There is no courage in American news reporting, so I have mixed emotions on the funding cutoff for NPR. Having spent a good part of my life in Billings and Bozeman, Montana, NPR was to me hours and hours of classical music, occasional news, Click and Crack and Warren Olney. But they would leave regular programming to cover major events free of advertising, including congressional hearings and floods. Their “here’s what you should think about this” commentary was kept to a minimum.
Now that government funding will be cut off for NPR, I wonder what will happen to all that band width. NPR will still exist, for sure. It took on corporate overlords years ago, so its news has not been any different than the commercial outlets for decades. But they did provide high quality programming in the non-news areas, including Fresh Air, Car Talk and Wait Wait.*** But hell, I can easily live without all of those. Perhaps the government funding was so small that it won’t be much affected – I do remember NPR getting a $200 million grant from the Estate of Joan Kroc. I even thought at the time that the money might give them some independence.
But to those who say “Why should I have to pay for news outlets that I don’t watch and blah blah blah, all I can say is “F*** your wars that I’m paying for, and my kids and grandkids.
NPR came about in the wake of the sixties, a deliberate attempt to tighten the reins on private radio outlets that had been unpatriotic during that time. Community broadcasting was an important outlet for information and education. It also undermined the propaganda system. Even so, by its very nature, not constrained by advertising in those early years, NPR did some very good work. This is attested to by the fact that the right wing went into hissy fits now and then, and programming was condemned on the floor of the senate and house.
It’s long since gone over the hill to the other side. The wine snob Ron Schiller, who was taken down by the video hit man last week, is all too typical of the limousine liberal fare of that network.
By the way, have you ever noticed that the pay channels often broadcast subversive programs, like Bill Maher’s Real Time? Bryan Gumbel and Real Sports is highly critical of the NFL. Such disrespect is not allowed on regular channels. Oliver Stone is going to run a series called The Secret History of America on Showtime, unless billionaire Haim Saban forces the network to shut him down. Because subscribers pay for those channels, some of the filtering is removed, and some honest and controversial programming slips in. * **
So what happens now? I suppose that NPR chugs along, more subject to corporate financing even than before, and eventually becomes just another crappy radio outlet. Perhaps some of the affiliates will have to go local for programming, and community radio will reappear. That would be a good thing.
But in the end, my only real thought about the loss of NPR is this: Are Tommy and Ray real mechanics, or is that just their radio persona?
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*Sixty Minutes was drooling all over itself after the 1999 movie The Insider came out. It dealt with some explosive inside information about how the tobacco company Brown and Williams knew how deadly their product was and spiked cigarettes with chemicals to make them even more addictive. Several attempts were made to stop the broadcast, but it was aired anyway. That’s what the movie is was about – the 60 minute heroes. Here’s what they forgot to say: Brown and Williams was not allowed to do TV advertising for tobacco products, and had no other divisions besides tobacco, and so had no financial leverage over CBS. That’s why the report even got through in the first place. B&W had to resort to an old-fashioned lawsuit to stop the broadcast, which they eventually lost.
**I believe that it was HBO that showed the movie “Waco: Rules of Engagement“, a documentary about that event that would never make its way to regular TV, as it accused the government of mass murder.
*** When I got satellite radio, I learned about Bob Edwards, Diane Rehm, Brian Lehrer, Talk of the Nation … yawn. Rehm is especially nondescript, but the others place a close second. PRI gives us This American Life with Ira Glass – that is great programming.
Piece of Mindful 
Ron took himself out.
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From US News….
. . . Conservatives have long complained that the public broadcaster has a liberal bias, a charge NPR’s defenders have denied. In at least one regard, however, NPR’s board and fundraisers have, as a whole, shown a marked lean to the left in recent years: political contributions. A review of campaign finance data found that NPR board members’ campaign contributions have sharply favored Democrats. Since 2004, members of the boards of NPR and the NPR Foundation, the public broadcaster’s fundraising arm, have contributed nearly $2.2 million to federal candidates, parties, and PACs, of which $1.95 million, or 89 percent, has gone to Democratic candidates and liberal-leaning political action committees.
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In your world, Swede, there is right and left represented by Republicans and Democrats. Consequently, almost everything I write here blows right by you.
This oughtta give you pause for thought: Obama’s largest contributor in 2008 was Goldman Sachs, done via bundling by their executives.
Therefore, Goldman Sachs is a leftist outfit.
That’s your world, Swede, roiling in contradictions which you never seem able to address.
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What’s troubling is the fact that you’re always critical of “right wing radio” and the fact that they use the public airwaves.
NPR uses the public airwaves and as a added bonus gets grants, millions in cash and as a nonprofit pays no taxes.
There’s the real contradiction.
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So NPR, in your eyes, is left wing. Please be specific and give examples.
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From the Boston Globe.
“…MoveOn.org, the left-wing pressure group, is promoting a petition that urges Congress to “protect NPR and PBS and guarantee them permanent funding, free from political meddling.’’ Yet political “meddling’’ is the inescapable price of taking political dollars. Conservatives would complain about NPR’s liberal tilt no matter where its funding came from, just as liberals complain about the conservative tilt of Fox News. But if NPR were no longer on the government dole, its political leanings would no longer be a congressional issue. The budget storms in Washington pose no threat to Fox because Fox doesn’t run on taxpayer money. They wouldn’t threaten NPR either — if only NPR would give up its subsidy.”
Now I suppose you want proof that Move On is biased.
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Look, Swede – the right wing has done a masterful job, from the days of AIM, to poison the well of American media. So I run into people like you who rarely listen to anything but Fox, and yet are convinced that all the other outlets are biased.
Here’s the deal:” The American media is corporate and statist. TV and newspapers that you consider “liberal” barely qualify – when they put on a war, all of the media, from CNN to NPR to Fox, line up. There’s very little going on in the way of leftist politics in the way of media – there is Democracy Now, a few talk shows, and that’s about it.
There was a book written in 1988 that attempted to quantify media bias – it was written by Chomsky and Herman, called “Manufacturing Consent”, and they did just what a scholarly work would of – they quantified bias, all of it pro-state, and then came up with seven reasons why there is bias, which they called “media filters.” In the corporate environment (which also includes NPR), you cannot succeed unless you internalize the power structure.
So I don’t know what to say to you except what Einstein said, that things should be made as simple as possible, but not more so.
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Amazing coincidence Mark, I was just reading some Chomsky (Understanding Power, page 388).
“Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.
Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”
A little fascist action solves everything.
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Blow me away!The state of popular movements today is virtually nil, you see. He’s saying that people would voluntarily submit to fascism, as there is no alternative, no on-the-ground populist movements to counter the oligarchy. You need to be more careful in your reading. That passage Blue Bayou.
Chomsky is not a fascist Swede. He’s a democratic socialist, or an anarcho-syndicalist or some such nonsense. He believes in popular rule, and not what we have. I am much more restrained – I only want to see public financing of campaigns and an end to winner-take-all voting. So while he might scare the crap out of you, I should be easier to swallow.
Chomsky is a little bit of an intellectual jump for someone schooled in right wing thought. But hell, that’s where I was in 1989 when I first picked up Manufacturing Consent. I was a lost puppy, having lost one system of indoctrination, and desperately searching for another. It’s very hard to live without some authority figure to look up to, and Chomsky is the only one – the only one- who has been, for me, 1989 to 2011, entirely consistent.
I try to be aware that there are no experts, no demigods, no saints and a lot of sinners, but Chomsky is quite good.
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Color me red. The very idea of you reading
Chomskya book is ludicrous. You went and Googled or asked someone to give you something he wrote to bring back here.Here’s a hint: You’re supposed to say that he supported Pol Pot and is a Holocaust denier. If you want to know more bad things to say about him, see David Horowitz’s website.
Good grief. I can’t beelive I bought that!
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Oh it gets better. Not only did I go here…
http://reason.com/archives/2005/04/01/deconstructing-chomsky
… then went to Amazon an bought the book for 10 bucks (used).
More fuel for the fire.
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I never in my life would have guessed I’d be having this conversation with you. The Reason article is interesting, but devoid of specifics, and just a polemic. That’s fairly typical, and goes along the lines of “how dare he!” It’s not that he says things that are wrong, but rather that he says things that are not allowed to be said in an imperial intellectual culture.
I do hope you read the book with a little more caution than you did with the one errant quotation above.
And as always, when someone first encounter the man, I suggest you start with his essay from the 1960’s, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, from 1967. You will find that he is the same man then as now.
I’ll link by editing this comment.
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Goldman Sachs is very left wing except where it concerns them personally — like so many leftists. Ex CEO Jon Corzine was known as the most liberal person in Congress. Of course he turned out to be a crook, like George Soros, another lefty billionaire. I’ll agree that rich people aren’t leftists on issues that affect their fortunes, but on issues like abortion or gun control you’ll find Goldman Sachs executives quite liberal. Nearly all the top billionaires are Democrats and support liberal positions where it doesn’t affect them personally.
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Only in the United States are the factions within the 1% seen as right and left. Goldman Sachs part of the left? Bizarre! But when there is no left (and there is no left in this country save bit players in the streets who are not well organized), then something has to fill the vacuum.
But Goldman Sachs part of the left? Good grief! Good f******* grief!
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When Chevron and Exxon own you, does “left-leaning” news really mean that much? The greater question, I would argue, is to what extent has “public” broadcasting become a handmaiden to global corporatists? The cute little refrain: “…and from viewers like you” has been a lie for years. Neoliberal Democrats need public broadcasting more than the people who watch, and clap for tinkerbell and the tooth fairy, do.
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“Why should I have to pay for news outlets that I don’t watch and blah blah blah, all I can say is “F*** your wars that I’m paying for, and my kids and grandkids.”
Thank you!
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Why don’t you just stream AlJazeera? Far better than polluting your environment with all the trash that accompanies the pittance of news on network and cable news.
AlJazeera is probably the best thing that could happen to the MSM in the U.S. They might actually have to compete with a real news source.
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Actually have them watch AJE with a CNN logo on it.
“As Al Jazeera English works to find itself a permanent place on American television, one question has now been settled. Americans don’t see AJE as biased. That is, as long as they don’t know they’re watching Al Jazeera. According to a study published in Arab Media and Society, researchers found that Americans who watched AJE news coverage–branded with a CNN International logo–found it to be fair. People watching the same clip who were told it was Al Jazeera were more likely to conclude the story was biased.”
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Question is: Do you understand what you just quoted here?
BTW, CNN International has completely different content than American CNN, which is filtered and dumbed down.
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And here’s the big money quote.
“With its record of crimes and hypocrisies, Chomsky argues, the U.S. could sustain its moral identity only if it had a press primed to play lieutenant to the capitalists and generals. This raises another commended Chomskyan asset: media savvy. In 1988’s Manufacturing Consent (co-authored with Edward Herman), Chomsky launched a widely repeated argument against the consolidation of media and their goal of propagandizing for a power elite. The book (along with a documentary based on it) remains a favorite on college campuses; even among Chomsky’s critics, few are willing to defend centralized media. Indeed, media savvy is a valuable trait, and one would think that an anti-conglomeration media theorist would keep abreast of changes in media structures and deliveries.
And yet Eli Lehrer finds that, in the last 10 years, Chomsky has all but ignored the most striking new medium of our time: the Internet. He says little about the weblogs and other virtual newsroom start-ups that have done the very work he advocates, forcing into the public eye stories that traditional media outlets ignored. When he does heed the Internet, he makes the same charges he leveled against the networks, in the process misrepresenting basic aspects of online communication. The Internet is just the kind of populist medium that Chomsky supposedly reveres, but all he can do is squeeze it into a conspiracy theory.”
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Your shallowness knows no bounds! Chomsky is not a conspiracy theorist. That charge usually comes from critics who have not read him. Since the man has been writing since the 1960’s, and you have a computer and can Google, can I expect this to go on for what … 15 minutes?
I don’t know what he thinks about the net other than to Google “Chomsky Internet”, which I assume you’ve done. For myself, I’ve seen a whole lot of good and bad come out of it. We used to be confined to the alternative media, where readers were counted in thousands.
But there’s a whole lotta crap comes out of this medium, and as anyone who gets chain emails from right wingers knows, it is easy to spread nonsense very quickly. The fact that you, who seems to lack critical skills, can form an opinion on Chomsky based on a half an hour of Googling is in point of fact one of the large problems with it. It makes it too easy for you. You’ve not done your legwork, and as usual, you are using other people’s thoughts like a sock puppet.
So tell me, Swede, what do youthink of the Internet?
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And you’re not one either? Mark, POM is conspiracy central.
JFK, CIA, 600K K in Iraq, Vietnam, Black Ops, Media BS, anything O Stone does-come on, you’re Norm’s mini me.
Oh, the internet, the internet is a peak behind the curtain.
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Swede: how is 655K in Iraq a “conspiracy”? What do you know of spooks? If you would read about media theory, you would know that people behave as rewards and punishment dictate, and that large groups of people cannot conspire but do have common interests. Stone badly erred wit JFK but so what? He’s smart, curious, prone to mistake but surely a better man than you. He served in Vietnam and came back curious about things.
Am I noam’s minime? There, finally, you say something that has some resonance. That is indeed a problem. But what am I to say? I do admire him, he has been right, he has predictive power, and he cares not a whit what power thinks of him.
Si you scored one point. One.
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PS: now go read Responsibilities of Intellectuals”. It is an important essay. Report back. Do you have it in you? Do you, punk?
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Am I missing out on the joke about the picture of Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin, labeled as Tom and Ray Magliozzi?
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