nihil wrote:For the most part, I enjoy NPR. But I get very annoyed when they cover the war or the current administration. They consistantly dance around the elephant in the room.
Yes.
They also have power knob slobbers like Juan Williams who is a regular contributer to Fox News. Morning Edition and All Things Considered will often have David Brooks, Charles Krauthammar and George Will, three men who have been tragically and consistently wrong about everything to do with Iraq and the War On Terror in the last 6 years and whose newspaper columns are often just echoes of GOP talking points. In short NPR's political coverage is staffed by so many of the same hacks you find in other news. They are as insestuous as the rest of broadcast/television/cable news.
Looking beyond that their business practices towards their affiliate stations leave a lot to be desired. For example, they ram their own advertisers and ads down network stations throats. While following a program "clock" they have "floating" breaks that carry their own advertising that could come over the feed at any time forcing the stations to either hit a moving target and cover it with their own announcements or just allow the free advertising. The stations have not been compensated for these ads and in fact have paid NPR to broadcast their network feed. So NPR ends up double dipping on the deal while the stations get screwed out of advertising revenue. When complaints about this were brought to the attention of the powers that be at NPR the response was essentially "tough shit".
NPR is also cutting their entire unionized engineering staff in favor of unorganized freelancers. The choice for these people has been to be bought out or shut out. Organizations that move to break unions are declaring war on working people and fair and living wages.
NPR is a media business and as such one should not be too bamboozled by their supposed "public radio" status. It is run by hacks afraid of rocking the status quo and more concerned about the bottom line than about wether or not they are parroting political propaganda, which they often are. How many times a day do they mindlessly repeat any public statements made by the crooks and liars in the White House or Congress? Every hour for 5 minutes.
Having said all that there is admittedly some excellent reporting that gets through the filters, but it is rare or it is contained in a weekly evening or weekend show that not everyone is listening to. NPR also generally shys awy from mindless entertainment news. But CNN has excllent coverage sometimes too and I would hardly call CNN independent or balanced. Money is all that matters to politics and big media. NPR included.