See Ya NPR. Bye.

I admit that I'll probably still listen when I'm getting ready for work.  I've listened for so long that it's kind of like brushing my teeth as part of my morning routine. But they'll get no more bucks from me until they start reporting real news.

 In keeping with "the media can only focus on one story at a time" meme, this morning's Weekend Edition was all Rita all the time, including a first person report from a woman who left her hurricane threatened Texas home along with her two elderly cats in tow, and scurried along to Mother's, where there was no rain and no hurricane; just a pleasant gust of wind once in a while.

So, what we're seeing here is that this Texan's two elderly cats, who were never in harms way, deserved more coverage than a hundreds of thousands of marchers rallying in Washington, DC.

The story of the march came in the second hour of the show, directly before the "Puzzle Master, Will Shorts."  The story was brief, shallow, and made sure to cover the counter-ranting of the spindly group of counter-protesters while ignoring the meat of the anti-war protest.  To be fair, they included a blip of Cindy Sheehan's speech.  NPR gave more time to this tepid exhange between one counter-protester and an anti-war protester:

CP:  "I was a Marine for ten years!  I was a Marine for Ten Years!"

AWP:  "Then Leave!"

Yes, well that was enlightening, wasn't it?

Oh, and the cats are fine.

•  Oops, That Didn't Make Sense.

  I need to edit my own post.  The above mentioned exchanged misses an important statement.

  CP:  "I was a Marine for ten years!  I was a Marine for ten years.  I don't have time for people like you!"

  AWP:  "Then leave!"

  There, that's better isn't it?

  by donna in evanston on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:33:17 AM PDT

•  The Weekend Editions are really lame.

  The onerous mouthbreather Scott Simon is not completely without smarts, but he never learned that on radio, huge faux-spontaneous guffaws don't work.  And his "essays" are even more cloying than the usual NPR standard.

  As to Sunday, one day I simply heard the phrase "play puzzle" once too often.  I like the game itself, and I like Will Shortz, but host Liane Hansen's personality deficit drove me away.

  To say nothing of the news judgment exhibited.

  The new regime replaced Morning Edition's stellar Bob Edwards with competent but colorless news readers.  Why won't it consider replacing the arguably more colorful but less competent Weekenders?  I still tune in occasionally for the rare treat of a substitute host, but otherwise, thank god Portland has KPOJ {AirAmerica}.

  by Vico on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:34:31 AM PDT

  •  Agreed, Leanne Hansen is teh sukc

    I can't take much of her.

    by jeremiah bullfrog on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 10:54:51 AM PDT

    •  Could never stand Leanne Hansen ...

      ... the Sunday program has been feelgood "nooz lite" for sooooooooooo gawdawful many years.

      by by foot on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 11:34:29 AM PDT

•  And MY correction

  That should be "odious mouthbreather Scott Simon."

  by Vico on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:36:27 AM PDT

•  Yesterday, NPR covered Rita

  wall to wall with almost no coverage of the march.  

  by doodlebug on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:36:36 AM PDT

•  NPR was spinning for Bush

  so fast this morning, and shilling so loudly, that it hurt my ears.  To listen to their "news" you'd think that the Texans had managed a perfect evacuation with no muss, conveniently forgetting to mention that they were just damn lucky the hurricane hadn't made a direct hit on Galveston/Houston, where MILLIONS of people had NOT evacuated.

  Oh, well, it's not a surprise--NPR knows that if it doesn't toe the Republican Party line, they get their last federal funding taken away.

  by corvo on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:38:35 AM PDT

•  Don't forget

  To send this to them! Make sure they hear it, not just the blog readers, make sure they know they lost you!  

  The conservatives hammer them all the time, the more annoyed individual letters they get from our side, the better.

  by sarac on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:39:28 AM PDT

  •  Done

    I sent them my e-mail and am anziously awaiting my auto-generated response.

    by donna in evanston on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:08:29 AM PDT

•  Still hold the opinion that public radio

  should be paid for by the public.  The bi-annual fund drives are disgusting and since my taxes are no less since the service is no longer publicly funded, giving in to their pleas strikes me as giving in to black-mail.

  That said, at some point we should come to recognize that capitalism has nothing to do with merchandizing.  Indeed, merchandizing (persuading people to buy things they'll not want or need once they get them) undermines the very basic premise of the market system--that resources will be automatically allocated on the basis of experience.  When that experience is negated by fraud (people aren't buying Fords because they aren't perceived as sexy rather than because their neighbors have discovered that they have a tendency to explode) then the market is almost certain to self-destruct--eventually.

  by hannah on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 08:41:51 AM PDT

  •  I wouldn't have a problem with sponsorship

    if it were done right. By that I mean, there would have to be a Chinese wall between the donors and the programmers, so that the donors would have no say in program content, and certainly not in news. Otherwise you have the absurd situation that exists now where programmers can't afford to alienate major donors, so you're a lot less likely to hear stories critical of major donors like Microsoft and Wal-Mart.

    by Omir the Storyteller on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:05:27 AM PDT

  •  Constitution is Broken

    The Constitutional approach to information is nearly useless in our era and the document has no conception whatever of mass media.

    It needs updating at least at the ammendment level in some fashion to establish some minimum degree of democracy in some minimum fraction of virtual spaces. From here onwards advanced society is and information system, and if information can't be democratic, society itself can't be democratic.

    This is way more fundamental problem than transient laws or departments or one or two public outlets can address.

    by Gooserock on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:19:20 AM PDT

•  There's NPR, and then there's NPR

  I like some of the non-news programming NPR does, such as Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!, Car Talk and Fresh Air, but lately I've been skipping the news. Much like most of the other broadcast news out there, I can get more and better news by going online than I can by staying glued to my radio. Which is a shame, because of all the broadcast media NPR has the potential to be more in-depth and impartial than any of the other networks. Or at least they did before everything got touched by the Ruling Class.

  by Omir the Storyteller on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:02:16 AM PDT

  •  "Public"

    It's UCWSR -- Upper Class White Suburban Radio (and TV).

    Virtually the entirety of diversity of the American public is neither represented nor served, and never has been. I'm sorry that it's shifted from serving rich liberals to rich conservatives, but really, big deal.

    by Gooserock on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:22:47 AM PDT

•  Too True

  I first realized that NPR was just another new-reading noise during the Dean presidential campaign, when they jumped on the "Dean Scream" bandwagon.  Having been in the Vai Aire Ballroom myself, I knew that the myth they were propogating was not really what happened.

  But habits are hard to break, so I went back to listening. And once in a while they get things right.  But not often enough.  And not this time.

  by donna in evanston on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:07:31 AM PDT

•  N P R And how to fix it

  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/14/105852/005

  by Eddie Haskell on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:36:55 AM PDT

•  Their pre-march

  coverage gave equal weight to the tiny handful of pro-war counter-demonstraters.

  NPR might as well be Fox news, at this point.

  I guess they're just the "liberal" media 'cuz the dittoheads say so.

  by drewfromct on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 09:53:04 AM PDT

•  NBC Nightly News did the same thing...

  last night. They had an hour long "special program" instead of the usual 1/2 hour of news. It was all hurricane, all the time. Fifteen minutes into the second half hour they did 10-15 seconds on the protest. Preceeding that they spent at least 5 minutes on the burnt-up senior bus, which that had already covered in great detail the evening before. It was discouraging. I would have watched ABC or CBS, but football was on.

  Like PBS, it's pathetic to see MSM continuing to provide cover for that sorry-ass president.

  by Ocean on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 10:48:05 AM PDT

•  If you can, turn right 'round and invest ...

  ... in other media if you leave NPR behind.  I don't know if there's a community radio station where you live, but that'd be one possibility. Ours runs BBC and Pacifica, after the membership overwhelmingly indicated a preference to ditch NPR some years ago.

  Or, if there's no good radio left (or, shall I say, left radio?), perhaps there are other outlets/entities that would be worth pitching a few bucks to ... mediamatters.org, fair.org, etc.

  by by foot on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 11:39:21 AM PDT

  •  alternates: will need support.

    GNN on IWT: "What the World Needs Now"

    http://www.iwtnews.com/GNN

    What the World Needs Now

    By Anthony Lappé

    Paul Jay wants to start the world's first private
    non-commercial newsnetwork, and he wants your help.

    Equal parts Ted Turner, Marshall McLuhan and Howard Beale, veteran Canadian producer Paul Jay is trying to kick-start a
    commercial free citizens' news network financed entirely by private donations - no corporate or government cash.

    With no popular news outlet (save The Daily Show) for millions of left-leaning (or just disaffected) Americans, it seems like an idea whose time has come.

    Jay was the producer of the CBC's political affairs show counterSpin (sic) for ten years. He's also directed and produced
    long-form documentaries for the last 25, including "Hitman Hart: Wrestling withShadows," a look inside the twisted world of professional wrestling, and most recently, "Return to Kanadhar," a post-Taliban look at Afghanistan currently airing on Sundance Channel. Now he's teaming up with a who's who of the lefty media to launch Independent World Television (GNN hastalked with him about collaborating).

    Jay is looking for $25 million by next year. So far, he's raised a small fraction through the fledgling network's web site. He's
    partnering up with the Link TV, which airs in 25 millions homes (though few currently watch) and says he's talked with several large cable providers about carrying IWT as a pay-for-view channel (we'll see how GOP-friendly corporations like Comcast react when they see Naomi Klein on the air).
    The initial audiences for the network will be in the U.S., Canada and India, which Jay points out has more English speakers than America.
    Eventually, he wants to be on across North America, India, U.K.,
    Australia and Europe.

    GNN's Anthony Lappé recently talked via phone with Jay from his
    temporary base in Los Angeles about the birth of IWT:

    GNN: What's the problem with news?

    Jay: In the movie The Matrix, people thought they were living in this normal, mostly peaceful world. But it was a false vision fed to them by aliens, who were actually sucking the life out of them.

    In our very real world, there's a kind of matrix that's been created by political leaders and most television news. They create a false vision of the world that the mass audience is supposed to believe in. There is no such thing as fact, only opinion. The picture they paint is a world surrounded by forces that want to destroy us because they hate our beliefs, values and way of life. If you step out of the boundaries of 'we're fighting evil' or 'international terrorism' or the latest abstraction called 'violent extremism'; if you attempt to reveal the reasons, the historical context, the specificity of things - in a word, if you embrace the complexity of our world - then you threaten this
    theatrical façade. That's what TV journalists learn.

    It's like the old professional wrestlers' code that protected the business by pretending that it was real. TV journalists must learn the code of the newsroom, they will suppress their better journalistic instincts or they will not last long. Why? Because of corporate ownership, and a political atmosphere in newsrooms after 9/11 that Dan Rather described as intimidating.

    So who's setting the limits of the façade? In the U.S. it's the
    leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties. The print media has a little more latitude. But in big media television news, you don't report outside of what the leadership of the two party's say (there are the odd exceptions like 60 Minutes from time to time). A good example is the last presidential election may have been won as a result of a fraudulent vote.

    Congressmen Conyers, and a group of congressmen, go to Ohio and report on evidence of fraud. On the face of it, it's a
    tremendous news story. Night after night you could ride that. Graphics, drum roll - The Stealing of a Presidency. From a
    journalistic and a commercial perspective it would be a super story. But it's not being covered at all. Why? Because the Democratic party leadership is not making it an issue. If you try to do what journalists should be doing, have your own idea about what the story should be, you're accused of being partisan, of having an agenda, of being left or liberal and so on.
    Well, IWTnews professional and citizen journalists will have their own agenda; it's called seeking the truth, being accountable
    to our viewers and the principles of good journalism. And nothing else.

    We can do this because we are non-profit, have no corporate ownership, no government funding and no commercial advertising. Mass internet fundraising makes it possible.

    GNN: What was the genesis of the channel?

    Jay: My own involvement in Independent World Television grows out of the experience of ten years of producing the main political debate show on CBC in Canada and twenty five years of documentary filmmaking.

    The moreI came to know about the world, the more I understood how superficial and misleading most TV news is. On my TV debate show, counterSpin, we were doing debates you couldn't see anywhere else on TV.
    We would debate the assumptions about 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we were doing debates that were not being seen anywhere on mainstream American TV.

    I realized that the creation of a courageous, independent TV and
    internet network with the funding base to contend for a mass audience was critical if people are going to be informed and
    capable of developing real democracy. Fundamentalisms based on medieval ideas, wielding very modern lethal weapons, are contending for power here in North America and around the world. They all raise the banner of God and patriotism of one kind or the other. I don't think it's too much to suggest we are at a cross roads between a new dark ages or a new renaissance.

    I think the creation of this kind ofindependent TV news
    network can play an important role in deciding the outcome.

    It became clear to me that we needed to break the monopoly on
    information and that the conditions for doing so had emerged. In the last five or six years, first of all, people began to see
    how overtly TV news collaborates with the creation of very dangerous policies, most notably the Iraq war.

    The second thing is the Internet is now part of our culture. It is a mobilizing mechanism. It is a "matrix busting" mechanism. The most brilliant example of that was Feb 15, 2003 when more
    than 20 million people demonstrated on the same day. It might have been the biggest international political event ever organized.

    GNN: But that was just a focus group, as Bush said.

    Jay: That was when the idea came to me. I said, if we can put together what MoveOn and the Howard Dean campaigns have achieved, that is the power of Internet fundraising, together with this rise of global consciousness that's been sparked by radical policies coming from the White House, from London, from Sydney - this is not just an American phenomenon. If you put together this consciousness, with this technology, there's a tremendous economic power that can fund such a TV network.

    This particular venture is being led by people with broadcast experience that have shown they have the ability to engage a mass audience.
    That can't be minimized. It's not enough to be worthy. The
    network must be entertaining and intellectually and spiritually
    nourishing. That takes talent and execution.

    The Daily Show works because they have craft. They are funny. It also works because Jon Stewart says the emperor has no clothes. We want a whole network that says the emperor has no clothes. And you can't do that without economic independence.

    We want to change the economics of journalism. We want the kind of economic independence that will allow uncompromised,
    courageous TV journalism, documentaries, political satire and debate.

    We think the conditions exist for it. Millions and millions of people around the world do not believe the fantasy that's being presented as news. If they participate, IWTnews is possible.

    We have received seed money from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford and the Phoebe Haas Trust. We are expecting significant seed funding from individual major donors. We have a deal with Link TV which is already broadcasting important programming into 25 million U.S. homes. We launched our web site in mid June, and more than one hundred thousand people visited, many contributed money, many signed up.

    This is all leading towards a world wide fundraising campaign in
    around ten months where we will ask people to contribute fifty bucks a year, or a few dollars a month. If we do it right, I don't see why we can't be on air by 2007.

    Then look out matrix.

    by migo on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 01:15:30 PM PDT

•  i started tuning out NPR when i

  started hearing "sponsered by wal-mart" commercials after the segments.

  by MetaProphet on Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 12:39:08 PM PDT