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Musk Calls for NPR and PBS Defunding

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Bias, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. To people on the right, Fox is "fair and balanced." So was Rush and before him, Paul Harvey. People on the left don't see NPR as biased. Before World War II, many newspapers were admittedly partisan. The Herald Tribune was a Republican paper; the Times was Democratic The same occurred in other cities with multiple morning and afternoon papers. You paid your money and you took your choice. The AP had to be "objective" because they had member papers aligned with both major parties. Then with fewer papers and a desire to broaden their readership base, newspapers began to sing the praises of "objectivity." Rupert Murdoch is merely a return to those golden days of yesteryear.

People don't want information; they want confirmation. People don't complain about bias when they have sources with which they agree.

Is NPR biased? Yes and no. They do try to present both sides (although many issues have more than two sides) accurately. But the philosophy and assumptions underlying their coverage and their decisions are shared with the left. And their is a class difference: NPR's audience is well educated and upper middle class. Fox targets the White working class. Each knows its audience.
 
TheBigA said:
The politician and the WNOE DJ are not the same person.
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In the early 1970's which station had "a Edwin Edwards station" in their ID? In Biloxi we got WNOE 1060 and WTIX 690 very well daytime. It's been a half a century and I could have sworn that they said "Governor" in the ID. The reason was at that time there was some form of "equal time" rules and I always wondered how they got around those rules. I will take your word that there were were 2 Edwin Edwards at that time.

Back my point. I hope it was a minority that hijacked the Republican party in that party primary. If not it is a real bad reflection of Louisiana Republicans.
 
secondchoice said:
In the early 1970's which station had "a Edwin Edwards station" in their ID? In Biloxi we got WNOE 1060 and WTIX 690 very well daytime. It's been a half a century and I could have sworn that they said "Governor" in the ID. The reason was at that time there was some form of "equal time" rules and I always wondered how they got around those rules. I will take your word that there were were 2 Edwin Edwards at that time.

Back my point. I hope it was a minority that hijacked the Republican party in that party primary. If not it is a real bad reflection of Louisiana Republicans.
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WNOE was owned by former Louisiana Gov. James A. Noe. Perhaps that's what you're remembering?

The former WNOE DJ was Eddie Edwards (RIP).
 
This may have been mentioned but WNOE 1060, New Orleans and KNOE 540, Shreveport, in Louisiana were owned at one time by Governor James A. Noe. I recall driving thru New Orleans back in 1975 and stopping there with my wife to see the sights on a cross country trip. I had on WNOE on my 72 Ford Mustang . . . they sounded great . . . they were playing Top 40 music . . . oddly enough I called them when we got back to California about a month later and told them how much I enjoyed them.
The PD said . . . I'm glad you enjoyed it, because we just changed format to C&W ??? !!! ???
Oh - Well !!!

By the way in the ID . . . when I heard them in 1975 they did say . . . loud & proud ... WNOE New Orleans, A GOVERNER JAMES A. NOE STATION. Like I said playing Top 40 they sounded GREAT, the DJ's, jingles. music.

On PBS defunding when I was at KQED-TV we went thru this in 1995 . . . it didn't happen . . . maybe it will this time, but PBS does not get much from the feds anymore.
 
Jean Luc said:
And their is a class difference: NPR's audience is well educated and upper middle class. Fox targets the White working class. Each knows its audience.
Click to expand...

Some of this was in the Uri Berliner article. His view was that NPR's audience was too narrow, and should aim for a wider demographic. He didn't have any specific studies to confirm his opinion. He based it on your same assumption, that NPR's audience is well educated and upper class. But does that mean that educated and upper class people are all democrats and republicans are poor and uneducated? Not sure either party would want to admit to that.

But public radio is first and foremost RADIO, and all of radio is marketed to demographics. That's just the way it's done. If you accept your assumptions about the public radio audience, the question is how do you change the audience target without alienating the donor base? CNN tried this, adding maga commentators to their coverage, and it didn't go well. We're going to see what happens at the Kennedy Center. The president fired all the democrats from the board and replaced them with a bunch of republicans. Can they attract the $200 million needed to run the place?

Public radio is in the part of the FM dial reserved for EDUCATIONAL radio. Most of these stations have their history tied to colleges and universities. Their approach to the news is educated because of who they are and where they come from. Not because of politics. There are educated conservatives. The whole "defund" movement isn't based on changing NPR. It's about shutting it down. Remove the funding, limit the corporate donations, and prevent stations from using the programming. Nobody is talking about adding conservative commentators to the staff or changing the target demo.
 
wadio said:
On the best ways to slant the news is by omission.

Back when Obama was running for president I mentioned to a friend who was a loyal NPR listener that Obama was a heavy smoker. He was shocked! SHOCKED, I say!! He honestly couldn't believe it, although it was widely reported by other media.
Click to expand...
NPR, 2010: "Obama Smokes: Should We Care?"

NPR, 2010: "Obama 'Fit For Duty,' But Smoking Still A Problem"

NPR, 2010: "He Might Need A Cigarette, But Obama Isn't Smoking"

NPR, 2011: "First Lady: President Obama Has Quit Smoking"

NPR, 2012: "Inhale To The Chief: More Details Of Obama's Pot-Smoking Youth Revealed"
 
Jean Luc said:
Bias, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. To people on the right, Fox is "fair and balanced." So was Rush and before him, Paul Harvey. People on the left don't see NPR as biased. Before World War II, many newspapers were admittedly partisan. The Herald Tribune was a Republican paper; the Times was Democratic The same occurred in other cities with multiple morning and afternoon papers. You paid your money and you took your choice. The AP had to be "objective" because they had member papers aligned with both major parties. Then with fewer papers and a desire to broaden their readership base, newspapers began to sing the praises of "objectivity." Rupert Murdoch is merely a return to those golden days of yesteryear.

People don't want information; they want confirmation. People don't complain about bias when they have sources with which they agree.

Is NPR biased? Yes and no. They do try to present both sides (although many issues have more than two sides) accurately. But the philosophy and assumptions underlying their coverage and their decisions are shared with the left. And their is a class difference: NPR's audience is well educated and upper middle class. Fox targets the White working class. Each knows its audience.
Click to expand...

Is NPR biased in their long form news discussion? Yes, i think theres a bit of a slant.

When it comes to straight up facts, especially at the member station level, news is incredibly fair and accurate. Many people don't see, understand or care to know about the lengths reporters go to to be fair and thorough.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
Is NPR biased in their long form news discussion? Yes, i think theres a bit of a slant.

When it comes to straight up facts, especially at the member station level, news is incredibly fair and accurate. Many people don't see, understand or care to know about the lengths reporters go to to be fair and thorough.
Click to expand...
Fair also extends to guests, not just presenting both sides, but giving them an equal amount of time. I've read that Diane Rehm used to go as far as using a stopwatch with guests on her show, to make sure each guest got an equal amount of time.
 
kevtronics said:
NPR, 2010: "Obama Smokes: Should We Care?"

NPR, 2010: "Obama 'Fit For Duty,' But Smoking Still A Problem"

NPR, 2010: "He Might Need A Cigarette, But Obama Isn't Smoking"

NPR, 2011: "First Lady: President Obama Has Quit Smoking"

NPR, 2012: "Inhale To The Chief: More Details Of Obama's Pot-Smoking Youth Revealed"
Click to expand...
What was NPR smoking when it sent reporters out to cover these non-stories? It's not like Obama ran on an anti-smoking, anti-marijuana platform. So where's the news value here?
 
TheBigA said:
Some of this was in the Uri Berliner article. His view was that NPR's audience was too narrow, and should aim for a wider demographic. He didn't have any specific studies to confirm his opinion. He based it on your same assumption, that NPR's audience is well educated and upper class. But does that mean that educated and upper class people are all democrats and republicans are poor and uneducated? Not sure either party would want to admit to that.

But public radio is first and foremost RADIO, and all of radio is marketed to demographics. That's just the way it's done. If you accept your assumptions about the public radio audience, the question is how do you change the audience target without alienating the donor base? CNN tried this, adding maga commentators to their coverage, and it didn't go well. We're going to see what happens at the Kennedy Center. The president fired all the democrats from the board and replaced them with a bunch of republicans. Can they attract the $200 million needed to run the place?

Public radio is in the part of the FM dial reserved for EDUCATIONAL radio. Most of these stations have their history tied to colleges and universities. Their approach to the news is educated because of who they are and where they come from. Not because of politics. There are educated conservatives. The whole "defund" movement isn't based on changing NPR. It's about shutting it down. Remove the funding, limit the corporate donations, and prevent stations from using the programming. Nobody is talking about adding conservative commentators to the staff or changing the target demo.
Click to expand...
One of the most common ways a business shoots itself in the foot is making changes to go after customers they don't have and thus alienating the customers they do (or did) have.

You don't seem to understand political sociology. The Republican Party is still very much the party of business and wealth and have been since Hamilton and Clay. Thanks to Nixon's "Southern Strategy" they adsorbed the former Dixiecrats. There are not enough executives, professionals and rich people to win elections. In addition to promoting the interests of the monied class, they pander to evangelicals and those in the White working class which resent DEI. Class is not about income. It's about how people talk, what people think, how they raise their kids, how they spend.

Uncle Walter used to say the objectivity is impossible to achieve. Media organizations promise it and don't deliver. So, people see bias.
 
Jean Luc said:
You don't seem to understand political sociology. The Republican Party is still very much the party of business and wealth and have been since Hamilton and Clay.
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I understand that very well. Those are not the people calling for defunding NPR. That party is very split. There are a lot of longtime repubs who have been completely thrown out of the current party. George W Bush and Mitt Romney to name a few. The new repubs are the ones calling to defund. So yes, NPR is seen as radio of the elite, and the new repubs hate the elite. Once again, this isn't about changing NPR or reforming it. It's about shutting it down completely. How that will affect the local stations in red states is something they haven't thought about at all.

If you go back to the original Public Broadcasting Act, it was supported by both parties, including the Dixiecrats. That's why so many of the state-owned public radio stations are in southern states. Lyndon Johnson owned commercial stations in Austin, and even he supported it. The PBA was amended under Reagan. Repubs were the ones who amended the law so the federal money went to the stations, not NPR. This battle has already been fought. Unfortunately it happened before the memories of the current people in congress. They don't know what their parents did that changed public broadcasting in ways that are very republican. They also don't care.
 
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Jean Luc said:
The Republican Party is still very much the party of business and wealth and have been since Hamilton and Clay.
Click to expand...
Are you sure? The modern Republican party was formed 1854 after Clay lost the the Presidential election. It was formed by the merger of the Whig, Free Soil, parties and Anti Nebraska movement.

Alexander Hamilton died in 1804.

The early Republican Party could have been considered "liberal", especially on slavery. Depends on who's history you read, but the value of slaves was a significant portion of America's net worth. The early GOP ended up severely neutering states rights and property rights considering the US Constitution considered slaves as property.

Hamilton had been dead around 50 years and the Andrew Jackson had already done his best to undue Hamilton's policies.

It is amazing that the Democrats and Republicans have flip flopped on liberal verses conservative ideas since the 1860's.
 
Just a reminder that the way money gets appropriated for anything, including public broadcasting, is through the budget process. One of the reasons why this keeps coming up is that there hasn't actually been a budget voted on for about 5 years. They keep doing continuing resolutions. What that does is simply rubber stamp the appropriations that were agreed upon in the last budget, which was a while ago.

This new congress has said it won't do another continuing resolution. They're going through the budget process now. They have a deadline set for March 14th. That was set in the last CR. We don't know any specifics about this new budget, but we can assume it will reflect the current administration's policies. So we'll find out more next month. In the meantime, there are several bills looking to prevent any funding of NPR.
 
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TheBigA said:
I understand that very well. Those are not the people calling for defunding NPR. That party is very split. There are a lot of longtime repubs who have been completely thrown out of the current party. George W Bush and Mitt Romney to name a few. The new repubs are the ones calling to defund. So yes, NPR is seen as radio of the elite, and the new repubs hate the elite. Once again, this isn't about changing NPR or reforming it. It's about shutting it down completely. How that will affect the local stations in red states is something they haven't thought about at all.

If you go back to the original Public Broadcasting Act, it was supported by both parties, including the Dixiecrats. That's why so many of the state-owned public radio stations are in southern states. Lyndon Johnson owned commercial stations in Austin, and even he supported it. The PBA was amended under Reagan. Repubs were the ones who amended the law so the federal money went to the stations, not NPR. This battle has already been fought. Unfortunately it happened before the memories of the current people in congress. They don't know what their parents did that changed public broadcasting in ways that are very republican. They also don't care.
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The Republicans supported it because commercial broadcasters didn't want to do fine art, classical music and dance, high drama and serious documentaries any more. Lest we forget, the original idea was public television. Public radio was tacked on as an after thought at the last minute.
 
Jean Luc said:
The Republicans supported it because commercial broadcasters didn't want to do fine art, classical music and dance, high drama and serious documentaries any more. Lest we forget, the original idea was public television. Public radio was tacked on as an after thought at the last minute.
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Yep, that's correct. In fact the vast majority of the CPB money is for PBS and local TV stations, not radio. It's about $400 million for TV, and $130 million for radio. Today there is really only one or two commercial classical stations, and ten commercial news stations. Those two formats are mainly handled by public radio.
 
secondchoice said:
Are you sure? The modern Republican party was formed 1854 after Clay lost the the Presidential election. It was formed by the merger of the Whig, Free Soil, parties and Anti Nebraska movement.

Alexander Hamilton died in 1804.

The early Republican Party could have been considered "liberal", especially on slavery. Depends on who's history you read, but the value of slaves was a significant portion of America's net worth. The early GOP ended up severely neutering states rights and property rights considering the US Constitution considered slaves as property.

Hamilton had been dead around 50 years and the Andrew Jackson had already done his best to undue Hamilton's policies.

It is amazing that the Democrats and Republicans have flip flopped on liberal verses conservative ideas since the 1860's.
Click to expand...
The party basically changed names. But as Federalists or Whigs they supported protective tariffs (which prompted the secession crisis during the Jackson administration) and internal improvements - both of which benefited the industrialized North. Before the war, there were abolitionists but the movement was of minor importance, and Whig-Republicans were willing to let the South have slavery although some didn't like that Southerners were able to own their workers and operate huge plantations while Northerners had to hire their workers and farms in the North were comparatively small.

Andy Jackson was a Southerner and a slave owner. He was more of unionist than most other Southern Democrats. But he was Jeffersonian and strongly opposed the national bank and Clay's American Plan (including high tariffs and internal improvements like roads and canals). Southerners hated the tariffs. They produced raw materials and because of the tariffs could only sell to the Yankees. In turn, because of tariffs they could only buy finished goods from the Yankees. Yankees bought cheap and sold dear because they had what was essentially a third world country as a captive source and a captive market.
 
Jean Luc said:
Andy Jackson was a Southerner and a slave owner. He was more of unionist than most other Southern Democrats.
Click to expand...

The current president is a fan of Jackson, and has a portrait of him in the oval office.

The problem with comparing the country then to now is that the split really isn't as simple as it was then. The north has some conservative rural areas, and the south has some very liberal big cities. The cities are all very supportive of public radio. The rural areas need the service (because commercial stations are now mostly using non-local programming), but aren't as supportive in the finances. So if federal funding would go away, the main stations that would be hurt are in the rural areas. Those areas don't see NPR as leftist propaganda. They just see it as a radio station that is staffed with people they know.
 
kevtronics said:
NPR, 2010: "Obama Smokes: Should We Care?"

NPR, 2010: "Obama 'Fit For Duty,' But Smoking Still A Problem"

NPR, 2010: "He Might Need A Cigarette, But Obama Isn't Smoking"

NPR, 2011: "First Lady: President Obama Has Quit Smoking"

NPR, 2012: "Inhale To The Chief: More Details Of Obama's Pot-Smoking Youth Revealed"
Click to expand...
Wow! I am impressed by such thorough research. But I was talking about 2007 when Obama was running for his first term.

Better late than never NPR. 😊
 
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