Question about trends on NPR

[matt819]

This falls into the "is it only me?" category. I've been listening to NPR for years. They've been accused of being on the left-ish side of things. If being factual and thoughtful is liberal, it's a badge I'd imagine wearing with some pride. In short, overall I like NPR.

Here's the "is it only me?" question. Is it only me, or is NPR shifting to the other side of the aisle (or perhaps pandering would be a better word) with such shows or features as Speaking of Faith, This I believe, or, more recently, Crossing the Divide. I absolutely can't stand This I believe, and the Crossing the Divide features are for the most part inane (with a couple of exception). I gather that Speaking of Faith is intended to be a "neutral" approach to discussing issues of faith in America, their inextricable link with the political process, etc.

Overall, my impression is that this is pandering to the religious right to build up their audience on the right. I doubt it's any more insidious than that, but it is irritating as hell. I know they have airtime to fill, as do all radio stations, but this isn't the way to do it. Anyone else?

[Skidmore]

1. As long as NPR has Terry Gross and Fresh Air on, they will

have me as a listener. I really miss some of the old voices. Talk of the Nation is a sad shell of what it used to be when Ray Suarez was on. He was absolutely the best host of this type I've ever heard.

[a kennedy]

2. I still like Scott Simon on Saturdays.......

and Kathleen Dunn on my local Wisconsin Public Radio station every morning @ 9:00am, she's great.

[Chiyo-chichi]

10. Scott Simon definitely a conservative Republican - and it shows.

I used to like him, too. He sounds pleasant & friendly & has a great radio voice.

But he was incredibly hostile in an interview with John Kerry in '04.

He was also a huge supporter of the Iraq war.

“It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane alternative now but to support war. I don’t consider this reprisal or revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks by destroying those who would launch them.”
Scott Simon, Even Pacifists Must Support This War, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11, 2001

http://www.current.org/ethics/ethics0316news.shtml

[a kennedy]

32. D*mn about Scott Simon.......

:cry:

[Buzz Clik]

7. Terry Gross, Diane Rehm, "Day to Day", ...

and many of the voices on NPR who are brilliant and not exactly pandering to the right.

[lazyriver]

3. It's not just you.

If you haven't read "Lap Dogs" by Eric Boehlert. I would recommend it. In one section, he specifically addresses the politics, players and propaganda that are the driving forces behind the changes that have become evident at NPR.

[mediaman007]

4. I'm a regular listener to Minnesota Public Radio.

I have listened to Speaking of Faith. I thinks its more than balanced. This program explores issues of faith and actually goes far beyond Christianity. I think this program is very valuable. In fact I think that there have been programs which explore the hypocrisy of religion.

This I Believe seems to be a random collection of individuals without any particular agenda.

I have not come across the third program.

[phaseolus]

5. "This I Believe"

...has had maybe two Atheists on, as well as I can remember - the usually annoying Penn Jillette, and a smart retired teacher from Wisconsin, so there's maybe a little balance there.

I bet you're right, though, about trends in general. This could be an effect of Bush's packing the board with movement conservatives like that ass Tomlinson who used to threaten to rebuild the whole organization in their image. It's hard not to imagine radio producers scrambling rightward in a situation like that, just to save their own skins...

[Buzz Clik]

8. Here's a link to "This I Believe" and its essays.

"This I Believe" is NOT a religious forum. (I just listened to a 14-year-old trying to embrace his very odd obsessive behavior, and the essay being touted as the next in line speaks about karate.)

In response to the OP's question, "Is it me?", there is no answer. I have found that there is a group of people on DU who hate NPR and claim it is a mouthpiece for the GOP. I'm in my fourth decade of listening to NPR, and it doesn't seem any more right leaning than before.

NPR is hardly perfect, but there is no reasonable alternative for news on the radio today. (No, you don't get real news from left-wing scream fests any more than you get news from Bill O'Reilly.)

[matt819]

17. Don't get me wrong

I think NPR is wonderful. Granted, I don't like all the shows, but that's to be expected, and the ones that are good are almost invariably very, very good. I know that there are those here who believe it is a mouthpiece for the GOP; indeed, one post I saw some time back called Diane Rehm a lackey of one sort or another, when she is anything but.

My objection to This I Believe is in part to the name. Some of the commentary is entertaining or moving or otherwise positive. But some is crappy and inane and leaves the impression that somehow we in the fact-based world somehow need to consider the views of those in the faith-based universe.

[Buzz Clik]

6. Today's "Crossing the Divide" was about race.

Not exactly a topic of choice for the right.

[Captain Hilts]

9. Juan Williams is a hypocritical tool. He defended Clarence Thomas while he...

was simultaneously having sexual harrassment charges against himself at the Washington Post.

I have no interest in hearing anything he has to say. No winder Faux uses him as a 'liberal' point of view.

[porphyrian]

11. They've been moving right since this administration took the White House.

NPR is a government agency.

[kath]

18. Actually, before that. Their coverage of the 2000 pres. campaign

leaned right, and was significantly more negative toward Gore than toward Bush.
Made me want to :puke:

[Tesha]

25. Steve Inskeep was their guy "covering" Bush in 2000

> Their coverage of the 2000 pres. campaign leaned right,
> and was significantly more negative toward Gore than
> toward Bush.

Their "coverage" of Bush was all fluff and their correspondant
covering Bush was Steve Inskeep.

He was rewarded for his hard-hitting, incisive journalism by
being promoted to the co-host's chair on Morning Edition.

Tesha

[IDemo]

12. Stay tuned for Rush today on All Things Considered->

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x35837

[Gruenemann]

16. I nearly puked when I heard that

on my commute this morning. not only have i stopped giving Nazi Propoganda Radio any money, i'm not going to listen to them any more.

[Ganja Ninja]

28. When I heard that on the drive home yesterday I reached ...

over and turned it off. I don't listen to NPR much anymore. I catch the headlines and if they are covering some real news I might listen but they ain't what they use to be.

[Annces]

13. They put me to sleep

They are not the cutting edge, so yawn, yawn.

[Sal Minella]

14. I avoided "Speaking of Faith" for years but now listen consistently. Krista Tippett (sp?) talks to

people from wildly different backgrounds -- Buddhists, atheists, etc. I now feel she is not pushing any doctrine, but is exploring whatever it is that keeps an individual going -- like a kid taking things apart to see how they work.

One of the "Speaking of Faith" shows I appreciated most featured the writer who was so horrendously depressed for so long, too exhausted to commit suicide, and a friend kept the thread of human connection in place by coming over and rubbing his feet every day....

When Krista interviews a self-professed "Christian" it's much more likely to be somebody cutting up carrots in a soup kitchen than somebody wandering around in satin vestments. I've learned to soak up her show, and I am a really prickly agnostic.

I've never heard "Crossing the Divide" but it sounds yucky. "This I Believe" is frequently not religious in nature at all.

And Terri Gross on "Fresh Air" yes yes yes, plus "On the Media" and "This American Life" (which I sometimes turn off, when it's just too graphic, or too painful to hear).

But what about the extended Coca-Cola infomercials they run from time to time? Stands my hair on end.

I have no TV (a choice made decades ago) and all in all I am grateful NPR exists. It seems to have drifted right-ward less than I expected, actually.

[Az]

15. There was a deliberate shift

In large part due to a supposed fear of being too liberal. During the repug congress years NPR turned increasingly conservative. Management was the key here. They decided that they should take a more "balanced" approach to reporting and decided to higher more reporters that had definate conservative biases in their style.

The tradgedy is that this sort of "balancing" is anything but. For the most part there is a tendency of the part of so called liberal reporters to avoid putting any spin on stories. Their is a deliberate effort to remain inpartial even if they are personally opinionated on a particular subject. But the so called balanced reporters have been given virtual free reign to spin and twist their stories any way they see fit. Because management wants to avoid appearing liberally biased they kowtow to there clache of conservative reporters.

Now all this being said the average conservatives head will still explode after listening to more than 15 minutes of NPR. As public media goes its still probably the best thing going in the US. And with the House and Senate back in the hands of the Dems perhaps the management may find the courage to reign in their little conservative monsters.

As a further point of hope the management that initiated the conservative turn at NPR has departed. Ken Stern stepped in as the new CEO of NPR in October of last year. Lets see where he takes the company.

[Nutmegger]

19. I've been listening to NPR for years

I'm astounded at the amount of time so-called "conservatives" get now. They'll have a lefty on and give the righty more time or have two on for "counterbalance".

I think it's disgusting. I feel that the right-wing knew that they couldn't stack the CPB or cut funding so they perpetuated this "myth" that NPR is "too liberal".

STFU cowards and leave NPR alone!

[Ron Green]

20. I'm not nearly as bothered by the discussion of faith as I am by the sale of NPR to Wal*Mart and

Archer Daniels Midland. The unfettered corporate market is far more dangerous to democracy than is religion, in my opinion.

[Nikki Stone1]

21. No it's not only you. They've been shifting since 1994 when Newt threatened their funding

They have been steadfastly pro-war during the Bush administration. I only listen to their entertainment shows when I run across them, like Prairie Home Companion. (Thank God for Garrison!) But I have ceased to listen to their news programs. I get my news on the web.

[Tesha]

26. Prairie Home Companion *IS NOT* an NPR show.

Prairie Home Companion *IS NOT* an NPR show; it's
produced by American Public Media and sold to your
local public radio stations.

Tesha

[Tesha]

27. Yes, '94 and the threat to defund CPB is about the watershed moment.

> No it's not only you. They've been shifting since 1994 when
> Newt threatened their funding

Yes, '94 and the threat to defund CPB is about the watershed moment.

It was at this moment that NPR lost its guts and caved in,
rapidly shifting their programming to the obscenity that it
is today.

Tesha

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. NPR is corporate radio. It has nothing to do with religion. Anyone still listening to it

Has a different idea of what "liberal" means.

NPR listeners are frogs in a boiling kettle. They've gotten used to the difference between today's NPR and pre-1994.

NPR is "liberal" in the sense that Woodrow Wilson, William McKinley, Andrew Carnegie or Boris Yeltsin is "liberal".

They are statist, state-sponsored, conservative talking head radio.

They despise non-commercial music and non-centrist opinion.

Read what Bob Edwards had to say. or Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers is someone who SUPPORTS talking about religion on public radio. He left NPR because he is a liberal.

Maybe all NPR listeners care about is the cultural element, making sure it appeals to people like themselves. in that case you should be satisfied by the world music interludes designed to pander to "enlightened educated professionals" who think they have taste.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. NPR's DC flagship station, WETA, just fired its last folk/protest DJ from the old days.

Her last show (Mary Cliff) is this Saturday at 9 PM,
after the march on Washington.

She has already been told to clear out her desk.

All her colleagues were fired in 1995 or later.

She only survived this long because she was the union rep.

They will replace her with automated playlisted classical music.

[Tesha]

24. NPR routinely shills for Republicans with their main news programs.

Okay, let's get past the obvious onjection first:

Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! are unabashadly
leftist programs. No doubt about it.

But nearly every other program on NPR is centrist at best,
or decidedly Right-biased.

The Tesha family has been listening to NPR for decades, and
it wasn't always this way. Years ago, All Things Considered
used to have the occasional actual leftist voice on. I remember
one male commentator (Michael somebody) they used to feature
who was from the Democratic Socialists, and they had an
African-American woman commentator who was also decidedly
left.

But over the years, those several voices got shunted aside in
favor of more and more commentators from The Heritage
Foundation, the Hoover Institute, or the CATO Institute.
Nowadays, they think they're being balanced if they put
someone from the Heritage Foundation up against someone
from the Brookings Institute; the far-right against the
slightly-left/centrist.

Then the Morning Edition fired Bob Edwards in favor of
Steve Inskeep, a fellow who "covered" Bush's 2000 campaign
for them and who absolutely drips disdain any time he's inter-
viewing anyone who's left of Dick Cheney. It's starting to
be routine each morning that one of his witty asides leads
me to shout "Fuck you, Inskeep!" at the radio as I switch
off NPR for the rest of the morning.

The Tesha family kept giving a lot of money to NPR even after
this shift became massively apparent to us, and we certainly
attempted to communicate our displeasure as listeners to the
folks at NPR, but we were politely ignored. So now we've
given up. Not a dime of ours has gone to NPR for a few years
now, and quite frankly, the sooner they die and remove their
cleverly-veiled propaganda from the air, the better off the
left will be.

Because they've become Nothing but Propaganda for Republicans.

Tesha

[sendero]

29. NPR has been going steadily downhill..

.... since at least the late 90s. After 17 years of supporting my local affiliate financially, in 2002 I'd had enough.

At that time, they started running regular commentaries from members of the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The CATO Institute and the National Review. They were cheerleading for the war almost as much as FOX News was.

I was hoping that with the departure of Ken Tomlinson, they would get back to their roots. They are better in some ways, but not much. Now, for instance, instead of running a commentary from the AEI (the most blatantly evil of the right wing stink tanks IMHO), they run "interviews", where softball questions are used to allow some AEI shithead to expose his ridiculous ideas without challenge.

I keep hearing "unity and bipartisanship" stories, just like on the rest of the mainstream media. Where were the calls for "unity and bipartisanship" before Nov 2006? Nobody seemed to care that the Republicans especially in the house but in the senate also, treated the minority Dems like a non-entity.

IMHO, NPR is gone forever and it is not coming back. It's not a case of perfect being the enemy of the good, they are not even good any more. You should have heard that asshole grilling Jimmy Carter about his book. The dude was a pit bull, and yet they will let a Republican sleazeball get on there and they will throw softballs and demand no followup.

Please, if you are still giving money to NPR affiliates, you are being duped.

[cadmium]

30. I get the same feeling. Ira Glass' show before

the invasion of Iraq was he usual heartfelt informal man on the street type thing but it was among Iraqi expatriots in Jordan. I don't remember him explicitly saying that he was encouraging the invasion, but the message was clear.

The show boiled down a littany of Saddam's wrongs from people who were personally affected and wanted us to get him. Then the message is "you decide".

This kind of manipulative stuff was very effective in getting liberals on board with the Iraq invasion.

[aikoaiko]

31. I don't blame them - after all its national public radio, not lefty public radio.

I still support them. Its good radio even if I disagree. Referring to it as Nazi PR or Nothing but Republican Propaganda Radio is ridiculous.

[Strelnikov_]

33. Not you. Stopped supporting Neocon Propaganda Radio

during the 04 campaign.