NPR on the Texas Shitshow...arghhhhhhhhh

[maxrandb]

So I happened to catch some NPR this morning. They were talking about the Texas energy fiasco. After playing governor Abbott blaming Windmills and the Green New Deal, the host asked the guest; "is he right about that"?

I actually started talking to my radio, saying; "no, no NO!"

I guess I anticipated what was going to happen, because there was a pregnant pause from NPR, and then I heard; "well, Yes and No".

How in the fuck the only answer to that fucking question is not NO! is fucking beyond me.

And then I remembered how our current media operates.

Democrats can present a 200 page, thoroughly researched, scientific, peer reviewed paper about a certain issue, and Retrumplicans can smear baby shit on notebook paper, and the media must present the smeared shit as just an equally possible plan.

[5X]

1. NPR is especially good at this. n/t

[Crunchy Frog]

2. I haven't seen that on MSNBC or CNN. I gave up on NPR more than a decade ago.

[Oldem]

31. NPR presents view from both sides,

no matter if one side bends the facts. CNN often has spokesmen for both sides, too.

Fairness of this kind is unfairness. What matters is the truth, now more than ever. Just because Ana Navarro, Bill Kristol, and their ilk have become anti-dumpers, now, doesn't mean they didn't do damage in their former incarnations. All in the name of "fairness." If a Dem or liberal lied on camera, I'd cry "foul," too.

[Geechie]

33. Absolutely. See #32 on the fairness doctrine ... nt

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

43. Never mind the fact that there often is multiple sides to ANY issue - why must

everything, but everything, be reduced to two either-or lib vs. con polarities???

Opening our minds to more free ranging discussions might result in more actual solutions to problems being found. I realize that may be beyond the intellectual capcity of most Americans.

[Geechie]

46. It certainly is, and we can thank

the dumbing down of the education system for that.

[barbtries]

3. a good and apt analogy.

media is part of the problem.

[LazySusanNot]

4. Our local NPR affiliate KJZZ is pretty good here in Phoenix

They go to BBC for much of their programming and NPR as well. The latter is where my problem usually begins and I start talking to my car radio. They also produce their own local stories which I find pretty good. Oh, and after 8PM at night, they play jazz.

Thanks for posting. Gives me a chance to mourn the passing again of my radio friend and consoler:
The OLD NPR before, you know....

[Mariana]

5. It's not going to change.

This kind of bullshit interview is standard stuff. Host asks a stupid question. Guest babbles on for a while, and doesn't actually answer the question. Host moves on to the next stupid question in the script. Rinse and repeat.

[jcgoldie]

6. NPR became the poster child of both-siderism...

....Regardless of how ridiculous and unscientific one side is they give them equal weight. This happened sometime between the 2010 tea party and the 2016 election when gop threatened repeatedly to pull public funding.

I had to quit listening in the 2016 leadup... “So Trump was on tape talking about sexually assaulting women, he made several racist slurs, he advocated violence against the free press, and he made fun of a person with physical disabilities on stage this week... but what are they saying at the diner in oklahoma about this??” ... “Well steve they are more worried about her emails....”

[DENVERPOPS]

27. Newt Gingrich

back in the day when he was shoving his "Contract On America" bullshit was the one that told NPR that either they started doing the "he said, she said" or Congress was going to cut any and all money to NPR.

NPR immediately complied and started the "both sides" bullshit and hasn't been the same since.....

I remember for awhile people were calling it National Republican Radio..........

[maxsolomon]

45. Now Promoting Republicans.

Used to have my alarm set for 6:20 and it would be a 5 minute interview with some oily liar that raised my blood pressure and put in me in a foul mood.

Now I wake up to tinkling chimes on my phone.

[aikoaiko]

7. Sounds like a nuanced response.

[dchill]

14. Gotta be nuanced. It ain't shit if it ain't nuanced!

[Crunchy Frog]

37. Presenting reality and falsehood as equally valid.

Too nuanced for my tastes. Maybe if they would employ a fact checker.

[Voltaire2]

8. meanwhile the legacy media is blaming twitter and facebook

for the toxic bullshit that has taken over the right. These platforms indeed are responsible for amplifying the insanity through their algorithms that maximize clicks in order to monetize our personal data, but legacy media has sat back for the last 20 years and just both-sided reasonable positions against insane positions, and normalized fascists determined to overthrow democracy.

The responsibility for this mess is widespread. At least twitter, and to a lesser extent facebook, have taken steps to deplatform the worst offenders. NPR, NYT, WaPo, broadcast and cable news still give overt seditionist nazis airtime, and continue to equate insane bullshit with reasonable fact based evidence.

[Cosmocat]

9. Your last sentence sums is spot on why we are fucked

nm

[Bear Creek]

10. Local NPR

Has there broadcast room named after Roger Ailes. But I will have to say the reporter on during Katrina had Bush's head for the response for interview and the reporter kept telling him the reporter on the ground was with survivors in a building and Bush's guy was arguing no one was at that location. That's when I started calling Strickland and Oxfam. Oxfam said they didn't respond to events in the USA told them to listen to the news cast. I believe they ended up responding.

[yaesu]

11. NPR gets a lot of money from the fossil fuel industry, their reporting is worse than ABC or NBC. nt

[wnylib]

30. Yes, they have quite a few corporate

sponsors. When covering a story that involves one of their sponsors, they say, "We should mention that xyz is one of our sponsors."

I can't remember them all, but I know that Facebook is one of them.

[NBachers]

12. After too many cases of yelling at NPR and slapping the "off" button, I gave up on them.

I refer to them as National RePublican Radio. I refuse to listen to that crap they keep doing, and my life is better for it. It's a shame. Occasionally I'll think of checking in and giving them a try, and 20 seconds later I'm enraged again.

[dianaredwing]

34. I miss car talk

and listen to wait wait, but here in Nola, I have WWOZ that sticks to music and is great.

[OMGWTF]

13. I gave up on NPR many years ago. Now I donate to my local college radio station

that broadcasts The Thom Hartmann Show every weekday (www.kbcs.fm).

[Lonestarblue]

15. Was the NPR host Robin Young?

She has often couched her questions to make Republicans look good. Even Abbott admitted after his Fox show that wind power wasn’t the big problem. It was fossil fuel powered facilities that were the big problem. The NPR person would have known that, so what was the purpose of giving credence to the Abbott lie?

This is what bothers me so much about media today. Too many of them bend over backwards for Republicans and criticize the hell out of Democrats. NPR used to be a fairly nonpartisan organization until the Kochs started donating and demanding some quid pro quo for their money.

[maxrandb]

25. I guarantee you that Hate Radio

will have cut that NPR broadcast so that all you will hear is the NPR host asking if Abbott is right that it was Wind and Solar to blame, and the guest saying "yes".

"See", they will exclaim, "even the liberal communist media is blaming the Green New Deal".

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

[List left]

16. NPR has some good programing but their news reporting is slanted right. They always give more time

and weight to the right wing argument and leave out the essential points that show the right wing arguments are B.S.

[BobTheSubgenius]

17. I have been defending that kind of behaviour, saying NPR has to tiptoe around sometimes.

Their funding is largely 'at will,' but hasn't that situation changed? Or is there a GOP-dominated committee that still has their hands on the purse strings?

I had no idea their "equal time" panto had become so ubiquitous.

[Buzz cook]

18. Nice Polite Republicans (NPR)

Sadly we have to be smart consumers of information. Even a lot of news that seems to support democrats is bullshit.

[Submariner]

19. To my shock and dismay I tuned in NPR back around 2003 or so

to hear Tucker f*****g Carlson with his own NPR talk show.

I read that Tucker's father was running NPR at that time. That happened only a year or two after they unceremoniously fire Bob Edwards who was always my favorite NPR spokesperson.

It's been soiled badly by the repubs.

[Traildogbob]

20. The deal is real

AOC is sending a green new deal to Texas, even after slamming her daily. The green deal is $1,000,000 plus in green cash to help. While their own senator runs to Cancun to relax and Sun, Still earning $200,000 per year in Texas taxes.
Secede an vote Trump your president Texas. FreeDumb. Keep your damn Cowboys and Jerry Jones.

[ffr]

21. And everyone of us must beat the talking heads and listeners over the head

as explained until they figure out that 100 is greater than 0. They are not the same.

[gulliver]

44. Journalists not being good at math is a serious problem

Basic math, at least up to introductory probability and statistics, should be required to be a journalist or commentator. A lot of these folks may actually be in their jobs because they couldn't hack ("disliked" as they might put it) basic mathematics. You can listen to some journalists, and you know they understand proportions. Others, you can tell they don't have much of a clue about math and everything with a number is just bzzz...bzzz...bzzz...equal.

[PutGramaOnThePhone]

22. After a lot of NPR...

though late comer to it in 1984-ish, I’ve been off it for...ummm...let me see...oh yeah, FIVE YEARS!

Granted, I’m a pretty fragile and sick person 😁.

[LymphocyteLover]

23. NPR Nice Polite Republicans

which is why I gave up on them 10 years ago...

[rurallib]

24. Thanks for this thread about NPR

I have been ranting about them since the day they fired Bob Edwards.

Unfortunately in my little slice of America they are far and away the only thing that is tolerable to listen to.

[maxrandb]

26. The problem really isn't NPR

it's that 3 decades of relentless attacks and accusations of bias, and...dare I say it...boycotts, threats of boycotts and right-wing cancel culture, has turned most of the media into battered spouses.

"Oh, it's my fault. I shouldn't have made them angry"

"Oh, it's OK. If I would just be nicer, they'd stop beating me".

[rurallib]

36. As true as that is NPR has a piece of the blame in its own diminishment

The outstanding example is letting the very gritty Bob Edwards go and replacing him with Steve Innskeep who has always to me seemed a real lightweight.

Whatever, it is hard to listen to, but unfortunately is what our choice must be - supplemented with a lot of reading.

[PutGramaOnThePhone]

48. Good point

[summer_in_TX]

38. Bob Edwards did a great job.

But I thought after he came back from the time he took off to write his biography of Red Barber that his questions had lost their sincerity or some intangible quality. They weren't bad, but I didn't think his heart was in it as much.


But I have no idea why they fired him. Firing is pretty drastic behavior.

[Ilsa]

41. Elimination of Fairness Doctrine and loss of government funding means

corporations are picking up the loss. I know the Kochs have funded public broadcasting. I don't know how much fossil fuel industry has funded them.

Reagan screwed it up for public tv and radio.

[paleotn]

28. Hmmmm. Better head down the road

and see how that solar farm is doing. I can see wind generators on a distant ridge too. Make sure they’ve not frozen up in this New England Winter.

I guess operator error never occurred to National Petroleum Radio.

[LiberalFighter]

29. Who was the person responding that way?

[Geechie]

32. Actually the "media" doesn't HAVE TO

present both sides. It's just that the Fairness Doctrine went down the toilet in the 80s and now the only ones who feel any obligation to abide by it are the non-Fox affiliated media, and their interpretation of it is so skewed by their pretzel-like defensive posture (because y'know, LIB'RUL MEDIA!!!11) that "fairness" means you have to present smeared shit as if it's the same as caviar.

If the "libreral media" truly decided to throw out the Fairness Doctrine even a tenth of what, say, Tucker Carlson does every damn day, we might actually witness right wing heads exploding.

[Hugin]

40. It's a choice...

Yep.

The right wing has trained them like Pavlov trained a dog.

[DSandra]

35. As I say from time to time: "Fairness is not a one way street"

The desire to be fair shouldn’t be used by the enemy to bludgeon you and then laugh at you and call you stupid. The cheaters think of you as a stupid sucker for following the rules when they don’t have to.

[UpInArms]

39. This has been a long time work in progress

I remember when Cokie Roberts openly wept on teevee when Clinton beat GHWB in ‘92

The “liberal” media does not exist.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

42. I used to be an avid NPR listener

but the "both sides" schtick, starting with the Iraq War (and maybe before but I wasn't paying as close attention before) really started turning me off to them.

[SlogginThroughIt]

47. Why people listen to them and much worse give them money

Why people listen to them and much worse give them money I have no idea. They are not doing their jobs. And they haven't been for a long time.

[Vinca]

49. You summed it up perfectly.

[electric_blue68]

50. Local Public Radio WNYC AM & FM is a great station

[Hortensis]

51. NPR's been corrupted. If this was "how our media operates,"

though, WE'D BELIEVE NPR. Get it?

If you don't know it exists and don't value it, you won't fight for it. You may notice when it's gone. But then again, considering, maybe not.