This was going on well before this latest cutback was announced. Admittedly, the local station has had some fairly severe financial problems over the past couple of years, but this “additional gift” practice has been going on for much longer than that. Once or twice a year, I wouldn’t mind. But twice a month?!
I will make an observation: Since NPR is government-funded, many people feel that it should not take political sides. And when it does (or they think it does) they will complain.
Personally, though I fall more to the right than the left of the political spectrum, I dislike both Savage and Limbaugh. And (on the other side of the political spectrum) I’m none to fond of Stern.
But that they are on the air doesn’t bother me too much (other than some headshaking about people’s taste) because I’m Not Paying For Them.
On the whole, I like a lot of what NPR carries. But I do think - yes, I know many will disagree, but I calls 'em as I see 'em - that their editorial bias is left-of-center. And I’d be happier if there was no discernable political content on NPR because I think, in context, NO political positions, left OR right, should be advocated by a publically funded network.
Commercial networks, all bets are off. My gut impression is that network news runs slightly left of center (CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN vs FOX) while talk radio runs slightly right of center. But in all cases, if those stations can’t attract enough listeners and advertisers to turn a profit, they’re off the air. Seems fair to me.
Re Bill Moyers: Hey, I never mentioned his politics, did I? I also mentioned McLaughlin, a conservative, didn’t I?
Looks like someone else is turning it into a polemic. I just think Moyers is part of the celebrity punditocracy. As far as his eloquence, like Bloom said, sometimes one can be tired of glib, wit and eloquence. Berkeley is filled with people that can write and speak very well, it doesn’t mean I have to bow and scrape before them. Hasn’t everyone felt, at least once, that eloquence is just a facet that outshines other characteristics? Last time I checked, he reads prepared scripts just like everybody else, too.
And even though Gilder is on his Savage attack mode, and I hate to entertain it, how long would Moyers survive ad-libbing a radio show? It’s a different talent.
I said that I hope PBS (and by unstated intention NPR) continue, not that they should be shut down for bias. I also said that there is bound to be trouble when they go into political areas on public money.
It’s just a difference of opinion, Gilder. If Savage was on PBS and getting public money, I would probably feel similarly.
It’s more about cultural nuance, to me. Lighten up. I guess I gored a sacred cow or something. I don’t like Cronkite, either.
PS. Read the speech. A nice reiteration of a common chorus these days. As far as the history, I didn’t see much mention of how slanderous early newspapers could be. He mentions Paine but omits Callendar (was it James THompson Callendar, or James Callendar Thompson) of “Dusky Sally” fame. He’s the guy who turned on Jefferson after he didn’t get enough for his propaganda work.
Anytime a “journalist” (the preferred term was newspaperman to the old-timers) alludes to the nobility of the profession, remember the scandal sheets and broadsides that were hand in hand with the more patriotic.
As as far as likening the impoverished Quaker-raised Tom Paine with Bill Moyers, there are millions of little differences $$$$$$$$$$. Unlike Moyers, Paine enjoyed brief episodes of public popularity before being turned on for his radical ideas. Paine was simultaneously much more brilliant and more flawed than I perceive Moyers to be. Maybe history will prove me wrong.
PS. I thought it…well, not exactly amazing…that Al Franken toured with “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” and was such a celebrity darling despite the infantilism of it, but I say a word about Moyers and look what happens.
Uh oh. Weeks, we can probably get you refugee status in Canada. 
Jef
I don’t think that it could ever outshine elegance.
It is just eloquence is easier and so grace has been abandoned.
Actually, NPR and PBS are more center than anything. CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN are right of center, and FOX is clearly extreme right since the owner has submitted memos to his news anchors instructing them to spin the news in favor of Republicans.
NPR and PBS are necessary to provide for Americans an alternative to the overwhelming corporate media. Because any independent voice in the media needs to distance itself as much as possible from corporations, they are at a disadvantage financially and require compensation. The government needs to play a vital role in keeping this kind of reporting available in a democracy such as ours. Listeners also provide support, but without the help from government it’s not enough and the public broadcasting networks don’t stand a chance.
I have a theory that the political environment consists of a liquid which bends the light, so that the political spectrum appears skewed differently depending on where you’re standing. 
Eloquence is a practiced trait that can be pretended while on the air. I rather like to see more of the real reporter…like the way Nina Totenberg came unglued with Alan Simpson, using the ef word right in his face, over and over.
Color blindness could effect one’s perception as well.
I dunno Gilder, I can’t figure out why you are not as distrusting of these PBS types as you are of most other media. I suppose you think Jim Lehrer, the baggy-eyed Bolshevik (toh to Savage, a joke don’t go nukular) is much more trustworthy than good ol’ David Brinkley…Oh wait, he went FROM commercial to PBS later in life…
Look at Judy Woodruff for example. She went from PBS to a commercial network. From Frontline to reading the news. Why? Money, I bet and prestige. And maybe guys like Moyers had sucked all available oxygen out of the room.
Do you respect her as much since she changed to NBC or whichever one she is at now? Is she now part of the lying corporate media?
If you look at it from the standpoint of a career track, they are doing the same things as the lying network weasels… reporter, newsdesk, author, moderator at debates and town halls, etc etc.
Come to think of it, do you respect or trust what Teddy Koppel says? Seriously.
Being a bit of a Lefty myself, I find that commercial media are for the most part skewed to the right. In fact, they are mostly skewed toward the establishment. Not necessarily the administration - I mean the white, middle class, middle of the road establishment. AKA, the target demographic.
The greatest bias is through story selection. NPR covered the massacres in East Timor long before the commercial outlets picked up on it. I’m sure there are other examples, but I don’t even try to get news from commercial outlets anymore so I can’t name any.
I saw a spoof NPR headline somewhere; something like, “World To End Tomorrow - Poor and Disadvantaged Hardest Hit”. There is a truth behind that, but it is mostly out of contrast between NPR and the rest. Commercial outlets have long shown a bias toward reporting the tragedies of attractive white women. If Paris Hilton should fall and break a leg she would get far more coverage than the families all over America who will get screwed by the new bankruptcy laws. PBS/NPR are not immune, but at least they try to get beyond the latest celebrity trial.
I’m starting to ramble - gonna get some dinner and bring my blood sugar (BS) level back up.
Roger
Just remember Rog, that it took a lying corporate media newspaper weasel to correctly put into words what I had long felt about Paris Hilton:
looking at her face and eyes is like looking at a GOLDFISH! I thought that was brilliant, m’self.
The professional news people aren’t the ones who I hold responsible necessarily. The way that the media is controlled in this country isn’t that overt. The people calling the shots are never seen on camera.
Corporate media was far less balanced over all on coverage leading up to the war. The ratio of pro-war as opposed to anti-war voices was something like 60 to one. The reason I say that PBS and NPR are more center than left is because they didn’t allow the anti-war voices to play on a level field either. They were better than corporate media, but not enough. They’re actually more right from center if anything.
As for individual personalities within the news business in both areas, it’s what they’re allowed to ask about and report on as opposed to what they would like to. I don’t condemn reporters for wanting to have a career; the responsibility for poor journalism rests on the shoulders of the owners and executives for the most part. The reporters have to behave within the parameters of what they’re instructed to do by their bosses.
We should treat them as we would want US POWs treated. Gitmo isn’t doing that; they are violating international law in their treatment of those prisoners. Perhaps the prisoners should be turned over to an international body to be processed or detained. The US government has proven itself to be incapable of the task.
I think that the US government and the US military are perfectly capable of treating POWs according to the Geneva Convention, and they used to have a great reputation for doing so.
I agree that Gitmo detainees should be either treated as POWs or given criminal trials before regular (not military) courts.
Back to NPR: part of the brilliance of the reporting on NPR, and which sets it apart from much else that I see on US TV or hear US radio (and I don’t see or hear much of that), is their willing ness to just report and let it stand. Since they take more time and dig deeper, they seem to be able to better resist the temptation of tying everything up into neat bundles.
Before the War in Iraq started I felt that NPR was leaning over backwards trying give a balanced account.
“they used to have a great reputation for doing so” - exactly my point.
I disagree, PBS has some of the same problems about having to drink the coolaid in order to maintain access to government officials. Case in point; failing to hold Rumsfeld accountable for misleading and false statements.
===========================
PBS Fails to Hold Rumsfeld Accountable
September 20, 2002
Asking tough questions of those in power is one of a journalist’s most important jobs-- especially when a country may be going to war. But PBS’s Jim Lehrer failed to challenge Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a September 18 interview on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”-- even when Rumsfeld made factually inaccurate assertions.
For instance, Rumsfeld repeatedly referred to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors being expelled from Iraq, saying, “We have seen the situation with Iraq where they have violated some 16 U.N. resolutions and finally threw the inspectors out.” Rumsfeld went on to say that “we have gone through… four years where they threw the inspectors out and there’s been no one there.”
In December 1998, the U.N. inspectors were not thrown out; they were pulled out by UNSCOM chief Richard Butler prior to a U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq. As Madeleine Albright told Lehrer at the time (12/17/98 ), Butler “made an independent decision that UNSCOM could no longer work.”
Rumsfeld also made a dubious assertion about Iraq’s plans for “invading Saudi Arabia, which they were ready to do.” This was presumably a reference to the Pentagon’s claim in September 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that Iraq was massing hundreds of thousands of troops along the Saudi border in preparation to take over that country as well.
But the St. Petersburg Times (1/6/91) published satellite imagery from the region that appeared to disprove the Pentagon claim, since no massive Iraqi build-up was visible in the satellite photos.
After the war, a U.S. “senior commander” admitted to Newsday (3/1/91) that reports of a major Iraqi troop mobilization were exaggerated, saying, “There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war.” Despite the serious doubts about the veracity of Rumsfeld’s charge, Lehrer allowed it to stand without comment.
A recent segment on CNN demonstrates precisely how journalists can clarify misleading statements from government officials. On September 18, CNN reporter Richard Roth explained the confusion about the UNSCOM inspectors this way:
“On our air, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense… said look, it was Iraq, he said, that booted out, kicked out those weapons inspectors. That’s not exactly accurate. It was the U.N. and the weapons inspections agency that withdrew them, under pressure from the U.S., because they had barely gotten out with their bags when U.S. military strikes occurred.”
It’s always important for journalists to correct misstatements of fact, but when an official is offering misinformation as a justification for war, that journalistic duty becomes an imperative.
Seems reasonable to me. You may or may not have noticed that I didn’t comment on whether I think PBS is leftie-biased. I think Bill Moyers is sort of a darling of many on the left who trust him, but I don’t know that he is leftie nor deserving of that trust. He seems pretty moderate to me in his delivery. I mean, his article had the usual finger-pointing at corporate interests in the media, but that’s being done from the right as well; to the point that its more factual than polemic. I don’t really pay any more attention to PBS News than I do the regular network news, so I don’t have a strong opinion about it.
I think that NPR, more than PBS, expresses a leftist inclination more by story and guest CHOICE, than overt opinionizing. For example, while driving around, I put NPR on and there was a big feature on how hard it is to be an illegal Mexican alien in the United States. I pondered that for a while. I think that NPR feels that its a story that needs to be heard. Whether they feel that need because its just a humanitarian story on its own, OR they are trying to influence the national debate on illegal immigration is not known to me. It would be easy to think the latter, but justify or rationalize by the former.
I have heard author guests that were pretty leftist and yes, they were provided a forum. On several shows, there was quite a bit of the verbal equivalent of eye-rolling about Bush and Republicans in general. I have never heard a right-wing person on there, but I don’t listen that often so I don’t know.
But having grown up around here and had ultra-progressive KPFA, NPR doesn’t seem all that shocking, whereas it might in other regions.
BTW, thinking about PBS historically, I always remember that William F. Buckley got pretty famous, being pretty right-wing on there so I don’t feel that one can prove a traditional bias. So in a way, the whole celebrated dignitary thing may have started with a rightwinger.
Public radio comes as close as it legally can to advertising yet w/o technically being called advertising. NPR is suppose to be commercial free, according to a certain definition of the term, but so-called underwriting goes on and on, in some cases, about certain products that the line between advertising and underwriting is not clear.
- “Support for this program is provided by Microsoft, helping business make the connections to quickly act, react, and succeed. Learn more about software for the agile business at microsoft.com/ enterprise.”
The truth is that people directly related to, and enriched by, [u]corporate America[/u] donate substantial money to public radio. These people are from some of the largest and wealthiest corporations known. Microsoft included the term “learn more” in it’s underwriting statement, and was okayed by NPR, but refused by Chicago’s public station, WBEZ.
- When this copy arrived a few weeks ago from NPR, WBEZ refused to let its announcers read it. “The implied promise of success is very strong,” says Malatia. “But worse is ‘learn more,’ which is a direct call to action.” So many other public radio stations reacted the same way that NPR turned to its lawyers for advice and then to the FCC. After hearing from the commission’s staff, NPR declared there was no problem. “I have received about a dozen e-mails focusing on the ‘learn more’ language, and I have read each of them carefully,” executive vice president Ken Stern asserted in an October 4 statement to public radio station managers and development officers. The FCC staff, he explained, had “reinforced” NPR’s conviction that what the FCC meant to prohibit was "calls for specific transactional behavior (‘buy,’ ‘come down and see’). This was never meant to be a prohibition against the use of verbs. While it is understandable that many in public radio have read it differently, this has led to awkward grammatical formulations and the somewhat illogical belief that an implied verb is somehow better than the expressed verb. -for more, see [u]entire article[/u]
I think that the salient point is not that NPR takes corporate money, but that it does not take corporate direction. NPR was taking underwriting money from Archer-Daniels-Midland even while reporting on the allegations of collusion between ADM execs and other companies to fix the price of animal feed additives. They take money from WalMart and cut them no slack in reporting their labor abuses. Local network affiliates will run puff pieces on news programs with celebs appearing in a new show on the network. When NPR news does a piece on an actor or musician it isn’t because they are trying to generate “synergy” between commercial divisions.
I think that they are trying to influence the debate by bringing out a point of view that is pretty much ignored by mainstream media. Humanizing the Mexicans who take great risk to work in this country helps us fill out the whole debate. It isn’t just about jobs or borders or legalisms but people as well. A public debate is most likely to come to a satisfactory solution if all relevant factors are considered. (Okay, that is an assertion that I am not prepared to prove by examples and closely reasoned argument but it sounds good.)
Roger