my commute into work. At least on the West Coast, at my affiliate, the coverage was excellent. :shrug:

[HamdenRice]

24. In real time, if you were in California, that would have been around 6 am your time

which is to say if you were driving after 7 or so, they finally decided to start reporting after it was too late in NYC.

At 9 am NY time (6 am you time) they actually decided not to tell the world that their NY affiliate was watching airplanes crash into buildings a few blocks from them.

Instead they had that bourbon soaked, cigarette junky Bob Edwards drone on about the inventor of the supermarket scanner and other bullshit for an hour or so.

Meanwhile, the emergency broadcasting system never kicked in and we in NYC were looking to local radio to tell us what was happening and what to do.

It was probably the worst dereliction of journalistic duty in the history of radio.

The rumor is that they waited a decent amount of time before firing Bob Edwards who was both on air host and editor of Morning Edition, and who made the call not to talk about the attacks for an hour because, apparently it was much easier to play pre-recorded bullshit "news" items.

Still, fuck 'em.

[catzies]

37. OMG! I'm a Californian who woke up to it at 7 local time and I love Bob Edwards!

:cry:

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

30. Wow. Never knew that story.

Turns out the thing that people made fun of the most about public radio and how "lighthearted" everything was on there (Think the "Schweaty Balls" skit on SNL with Alec Baldwin and Molly Shannon) caused them to miss out on the biggest story of a lifetime.

[1gobluedem]

31. This is interesting because that's not how I remember it at all

I was at my desk when a New York member of an internet group I belong to, posted to say she had just heard that a small plane crashed into the World Trade Center. It was probably 8:45 or so. Within three minutes NPR had cut into programming; in fact it beat the TV stations, and Jackie Leyden was going on and on about "bicycling in from her loft" until I wanted to strangle her. Then it ran wall to wall coverage for the next week.

Bob Edwards was let go because he refused to take on a co-host. He also was not an editor of Morning Edition.

I know they broke into programming in far less than an hour because we air music at 9a and that program didn't air for another week. We never had music on the air on 9-11.

[CreekDog]

14. i like their non news shows

like Fresh Air, Car Talk, Wait, Whaddya Know? (okay APR), Prarie Home Companion (MPR).

all that said, i listen to radio differently now than i once did. back in 1992 when Elizabeth Arnold was covering the Clinton campaign, it was one of the best sources of reporting around (as was the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour). nowadays, i don't listen to radio for news because i have the web. i listen to radio for entertainment or analysis that i can't get anywhere else. that has made shows like ATC less critical for me.

[Optical.Catalyst]

36. Click and Clack, the Tappit Brothers

Car Talk is a laugh a minute.
<>

[redqueen]

15. Their reporting during the buildup to the Iraq War was horrendous.

And their coverage of the protests was pathetic.

Haven't listened since.

[HamdenRice]

16. They gave the Bush crime administration a complete pass for 8 years

and the war was part of that. Maybe because for most of that time, the head of NPR was a former CIA/Voice of America propagandist.

[redqueen]

17. Yep... explains the reason for the whimsical BS stories instead of real news. (nt)

[HamdenRice]

19. Lookee here: NPR's worst broadcast ever (re post 13 up thread)

Notice the date. This was the crap they would not interrupt while planes were flying into buildings right outside their NYC affiliate's window.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1128798

Scanner Inventor Obituary

Listen Now:
Real MediaExplain these links

Morning Edition, September 11, 2001 · NPR's Scott Horsley reports on the death of Jon Myer, the experimental physicist who helped invent the supermarket price scanner. Myer was working at Hughes Laboratories, when he came up with the idea of using lasers to read bar codes and scan the information into cash registers. His invention has fundamentally changed the entire retail industry.

[GCP]

34. If that's the case, how come NPR listeners were the most well informed

And the most sceptical about WMD and going to war against Iraq?

Must have been all that cheer-leading, huh?

[redqueen]

35. They were skeptical because they were more informed.

I expect a lot more from supposedly public radio than to be somewhat better than M$M bullshit. Sue me.

[Orsino]

18. NPR still beats a lot of MSM.

A lot of NPR does, anyway. Though the right-wing slant grew painfully obvious in the * era.

Cokie is a goddamned joke.

[stuntcat]

21. I listen

:hi:

They DID screw up totally covering the Bush administration, and the runup to the war. And I'm disappointed in how little they cover the environment, I wish SOMEONE in our MSM would acknowledge how much our consumption is affecting OUR FUTURE :mad:

But I listen anyway, every day. After listening all these years I'm still about as far to the left as an Amurican can get :shrug:

[mitchum]

25. See Phil Och's song "Love Me, I'm A Liberal"

[mitchum]

26. I love their classical and jazz programming, but I can do without...

their oh-so-cautious commentary.
Their producers and commentators are tools.
And most of their on air personalities don't even have good radio voices (it would be akin to the Cross Eyed Modeling Agency)

[Blue_Tires]

27. they are ok...but they have the Cato stooges on a little too often for my taste

[Arugula Latte]

28. I find it too annoying now.

They lost me.

[KansDem]

32. I gave up on NRP when Cokie Roberts reported on the "Bush Charm Offensive..."

...during Campaign2000. She told us about how Bush was "charming...oh, so charming" and how he would use this "charm" to get things done in DC.

Oh, and he also liked to give out "nicknames" and that more Americans wanted to have a beer with him than Al Gore...:puke:

[KG]

33. it's a nice little town!

http://cityofnewportrichey.org/