Including paying most of my Senators and Reps to be on X and line up Fox News and Newsmax hits. My reps hate anyone who thinks like me and are glad to flaunt their almost un-checked power.
Last edited:
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
NY Times Article on Challenges Facing NPR
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
- Status
True especially when Elon Musk made claims about NPR on Twitter last year that it was "Government Funded." Elon Musk simply caused NPR, PBS and their affiliates boycott the X app. I looked at NPR, PBS and their affiliates specifically on what they had on Musk that his allies does not want us to know. It turns out it was Reuters that extensively covered Elon Musk not just at X but also at SpaceX and Tesla over his business practices.
Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible - Nieman Reports
Covering thought leadership in journalism
In a similar argument we seen certain politicians during an election year start resorting to defaming kids shows on the PBS TV app as part of a ploy to defund CPB and local PBS affiliates owned by State entities mainly because certain politicians are offended that their record in congress became exposed on PBS Newshour and on PBS Frontline as part of a national segment on Civil Rights. Case and point State of Oklahoma tried to defund CPB money to a statewide PBS affiliate OETA all to score political points for the 2024 elections.
Lawmakers override 13 of Gov. Stitt's vetoes, including OETA legislation
www.publicradiotulsa.org
Governor Stitt says he is 'glad to veto' OETA bill
Governor Kevin Stitt held a press conference in Oklahoma City yesterday, where he addressed a number of issues from Oklahomans.When asked about the OETA bill, h
ktul.com
As Oklahoma lawmakers push anti-LGBTQ+ bills, advocates worry about the chilling effect
Oklahoma has seen a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation this year. While some bills have withered in the process, a number of other anti-LGBTQ+ measures could be passed before the legislative session ends in late May.
www.pbs.org
But the purpose of NPR is to be for all the people and impartial. If you find it polarized, it is not doing its chartered job.
That's not anywhere in the law or the charter.
Nobody in the Reagan administration that devised the current funding plan ever imaged a world where facts would be in doubt or that presidential candidates wouldn't accept defeat.
Judges are supposed to be impartial. Especially the ones at the Supreme Court. Yet we're seeing them make decisions based on things other than the actual law.
In the US of 2024, it's hard to imagine anything being successfully "for all the people and impartial," which comes around to one of my many issues with Berliner's piece - it completely ignores all the externalities of today's massively polarized political climate.
Some fairly large number of people out there are charged up right now in ways that a place like NPR simply can't reach without losing its reason for being. Its editorial processes and norms were formed in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when most (not all, but at least most) Americans had more of a baseline consensus on what constituted truth.
We've seen a microcosm of that in this thread. I can have a conversation with you about a lot of things that we disagree on, as long as they're founded on a baseline of observable fact. But when you come in with an argument that's based on a rock-solid belief that KERA in Dallas has lost audience and is failing, and I know that it's the top-rated non-music station in the market and that your belief is simply not factual, where can a conversation even start?
Which is to say, whether "you" find NPR "polarized" isn't just a reflection on what NPR is actually putting out into the ether. These days, it's also a referendum on who "you" are (and what your baked-in beliefs are) and on what "polarized" means to you.
Some fairly large number of people out there are charged up right now in ways that a place like NPR simply can't reach without losing its reason for being. Its editorial processes and norms were formed in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when most (not all, but at least most) Americans had more of a baseline consensus on what constituted truth.
We've seen a microcosm of that in this thread. I can have a conversation with you about a lot of things that we disagree on, as long as they're founded on a baseline of observable fact. But when you come in with an argument that's based on a rock-solid belief that KERA in Dallas has lost audience and is failing, and I know that it's the top-rated non-music station in the market and that your belief is simply not factual, where can a conversation even start?
Which is to say, whether "you" find NPR "polarized" isn't just a reflection on what NPR is actually putting out into the ether. These days, it's also a referendum on who "you" are (and what your baked-in beliefs are) and on what "polarized" means to you.
We should be clear that NPR, as it was designed, was not intended to be strictly a news organization. Originally the company offered classical, jazz, and folk music programs, as well as documentaries about numerous topics under the omnibus of ''Options.'' They also have a very active engineering department that represents the stations in a number of issues, such as LPFM and HD radio.
At the same time, there are multiple competing public radio content companies that produce and distribute very similar news and talk programming. None of them seem to ever get targeted as much as NPR. All of them are equally being challenged in the current financial turndown, and all of them are responsible for the ratings being experienced by the stations. Blaming NPR for local station ratings ignores all of the non-NPR programming those stations air.
A clearly written editorial (from a year ago) calling for changes in the NPR funding model, based on changes in technology.
NPR Funding Reforms May Be Needed
NPR Funding Reforms May Be Needed
There was when Boris Johnson was PM. He felt the BBC was too liberal. He set about a move to abolish the broadcasting tax. It was passed a couple of years ago:
BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen
Government announcement will force broadcaster to make deep cuts to its programme budgets
It's very complicated, because commercial broadcasters aren't excited about having to compete with public radio for advertising or sponsorship money. Especially in the current economy.
What I might foresee is NPR splitting off its news division as its own company, and keeping NPR as a network, the way PBS operates with the NewsHour being done by an independent company. PBS doesn't actually produce programs. Just funds & distributes them.
Sorry, I'm still smiling at all the political agendas going on behind the comments.
"What's your vision for what NPR should sound like"
For me, it's the same for every media source, not just NPR. I do think NPR, being even partially publicly funded should have a higher standard. Hope I'm not asked to take my opinion to another board because that thought disagrees with those of others.
Here's a short list of my recipe:
This is not a big order. It's basically what the news media did for their entire tenures up until about a dozen years ago...right about the time people started noticing the bias.
And, no matter what their political preferences, many are sick of it all, contemptuous, and mistrusting. I don't listen much at all any more. Terrestrial broadcast can't afford even a single pair of ears giving up on them.
"What's your vision for what NPR should sound like"
For me, it's the same for every media source, not just NPR. I do think NPR, being even partially publicly funded should have a higher standard. Hope I'm not asked to take my opinion to another board because that thought disagrees with those of others.
Here's a short list of my recipe:
- Don't have intonations or wording that show the opinion of the speaker, the writer, or the administration.
- Refer to every sitting president, or for that matter any major elected official with the honor they deserve; don't refer to favored ones as "President" or "Mr", and disfavored ones by their last name.
- Give me the facts, uncolored either way, and let me make my own decisions.
- Research all sides of issues, not just preferred outcomes.
- Consider which stories get lead positioning, and which are on 'page 10'
This is not a big order. It's basically what the news media did for their entire tenures up until about a dozen years ago...right about the time people started noticing the bias.
And, no matter what their political preferences, many are sick of it all, contemptuous, and mistrusting. I don't listen much at all any more. Terrestrial broadcast can't afford even a single pair of ears giving up on them.
I agree for the most part, but it is worth noting that "right about the time people started noticing the bias" coincides with "right about the time that one side of the political aisle decided that 'the media' was biased against them and decided to do something about it."
This began when someone associated with a very corrupt administration asked "would our guy have been forced to resign if he'd had a friendly media outlet blocking tackles for him?" Over the course of a couple decades, a narrative was presented that "the news" (Walter Cronkite, the New York Times, and others) weren't trusted bastions of journalism, but were at best hopelessly biased and at worst a wide-ranging conspiracy from "the left."
The "liberal media" was* in no small part a construct. An image designed to sell an alternative product as "fair and balanced," and has become so prevalent that the number one cable news network - owned by one of the largest mainstream media corporations on the planet - can with a straight face regularly rail against "the mainstream media" and have it's viewers all nod their heads in agreement.
* I say "was" because in response to competition, the traditional media either pivoted to "the left" or even created their own competing cable network(s).
It has gotten to the point where a media outlet (radio, television, cable, online) HAS to have an obvious bias or they can't survive in the media landscape. Is NPR biased? I think they try not to be, but they are perceived as such in no small part because they don't shout their bias from the rooftops. For the longest time, the formula for a "news" outlet has been actual news at the top and bottom of the hour, and fill the rest of that hour with an opinion host shouting at listeners to tell them what they must be "outraged" about at that moment.
I think NPR follows your recipe fairly well, but they're having trouble competing in the marketplace because instead of breaking away from the news to shout at listeners, they do in depth reporting, or an in depth interview, or a week-long series on international variations of hip hop or the impacts of climate change in far-flung communities. In a way, their dedication to objectivity, a desire to present a diversity of opinions, and digging a little deeper into important issues has become a liability.
Five minutes of "news" an hour and 55 minutes of shouting hosts and commercials for gold schemes and ED pills simply sells better than objective reporting and a thoughtful examination of issues.
And that's depressing.
The whole argument is based on the notion that National Public Radio is itself the central point and controlling entity of everything public radio. Which is the furthest thing from the truth. What you think is "NPR" is in actuality a very loose definition of public radio.
KEXP is nominally an NPR member station and they have no funding issues at all thanks to a large bequest of funding from an anonymous donor, even recently purchased a station in Alameda, CA! So they are "an NPR station" that is doing well. How does that jibe with the Times article?
It's all about the stations. Those stations have the right to pick and choose national programming to purchase from a deep pool of distributors, and NPR is but one distributor. They are not a network, and NPR is a co-op, not a network.
Simple as that.
KEXP is nominally an NPR member station and they have no funding issues at all thanks to a large bequest of funding from an anonymous donor, even recently purchased a station in Alameda, CA! So they are "an NPR station" that is doing well. How does that jibe with the Times article?
It's all about the stations. Those stations have the right to pick and choose national programming to purchase from a deep pool of distributors, and NPR is but one distributor. They are not a network, and NPR is a co-op, not a network.
Simple as that.
Last edited:
But, returning to the subject here... which is NPR, not the affiliate or associate stations, we were discussing a piece written in violation of employment agreements by a staff member.
I am not an NPR listener. I state that because my opinions are theoretical and not based on personal evaluation of content.
The issue in the piece in question is that nearly 100% of the portion of the NPR staff that the writer analyzed are of one political persuasion. In an era of rapidly escalating polarization of the country, that does not sound "right".
On the other hand, have you ever seen a news organization with quotas for Republicans, Democrats and Independents? The idea of that either deadly serious or worthy of a chuckle about segregating every possible group!
My life experience is mostly with nations that have more than two parties. Nations where new parties, such as Morena in Mexico, can rise and take real power in less than a decade. Nations where parties can be found obsolete and discarded, such as may be happening with Peronísmo in Argentina. Places where a candidate with no party but popular ideas can be elected, such as Ecuador.
This brings me to often wonder if the two-party system of the US is obsolete, along with institutions like the Electoral College which exist only in such a system. I see lots of rocks being thrown back and forth (talk radio being a literal quarry for those stones) and nearly no discussion of the system itself.
You're making the mistake of treating the Berliner piece as factual. It is not.
How my NPR colleague failed at “viewpoint diversity”
Uri Berliner gave a perfect example of the kind of journalism he says he’s against.
steveinskeep.substack.com
Seems maybe 20 years ago there was an attempt to do a mirror image of conservative talk radio that failed. Hello, Air America?
Our local station that plays Americana music all day gets some CPB funding.
Excuse me, but MAGA continues to refer to "President Trump" and "Biden"
A group of Repub Senators have written a letter to NPR suggesting some changes:
www.cramer.senate.gov
Interesting that the letter has no threats of defunding, as was the case from the House. They also commend local affiliates.
Senator Cramer Leads Letter Highlighting NPR Bias, Urging Journalistic Integrity
Former National Public Radio (NPR) Senior Editor Uri Berliner announced his resignation after an article was published in the Free Press, accounting the network’s record of biased reporting and losing the trust of the public.
www.cramer.senate.gov
Interesting that the letter has no threats of defunding, as was the case from the House. They also commend local affiliates.
At least they realize that it is not an easy process to "defund" public broadcasting. Plus the House GOP has a whole lot of other internal problems right now that such a threat is pretty much impossible for them to make, let alone carry out.
Not just MAGA, but news anchors and commentators in general. It gets awfully confusing when they talk about President Biden, and then the very next sentence mention "The President was in court today" -- referring to Trump.
- Status