I don't know about everybody else, but with the exception of this idiotic war, loss of choice, loss of the fourth amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, the gutting of our environmental laws, the firing of federal prosecutors who weren't loyal to Caligula, the outing of CIA agents purely for revenge, the villification of dissenters and of the destruction of the middle class nothing has distressed me more about this administration than the destruction of the wall separating NPR from right wing influence. The most aggredious example is the sacking of Bob Edwards last year and then replacing him with Steve Inskeep.
Inskeep is the most slanted, smug and reactionary "straight" news personality on the radio. He is truly dismissive and downright disdainful of anything that isn't the administration line. He is the admiral directing the rightward drift of NPR.
Tony Hedra had a great piece in the Huffington Post yesterday. He sees Inkeep as a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Inskreep (sorry can't resist), he who hath never met a progressive he didn't feel compelled to patronize or contradict, replaced the much lamented Bob Edwards a year and a half ago as Morning Edition's co-host, where his smug, condescending drone has become a daily reminder of the Republican drive to garrote the last independent voice in national news.
(Should you need an example of Steve's sympathies check out his deferential serve-up-the-softballs interview last month of war criminal Douglas Feith. Which teaches us, class, that there are other kinds of on-air obscenity than calling college athletes offensive names.
But it's not really Inskreep I'm gunning for; rather an insidious phenomenon that's been occurring on his watch. As soon as the Dems took control in January, Morning Edition began to include an almost daily diet of 'behind-the-scenes' Iraq-related news stories (Feith-based perhaps?) so pro-war they made you wonder if there wasn't a Pentagon PR flack embedded with this particular NPR unit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This morning I heard Inskeep ask sarcastic question after sarcastic question to Greg Easterbrook, who had written an article questioning this administrations plan to put a base on the Moon while cancelling programs to launch satellites to study global soil moisture change as a result of global warming. Inskeep whole interview was used to undermine and belittle Easterbrook's thesis that NASA is being used for solely political purposes and has gotten away from it's mission.
http://www.npr.org/...
Listen for yourself if you didn't hear it.
My hope is that all of us are tired of griping about NPR. There is no reason we in this community can't make a difference. We most likely make up a significant portion of NPR's audience. I believe with a concerted effort we can make some significant changes. First of all to get rid of the dreadful CPB C.E.O. Cheryl Halpern and then demand a return to unbiased decent news reporting.
Can we use this diary as a starting point for taking action to take back our network? If you agree with me let's start some framework for a change.