Okay, i did it... I listened to NPR

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

until Juan Williams came on gushing about how great the GOP was this week unifying against Obama and "big government" why is that odious fuck still polluting the air?

[SpiralHawk]

1. NPR has deteriorated drastically

and is often little more than a Homelander propaganda catapult...

sadly

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. yeah, I stopped listening a while back

and was hoping that Saturday Weekend Edition with Scott Simon would ease me back

uh, no

[stubtoe]

16. WE Saturday is the most like Fox Snooze, best avoid it.

Simon went over to the Dark Side years ago.

I don't listen regularly, but All Things Considered seems to me to have the best reporting currently available on NPR.

[MinM]

36. Here & Now, Day to Day, and On the Media are good too...

Here & Now


On the Media


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3536251#3543542">Day to Day

[lunatica]

20. Listen to Pacifica Radio if you want your news starkly unvarnished

http://www.pacifica.org/

It isn't glamorous but it'll definitely keep you abreast of the truth. Sometimes it'll rip your heart out.

[elizfeelinggreat]

3. The bush administration

changed the people in charge and they have slanted the news ever since.
Hopefully that will be corrected by the current administration :)

[peacetalksforall]

10. Dan Burton, Jess Helms, Strom Thurmond did a big number of NPR and

NPR caved. Big loss. I could never gush enough about them before that happened. Now, I am a torn citizen of public radio - because I love some of the weekend shows.

[geckosfeet]

4. You mean National Propaganda Radio? GOP flag wavers of late.

It is sickening really, to see how far they have fallen.

Wait until the next fund drive - they will air a few stories featuring liberal ideals and concerns. Then when it's over they will go back to their same old shtick.

[stlsaxman]

7. brought to you by the "Corporate Propaganda Broadcasting".

oh - and that's "Nationalist" Propaganda Radio

[geckosfeet]

8. My error, sir.

[ThomWV]

5. For 5 years now every time they have a fund drive I call to tell them why I don't donate anymore

[Buzz Clik]

6. Is it Saturday already? Damn -- time to bash NPR!

Juan Williams is a total ass, and I do not value his opinion. On the other hand, Dan Schorr is a treasure and doesn't give his commentaries elsewhere. Scott Simon's show is always wonderfully produced, and Simon is great.

I'm listening to NPR now, and I'll continue to be a contributing member to WBAA until hell freezes over.

[geckosfeet]

9. I agree about Schorr, but his spots are slipped in less and less frequently.

Simon is as non-committal politically as anyone possibly can be. But you are right - excellent commentary and production.

I am particularly fond of This American Life.

However, the fact remains that surrounding a few less politically RW leaning spots, is a sea of conservative fundy commentary.

[sendero]

11. You will hear a lot more..

... National Review, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and CATO than you will hear Daniel Schorr or anything remotely like him.

I stopped sending them money in 2002 when they let Colin Powell spout the lies that I knew and he knew were lies without so much as a rebuttal.

Fuck NPR. They're gone.

[Muttocracy]

32. Maybe as the internet becomes the distribution media, we can donate to TAL

and bypass NPR. Friends used to make the argument to me that you had to donate to local stations to keep the national programs going, but that's not the case so much. I do appreciate some of the local programs my 2 local public radio stations put out, but I think they're going to go under given the state and local budgets here.

[Catshrink]

12. I too listen to Scott Simon on Saturdays

and am so disappointed when he is away. His segments with Dan Schorr, Daniel Pinkwater on kids' books, and the Masetro Marin Alsop are keepers.

I notice the rightward movement of npr in general. I really miss Bob Edwards in the morning but found him on XM Radio and listen to him nearly everyday.

Here's Pinkwater's website:

http://www.pinkwater.com/

And a link to Alsop's essay on Aaron Copeland's music:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98342141

Best of all -- Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I love that show!

[Buzz Clik]

13. I see the "rightwing movement" as a shif to the center. It was a welcome change.

Some of the old timers were insufferable, and I'm glad to see a new and balance approach. I really don't like being spoonfed ideologies.

[geckosfeet]

15. You mean those old timers who started NPR with a mission to make

a progressive and liberal political statement?

That's why I am angry - because it's a watered down cauldron of middle of the road mush trying look "fair and balanced" being spoon fed talking points from RW "think tanks".

Enjoy sending your money to them. They are not getting mine.

[Buzz Clik]

21. No, that's not who I meant. However, since we're on the subject ...

... when suck on the government tit, there are expectations and the government has a way of getting ugly when you act like you're an independent entity. So, now NPR presents a balanced view of the news instead of a single-minded slant that appealed strictly to the liberals. Most people call that objectivity which is a requirement of journalism.

[geckosfeet]

23. Presenting a balanced view because you are getting paid off? Right.

You make my point with superb understatement.

My other point - it was one of the best liberal news organizations in town. Now it's just like the rest. Trying so hard not offend the largest swath of the public it can, so it can keep the $$$'s flowing from them.

Hey what's your skin in it anyway? Do you work for them?

My beef is that they spout RW talking points even though it's pure BS. Not that they represent a conservative perspective occasionally.

I appreciate good reporting. NPR dropped that ball a long time ago.

[Buzz Clik]

27. "Hey what's your skin in it anyway? Do you work for them?" And there it is.

When you run out of arguments, break out the bullshit.

[Ikonoklast]

18. Sure you do.

Always more of the same apologies for the right wing.

Nice to see some things never change. You are like the buzzards coming back to Hinckley.

[Buzz Clik]

22. You made no sense.

We'll let it stand that you liked it better when NPR was a voice of the hard left, and now you're pissed off because you are forced to listen to people who might embrace a different point of view.

There's always Air America...

[Ikonoklast]

26. 'We'? Using the royal 'We' now?

Amusing. I never knew that NPR was ever 'hard left'.

That is a right-wing meme promulgated by those that would have NPR turned into the Republic Party house organ. Must bother you that is coming to an end now.

Check out Diane Rehm, and the AEI shills, the Republic Party flacks, the Heritage Foundation creeps, every right-wingnut 'think tank' goober sponsored by Mellon-Scaife that she has on her show, 2 to 1 over any progressive voice.

And that's just one show.

And you can go back to Rush Limbaugh. Those talking points are directly from his show.

[bread_and_roses]

33. NPR might as well be FOX with three syllables when it comes to reporting anymore

they stay strictly inside the same Beltway frame as the rest of the MSM. Why should I pay for that?

[bunkerbuster1]

29. Lots of great stuff to be heard on NPR

Put another way--the crappiest hour on NPR beats the best hour on 95% of America's AM talk stations.

That said, Juan Williams is basically a Republican strategist. If he were simply ID'd as such when he appears on NPR I'd be ok with him.

[MinM]

14. Scott Simon's prose was indistinguishable from Bush's rhetoric...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles3/Jensen_NPR.htm

...After a day of antiwar protests on the University of Texas campus and in Austin, I found myself booked as a late-night guest on NPR's all-day coverage of the war to be interviewed by Scott Simon, the popular host of Weekend Edition on Saturdays.

I knew something about Simon's politics from an essay he published in the Wall Street Journal a month after 9/11. In that piece he explained that he had become a Quaker and pacifist during the antiwar movement of the 1960s but now supported Bush's war on terrorism. His prose at the time was indistinguishable from the president's rhetoric:
...
Instead of accepting the assumptions built into his pro-war framework, I challenged them. I agreed that Hussein was a totalitarian thug, but argued that had little to do with why the Bush administration had pressed for a war. I talked of U.S. plans for empire and the longstanding U.S. project of controlling the Middle East as a source of strategic power in the world. I referred to the Bush administration's own National Security Strategy document (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html), which lays out a plan for U.S. dominance, and the U.S. military Space Command�s plans for controlling space (http://www.gsinstitute.org/resources/extras/vision_2020.pdf). With each point I made, Simon returned to some version of, Yes, but certainly you must acknowledge ��

But I never did acknowledge what he wanted me to -- not out of obstinacy but because I thought he was wrong. When it came time to take callers, Simon didn't invite me to stay on the line, even though it was clear that he and I could have engaged in a lively exchange with listeners. After going off the air, I listened to the callers and was amused by the way Simon tried to spin my comments and put back in place the proper pro-war framework...

[NightWatcher]

17. it's because they need 20 grand a day to operate. they HAD to sell out

and I had to turn them off. I still will watch PBS until they too flake out.

[uppityperson]

19. I listened to them yesterday and they were doing well then. Didn't hear Williams though.

I must say I was surprised at how fair the news presentation was last night. I expected worse, but they seemed decent.

[and-justice-for-all]

24. Yeah, repukes did a good job of shitting on themselves...nt

[alfredo]

25. Tomlinson screwed up NPR. Maybe with real leadership, they can

come back from the darkness.

[bunkerbuster1]

28. Juan is ever the Nice Polite Republican...

hence the network's initials.

[YanquiUXO]

30. NPR is getting worse than Fox.

It's sad, really.

[Buzz Clik]

31. Whoa! I almost forgot. I'm traveling tomorrow and I need NPR podcasts.

Whew. Thanks!!!

:)

[suede1]

34. He belongs on Faux. It's as disreputable as he is.

[JackRiddler]

35. Since the advent of "The Takeaway" they can just call it Fast-FM or some such...

This is the new morning show in "info-packet" format. An onslaught of three-minute lite news pieces, all tendential, with a lot of right-wing platitudes in liberal guise. Constant repetition of the theme song, signature sound effects and fast chatter by the android hosts make it stylistically indistinguishable from commercial radio. It even feels like it's got almost as many commercial breaks, thanks to the constant over-produced plugs for the humanitarian billionaire foundations without whom all this wonderful boredom would be unavailable!

And yes, rather than just complain, I stopped listening to that crap in the mornings, or most anything on NPR other than the funny weekend shows, long ago.