It all started with “The Takeaway.”. Do you remember that? It was like McNews and was supposed to appeal to the Yoof. Ghastly. I stopped listening when it was on. My husband uses it to wake up to, (really more as noise than anything else) and when he’s traveling it comes on. After a few minutes I am forced to skootch over to switch it off before apoplexy sets in. They used to be sad middle aged journos trying to stay relevant. Now they are just tossers.
I vaguely remember that show. But oh how I loved Brian Lehrer! Terri Gross! Prairie Home Companion! I went to see the live show at Christmas a bunch of times...I'm sad just thinking about it.
Today's once respectable but now dishonest propaganda media would do well to remember the biblical admonition, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..." (Isaiah 5:20). But, of course, they are too "sophisticated" in their world of manipulative lies to pay attention to biblical truth.
UK Column News in the UK have done a lot of work looking into the infantilisation of the BBC. A lot of BBC journalists write opinion pieces nowadays rather than news pieces. It's not even journalism. I can't watch it or listen to it anymore. Radio 5 Live used to be excellent, then they chased the 'yoof' audience, dumbed down and lost their dedicated audience for a 'new young audience' that wasn't interested. Very sad.
Excellent article. I'm glad I'm not alone in this, and thanks for the Peter Boghossian link; it's on my list. Although I always recognized the left-leaning bias, I used to love NPR for its longform reporting and the civil discourse, which was a refreshing alternative to talk radio and cable shouting matches (being from slow-and-boring-news Sweden probably makes me biased towards this). I still listen regularly to some of the NPR related but, I think, independently produced podcasts such as Freakonomics, Hidden Brain, and How I Built This, but with less frequency to others. I've always been an advocate for separating state and media, meaning that NPR and its affiliates across the country should not receive any federal, state or local government subsidies, nor should they be under governmental regulatory influence (supposedly, only 4% of its funding was public back in 2017: https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009). 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have said that NPR should have the confidence to go independent, because there is a huge market for its form of delivering news and other content. With the current direction, I'm not so sure, although many corporations and NGOs seem all to willing to fund the race to the bottom. By the way, this article from 2014 does a good job of showing why a Platonic objectivity ideal in journalism is unattainable, meaning that we all have to be vigilant in our news consumption, NPR or otherwise: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2014/07/08/nprs-seven-secrets-of-feigning-objectivity/?sh=f330515eefd9
So many newspaper editors get the story ideas they pass on to their reporters from NPR, or they used to when I worked as a journalist. It's part of the reason why much of the traditional media seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
I donated to NPR repeatedly in the early eighties. I stopped listening to them except by accident in the nineties. Same trajectory as Saturday Night Live.
I used to listen to NPR a lot in the late 80s and through the 90s but stopped in the 2000s. My favorite was Keillor, also those Car Guys, and just random interviews they did. Bob Edwards had a soothing barbershop quartet bass voice to ground the daily news. Post-911, as I became preoccupied with the problem of Islam (and the problem OF the problem--namely the problem of Western political correctness whitewashing the primary problem), I maintained a blog about it for about 11 years, from 2007-2018. One feature was a spoof of Keillor's monologue, what I called my "Lake Mo-Begone" series. The posting that kicked it off (written in 2011) begins:
"Brought to you by Powdermilk Falafel -- made from couscous raised in the rich swamplands of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley by Kurdish bachelor farmers; so you know they're not only good for you, but halal... mostly. Couscous that gives shy mujahideen the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. Mashallah they're tasty, and expeditious!"
It all started with “The Takeaway.”. Do you remember that? It was like McNews and was supposed to appeal to the Yoof. Ghastly. I stopped listening when it was on. My husband uses it to wake up to, (really more as noise than anything else) and when he’s traveling it comes on. After a few minutes I am forced to skootch over to switch it off before apoplexy sets in. They used to be sad middle aged journos trying to stay relevant. Now they are just tossers.
I vaguely remember that show. But oh how I loved Brian Lehrer! Terri Gross! Prairie Home Companion! I went to see the live show at Christmas a bunch of times...I'm sad just thinking about it.
Yeah… it is depressing for sure
Today's once respectable but now dishonest propaganda media would do well to remember the biblical admonition, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..." (Isaiah 5:20). But, of course, they are too "sophisticated" in their world of manipulative lies to pay attention to biblical truth.
UK Column News in the UK have done a lot of work looking into the infantilisation of the BBC. A lot of BBC journalists write opinion pieces nowadays rather than news pieces. It's not even journalism. I can't watch it or listen to it anymore. Radio 5 Live used to be excellent, then they chased the 'yoof' audience, dumbed down and lost their dedicated audience for a 'new young audience' that wasn't interested. Very sad.
Excellent article. I'm glad I'm not alone in this, and thanks for the Peter Boghossian link; it's on my list. Although I always recognized the left-leaning bias, I used to love NPR for its longform reporting and the civil discourse, which was a refreshing alternative to talk radio and cable shouting matches (being from slow-and-boring-news Sweden probably makes me biased towards this). I still listen regularly to some of the NPR related but, I think, independently produced podcasts such as Freakonomics, Hidden Brain, and How I Built This, but with less frequency to others. I've always been an advocate for separating state and media, meaning that NPR and its affiliates across the country should not receive any federal, state or local government subsidies, nor should they be under governmental regulatory influence (supposedly, only 4% of its funding was public back in 2017: https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009). 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have said that NPR should have the confidence to go independent, because there is a huge market for its form of delivering news and other content. With the current direction, I'm not so sure, although many corporations and NGOs seem all to willing to fund the race to the bottom. By the way, this article from 2014 does a good job of showing why a Platonic objectivity ideal in journalism is unattainable, meaning that we all have to be vigilant in our news consumption, NPR or otherwise: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2014/07/08/nprs-seven-secrets-of-feigning-objectivity/?sh=f330515eefd9
Im canadian. Sub in CBC for NPR and this exactly. A former cbc radio addict, i wont go near it now. Tv or radio. Done. Same timeline as yours.
NPR has been a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party for a long, long time.
So many newspaper editors get the story ideas they pass on to their reporters from NPR, or they used to when I worked as a journalist. It's part of the reason why much of the traditional media seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
I donated to NPR repeatedly in the early eighties. I stopped listening to them except by accident in the nineties. Same trajectory as Saturday Night Live.
Something in this essay reminds me of that parody BBC interview of terrorists objecting to subtitles...here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AgmUTTZ27k
I hadn't seen that before, thanks for sharing!
I used to listen to NPR a lot in the late 80s and through the 90s but stopped in the 2000s. My favorite was Keillor, also those Car Guys, and just random interviews they did. Bob Edwards had a soothing barbershop quartet bass voice to ground the daily news. Post-911, as I became preoccupied with the problem of Islam (and the problem OF the problem--namely the problem of Western political correctness whitewashing the primary problem), I maintained a blog about it for about 11 years, from 2007-2018. One feature was a spoof of Keillor's monologue, what I called my "Lake Mo-Begone" series. The posting that kicked it off (written in 2011) begins:
"Brought to you by Powdermilk Falafel -- made from couscous raised in the rich swamplands of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley by Kurdish bachelor farmers; so you know they're not only good for you, but halal... mostly. Couscous that gives shy mujahideen the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. Mashallah they're tasty, and expeditious!"
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2011/12/news-from-lake-mo-begone.html