I have stopped listening to most of the NPR broadcast programs

[summer_in_TX]

31. I've been very pleased with NPR before and since the election.

On numerous shows they have had many episodes on the rise of authoritarianism as they report on what the Trump administration is doing. PBS News too. But they don't do it in the way of MSNBC, or online partisan networks with their huge lurid headlines, and so my anxiety isn't triggered by it.

Does anyone think the BBC can replace the content of NPR and PBS? I don't. Not in America. Not under Trump, for sure, but really, they can't provide what NPR does. They don't have the investment in the whole news reporting infrastructure, including reporters, it would take to do it here.

I don't compare NPR and PBS so much with what other nations have but with what our country does. I think they are head and shoulders above any other American broadcast network.

They angered me often during the GWB administration. But they have been doing a really good job in more recent years. Even though their funding is under serious threat, I don't hear any lack of truthful coverage of what the Trump administration is doing.

I've often wondered if there wasn't some kind of campaign to undermine and create distrust in our pre-eminent local, national, and international news network. I suspect the billionaires and Russian oligarchs are beside themselves with how well their efforts to get rid of real journalism in the US is working. 90 percent of important news stories originate from real news organizations in spite of all the social media we are inundated with.

With the news desert problem widespread across our country now, can you imagine if NPR goes away?

I think of Marfa Public Radio in West Texas, where the sparse rainfall equates to few people spread out far and wide, trying to eke out a living. That station cannot sustain itself without outside funding like that from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – and they are a lifeline to their listeners in fires and other severe weather. Plus they are possibly the only source of information that is not RW radio or television.

I just hope it somehow is able to keep going and doesn't fold. It doesn't sound like many here would be inclined to step up and help them stay afloat. It's a shame. I consider it short-sighted.