NPR, diving toward the right ????

[lanparty]

Anyone else here think that NPR has gone on a right wing rampage lately. Yesterday I heard an amazingly stupid essay containing pretty typical right wing lies and distortion. It wasn't fact based. It was pure rhetoric. And it WASN'T followed by a rebuttal.

A couple days ago, I heard a story on voter disenfranchisement. Electronic voting was talked about and a few brief concerns about e-voting followed by long disertations on the exceptional accuracy of voting machines. What AMAZED me is they didn't even MENTION Bev Harris and Black Box voting.

I'm pretty sure that NPR has finally caved and replaced long in-depth balanced critique, with long shallow, conservative biased commentary.

[stldemocrat]

1. I have...

kinda heard the right wing stuff creeping in too. I wonder if someone in the Bush* regime is pressuring NPR to tow the li(n)e...

[virgdem]

2. I don't bother to listen to NPR anymore...

since I got my Sirius Satellite Radio system installed in my car. Now I get to listen to Air America Radio, and let me tell ya, it is a breath of fresh air compared to the stale commentary on NPR. I too have noticed a rightward shift, but it was the least of all evils compared to the other dreck on the radio. If you have the money, go get Satellite Radio. The selection of music and talk radio alone is worth the money.

[ogsball]

3. They really try hard to stay in the middle

I liked the segment on Edwards, GW, & Cheney all being United Methodists. Makes you wonder what church membership means.

BTW W and Dick were both members of the same church in Dallas and the council of Bishops has sent a couple of letters asking W to rethink his policies.

[mediaman007]

41. I thought that the Big Dick was from Wyoming?

[Snow]

4. I stopped listening to them during the Monica scandal...

after about the 17th prediction of "Bill Clinton will be toast within 2 weeks". The rightward swing well precedes *bush. Although in some fairness that was often Cokie Roberts making those predictions, speaking of someone who's swung right.

[gulfcoastliberal]

5. When they fired Bob Edwards for a speech he made,

you know that means NPR is terminal. Since the awful Steve Inskeep took the helm, I've really noticed the quality of Morning Edition has dropped off significantly. FAIR did an analysis of NPR and found they feature conservatives over democrats by 60/40. Even when Clinton and the dems were in power, they had more repugs on.


FAIR Study:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0405/npr-study.html

Speech that sealed Bobs fate:
http://larrycoates.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/25/184449/498

Bob tells NPR where to shove it:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/ap20040723_499.html

[TankLV]

6. I heard them yesterday with all the talk on how bush* was sincerely a man

of God, with deep, modest spiritual beliefs, who kept them to himself, and Clinton actually proclaimed Jebus more times and more often, and...

I almost wrecked my car when they were SERIOUS!

Some new book on "God and Bush" or some such nonsense.

[kestrel91316]

7. I thought I was imagining things...................

I have been noticing for weeks or months that NPR has a bit more right-leaning tendency than in prior years. I think they have been taken over by a quiet internal coup of some sort. I wondered for a long time if I was just being paranoid, but it is nice to see I am not the only one who has noticed a problem. I listen to Air America Radio in the evenings now.

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. It's the money...

no doubt the pugs in power controlling the pursestrings have "convinced" NPR they should be more like Faux Nooz.

[DaveSZ]

9. I notice it too

I use DU as my media filter now and stopped listening to NPR.

[waywest]

11. NPR doesn't get my money anymore.

A longtime supporter of my public radio station, I offered to sponsor again only if I could be assured of my money not benefiting NPR,.....no reply.

[janx]

10. No.

What would you prefer--no coverage of what the extreme right is doing or thinking at all?

NPR is great. Watch and see what happens.

[lanparty]

16. I do prefer BALANCED out of NPR ...

However, I think they've been definitely tipping towards featuring right wing commentary without providing a contrasting viewpoint from the left.

I also don't like commentators going on long diatribes about the intellectual bankruptcy of liberalism using only rhetoric and including aboluetly NO FACTS: "John Kerry and John Edwards have the most LIBERAL voting records in the Senate. Now they want to portray themselves as conservatives".

That commentary really pushed it over the line for me.


Another recent story on the Hugo Chavez recall really made me puke as well. All it featured were right wingers talking about how Chavez dominates the country and stacked the courts, blah, blah, blah. They didn't talk to any Chavez supporters to hear THEIR perspective.

BTW, I've scanned the NPR website for these stories and cannot find them. I'm pretty sure I heard them on the evening news program "All Things Considered". But I cannot find them. I suspect they've been flushed down the memory hole.

[Mr_Spock]

27. You might be the only person here who isn't paraniod.

The right-wing killer morons are in power - how else are you going to learn about them? People here a paranoid and want NPR to be Fox-Left. I hate this sort of thinking - can't some people take any balanced news? No wonder Faux is sucessful - people only want to hear their own viewpoint these days. I just change the station when there is a story I don't want to hear - you can too. Criminy! What a bunch of crybabies!

[lanparty]

30. No I want it to be in-depth, substanative and balanced ...

I want to hear both sides. But I want to hear FACTS instead of rhetoric. This is what has gotten NPR labelled as having "liberal bias" because they have traditionally run long stories that actually had time to present factual material instead of subjective summaries. I've heard a LOT more subjective summaries lately and it kinda disturbs because I've been a fan of NPR for a while now.


Finally, if NPR is going to be accused of "liberal bias" they might as well live up to the reputation !!!!!!!!

[Nordic]

12. They were doing a smear piece on Seymour Hersch one day

and that's when I decided I'd never listen to them again.

Fuck them.

[DeepModem Mom]

13. kick

[Norquist Nemesis]

14. Sometimes I wonder if it's due to

the so-called middle of the spectrum being moved to the right mostly due to the extreme right-wing pull from this administration. In other words, while you've stayed in the same position on the spectrum...the rest has shifted.

I haven't listened to NPR in quite a while. I was having the same feeling about the tone of the pieces as you are now. And while I'm not extreme left, it's just too far to the right for me. I even thought that maybe they're appealing more to the right because that's where they can get bigger support (donations). :shrug:

[Tom Kitten]

15. I stopped listening to them on March 31, 2004...

...when AAR debuted in Portland....and I don't miss the weekday programming AT ALL!

I do still listen on weekends....KPOJ just reruns shows they should consider changing that! ...I still listen to Car Talk, Whaddya Know, Prairie Home Companion, Afro-Pop, the Celtic Hour...when I listen to the radio! and some of those aren't even NPR shows...
So last Monday I forgot to reset my clock radio to AM and woke up to NPR Cokie Roberts going on about Kerry's flip flopping and his nuanced Senate statements confusing people...and they fired Bob Edwards for this? Too bad I don't sleep with a baseball bat in reach....I felt like smashing my radio! Oooo...I am so angry! I wonder why????

[Junkdrawer]

17. This morning was awful: Gushing about the "enthusiastic crowds"..

for Bush (never once mentioning that the crowds are hand picked),

while "presenting both sides" of Kerry's VFW appearance - and making sure to play up the Swift Boat charges and Kerry's anti-Viet Nam stance.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

22. And they mentioned one Kerry heckler, but didn't mention the hand-picked

Shrub crowd. NPR is making me ill lately. :puke:

[EstimatedProphet]

18. It's been like that for a while now

NPR plays to soccer moms, and suburban values these days are the Republican ones.

[auburngrad82]

19. My Thoughts exactly

I think that they have sold out for major donors. I know that Fox Searchlight pumped a lot of money into NPR to promote In America (a great movie, by the way) and I've heard that Wal-Mart is beginning to pump huge amounts of money into NPR. Everyone knows that Fox and Wal-Mart are giant Republican donors as well. I think money changes everything.

[wurzel]

20. Either that or they are as lazy and stupid as the networks.

I heard Ifel the other day refer to Kerry as "flip flopping". I heard another refer to a Kerry statement that he "would reduce troops in Iraq within six months". They just seem to have adopted Republican language.

[tom_paine]

21. NPR is perhaps the best of a bad lot

Considering the Imperial Amerikan Media is hurtling headlong into a Soviet-style Laughinstock at seemingly breakneck speeds, that is a dubious distinction at best.

And THEY like damned near all the rest of Imperial Media, are getting worse.

[AlabamaYankee]

23. I haven't listened for over a year

I think it was Cokie who drove me finally over the edge, with an assist from Juan Williams. I tuned in accidentally last Saturday and caught Daniel Schorr. He's even drunk the Kool-Ade.

My money goes to WWOZ, New Orleans' Jazz and Community Station since it's on my computer all day.

[lanparty]

31. Hey, I like Dan Schorr

The guy has integrity. He's done more Bush bashing on NPR than all the commentators on CNN combined.


http://search.npr.org/search97cgi/s97_cgi?cleanQuery=Daniel+Schorr&ResultTemplate=allow_re_sort.hts&SortSpec=Date+Desc+Score+Desc&ViewTemplate=docview.hts&collection=ALL02&Action=FilterSearch&filter=topic_filter.NEW.hts&QueryText=


Daniel Schorr is the best editorial journalist out there. He makes those pukes on telivision look downright pee brained and pathetic.

[NoBorders]

24. don't they get money from Congress?

And isn't Congress controlled by Repubs?

[1gobluedem]

32. Congress funds the CPB

And the CPB funds the stations in the form of federal grants. Congress does not fund NPR directly.

I work at an NPR affiliate in a very liberal area and often field complaints from listeners accusing the network of being too right wing. I also take calls from some conservatives accusing the network of being too liberal.

I agree that NPR has moved more toward the center in recent years. There is a reason for that. When Newt Gingrich and his band of idiots came into power in 1995, they tried to cut all funding for public broadcasting, claiming that everyone can get their news from cable and accusing public broadcasting of being too liberal. That idiot from South Dakota (I can't remember his name right now -- he's no longer in office) even went so far as to try and get the records of all NPR staff members' campaign contributions and claimed that they were cheering in the NPR newsroom every time Clinton won a state in the 1992 election.

While they didn't succeed in cutting funding, they did succeed in changing the formula of how stations are funded. In the good old days, CPB grants were based on market size. Now they make grants according to audience numbers as determined by Arbitron ratings. Stations were forced to cut a lot of eclectic, diverse programs from their schedules because the audience numbers were low and the network was forced into more middle of the road reporting to attract more audience. NPR lobbied strongly against the change in the formula but to no avail.

And because the grants now depend on audience size, many of them are lower than in the past. That means less money for NPR and they have to reach out to the corporate community more just as member stations do when their member support decreases for whatever reason. It's a vicious cycle.

The best thing we can do is to change the balance of power in Washington back to the Democrats. They can change the funding formula back and programming will change. I guarantee it.

[NoBorders]

40. Interesting. I knew about the CPB but

did not realize the distance between Congress funding the cpb and how NPR is funded. I just recall hearing republicans complaining about NPR, and the fact that it receives gov't funds. It was inevitable that NPR would have to heed a little bit to the political pressures.

We need increased funding of NRP to help minimize the corporate influence, agreed.

I live in SF Bay Area btw--would I know your station?

[rustydad]

25. Look for...........

........a Pacifica station in youir area. They still keep the faith. Bob

[AP]

26. Yesterday on the Tavis Smiley show, they allowed a Choice Point exec SIX

MINUTES to rebut the claim that their company was involved in the Florida vote fiasco.

Their rebuttal: it wasn't us, it was a company we bought. We bought it before the election, but they finished their work {fucking up the election} before we bought them.

It's my impression that the law doesn't really let people buy up companies as a strategy for absolving them of liability. Isn't this Dick Cheney's Halliburton's problem with the asbestos cases? Why try to get the governemtn to pass a law insulation Halliburton from liability for the negligence of the company Halliburton bought if he could just say we bought this compay AFTER the negligence occurred.

[lanparty]

33. That one disturbed me ...

And I'm not surprised that it happened when Tavis was on vacation.

I was shocked that they really didn't bother to talk about any of the real problems in the election. Greg Palast didn't have time to present all of the Choicepoint evil. His portion of the interview was OBVIOUSLY redacted. Nor did he have a chance to rebut what the Choicepoint representative said.

This one was a definite psy-ops piece in my opinion. They only gave the criticism without support. They didn't give the Choicepoint critics opportunity to go into detail about all the problems with Choicepoint. They only presented it as an opinion and then allowed the Choicepoint guy free reign to go to town without risk of contradiction.

Here is the show:
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=3856705

I want an NPR defender to tell me how this story (or the whole show) is balanced.

[AP]

34. The shocking thing was that it was such a non-denial denial

You can't free yourself from liability for your actions just be selling yourself to someone else. That guy's entire argument was totally inconsequential to the issue.

(And I still don't understand what he was saying about Venezuela. Is he saying they did nothing with the VZ voter lists, or was he saying that what they were doing was totally legal?)

It was amazing that they gave him 6 minutes to make two points, and that first point was inconsequential and the second one was so convoluted that, even after six minutes, I'm not sure what he was saying.

[lanparty]

36. Notice that Greg Palast only got 30 seconds ...

... and he writes entire books about electoral fraud.

My gut tells me that the telephone interview with Greg Palast was a LOT LONGER. But they only allowed Greg to make the accusation and NOT back it up (which he would do at a moments notice).

What I would LOVE to see is a debate between a Choicepoint rep and Greg Palast. In a sane world, Palast would be on Crossfire tearing new assholes for conservatives. But Greg is too critical of the corporate media establishment for him to get ANY airtime on US airwaves.

[xchrom]

28. they made their conversion

just before clinton was elected -- and there have articles commenting on the fact for a very long time.
it's a right wing rag -- diguised as thoughtful.
i would now support having their funding pulled because i would not trust them in the future.

[lanparty]

35. I still think they do a decent job in some respects ...

But I keep hearing these right wing, shallow smear pieces showing up. The liberal leaning "hosts" (Terry Gross, etc...) make sure to get the other side involved.

BTW, I DO think that NPR is still the CLOSEST thing we have to "fair and balanced".

[LisaM]

29. This in Newt Gingrich's doing

ever since he held his recission hearings and de-funded public broadcasting, they have had to depend on corporate sponsorship. Contact your representative and try to get their funding restored.

[goddess40]

37. Funding for NPR

My take on this entire issue is the Repukes have cut funding on NPR and now NPR depends a lot on contributions from listeners. Bush has appointed two Bush Bots to the corporate board of NPR. Because they are afraid of losing what funding they do get from Congress NPR is going overboard in leaning to the right. This is what the Repukes want because they know this will turn off listeners who will no longer donate to NPR. This will in turn put NPR further in the hole and the Repukes hope NPR will fold. This is another reason to vote Kerry.

[LisaM]

39. Sounds like another reason to donate to NPR, too!

The more they get from listeners, the less they will be in thrall to the corporate underwriters.

[DU GrovelBot]

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