Comments on: NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

by: Jim Swanson

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:57:48 +0000

National Praeternatural, or Propaganda, Radio has been slowly evolving for decades. As one board member said to me 5 years ago: “We have a mission to diversify our staff and audience and ‘those people’ cannot handle reality.” I will leave you to understand what he meant by ‘those people’, but he was careful to explain that instead of reality ‘they’ needed spiritualism and simplistic, authoritarian world views.
Check how the programming has changed to place religion as more valuable than scientific enquiry, and how ‘reverend’ Scott Simon even criticizes interviewees who express opposition to authority. NPR has become Fox. After donating over $4,000 to Chicago affiliate WBEZ in 2004 I was asked not to make any more donations so that they “could ignore” my criticisms. They have a new mission and it is “the truth”.

by: Old NJ Guy

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:30:30 +0000

It is relieving to learn of others that have a hard time accepting the smarmy, condescending, overly patronizing tone and pro-administration spin of NPR (National Propaganda Radio).

I have already informed my local Public Radio Station, KUT (Austin) that I refuse to donate money to that very good radio station as long as it broadcasts low critical thinking shows like All Things Considered and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

Scott Simon, Cokey Roberts, and the others have obviously been absorbed by the group mind-think of the favored few in Washington. Time they worked for their pay in real jobs somewhere else in America. It hurts to hear their public display of personal failure and loss of moral objectivity.

by: Paul Harrington

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:34:18 +0000

The wacko left get all hot and bothered when NPR strays from the party line So what!
They still have ABC,CBS, NBC,PBS along
with NY Times, Wash Post and the Los Angeles Times to spout thier left-wing America hating garbage.

Have a nice day Comrades

by: Francis Scalzi

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:07:42 +0000

Ever since the Republican legislatores ramped up their customary attacks and threats of de-funding public media afew years ago, NPR and PBS have been extraordinarily cautious in aligning themselves more closely with the powers in DC. Check out the Jim Lehrer News Hour, Watch Lehrer’s dead pan face deliver the latest, bland, inside-the-beltway stuff released by the White House, DOD, and the Pentagon. Later, two or more panelists discuss their viewpoints in looong boring discussions that are supposed to pass for “balanced” coverage, controlled, of course, by questions from an anchor assuring that no one utters anything too “controversial. PBS and NPR knows full well on which side their bread is buttered.

by: Daniel

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:50:22 +0000

I’ve often thought that there should be a NPR watch website so as to call out what news and features are biased. It would be have an intent like Mediamatters.org, but would have material like what you’ve just written. Maybe you could put up a section on Mediachannel for this…? I’d be happy to help out if you need it.

Daniel
near Seattle

by: Michael

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:42:19 +0000

I noticed the general tone of NPR for years now. I can listen only up to the point when it firmly sounds like a commercial for Bush and the neocon take of news. Clearly they were “invaded” by war sympathizers and the rest of the staff either quit and cleared out or remained and appeased. To loosely quote Chris Hedges “NPR has become the ‘opiate of the’ liberal ‘masses’.”. This is a shame and yet another of the casualties of not just the war but the takeover of the present regime and it’s campaign of “Gleichschalltung”.

by: Ray Blessin

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:06:15 +0000

The “enemy” in Iraq - is the US military.

Ray Blessin
Kamloops, BC
Canada

by: Doug

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:17:12 +0000

Norm,

I’ve had the same uneasy feeling about NPR’s coverage of the war myself. An independent journalist, especially under the guise of public radio, would not cover the war as they have. I’ve been a listener to Morning Edition and All Things Considered for some time, and this is the first time I’ve really been unnerved by the tone and point of view I hear coloring their war coverage. Not a way to get at essential truths.

On a brighter note, Marketplace is pretty refreshing, and at least so far, I notice more willingness to question U.S. policy and consumer actions moreso than I would expect. It has a ring at times of more authentic journalism.