Why I Don't Listen or Give Money to NPR

Back when I was in high school and even in college, I could listen to NPR without screaming at the radio about their right wing bias and pandering. Today? Not so much. It seems every time I turn it on I have to hear Cokie Roberts talk about how tough things are for the Democrats right now, and "even with all his troubles, President Obama still has an approval rating over 50%." She actually said that. I remember the phrase because it made my blood pressure go up and I instantly changed the station.

Their ombudsman consistently argues in favor of the right wing - literally repeating Republican talking points and pointing out that conservative commenters are correct in pointing to a "liberal bias" in the station's reporting. The entire station seems obsessed with the Catholic church. I feel like every time the Pope sneezes, I have to hear about it. And in the last few years they've taken on this incredibly FOX News "we report, you decide" way of reporting the news - often interviewing only a conservative Republican and leaving the Democratic point of view summed up by the host of the program in the most poorly stated way that the Republican easily "wins" the argument.

Every time they mention "Entitlements" they talk about how Congressman Paul Ryan, who wants to eliminate all entitlements, is "the only grown-up" who is willing to even discuss how unfunded these programs are - despite the fact that Social Security is clearly solvent for the next 26 years and could easily be solvent for another 100 years if one simple tax change was made. Of course, during the health care debate they couldn't help but repeat the GOP talking point that the Democrats were working to "cut Medicare." Of course, the benefits for Seniors actually increased as a result of the Affordable Care Act and all of the "cuts" came in cost savings due to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, and in restructuring how hospitals and doctors work together in order to provide better care at a lower cost. Now that Paul Ryan wants to actually eliminate Medicare entirely, no one on NPR has said a peep about Republicans attempting to cut the program.

This is the final straw for me though - and I don't care that it's a local station. This is representative of NPR's problem nationwide. It's this mentality that makes the station bow to right wing demands in everything from the angle of the story to the sentence structure of the report.

Program Director Craig Curtis explained in a Friday memo to staff members, “given that the budget debate in congress is focusing today on abortion in general and Planned Parenthood by extension,” running the spots “might raise questions in the mind of the “reasonable listener” regarding our editorial and sales practices.”
A “reasonable listener” might now have questions about the journalistic integrity of the station.
The memo was published in LAObserved.com, a media-watch website edited by Kevin Roderick.
“There is nothing wrong with the spots per se,” Curtis said in his memo. It’s just that the station doesn’t want to make Republicans unhappy.

The "reasonable listener"? That's not your Republican audience, Mr. Curtis, and if you don't know that by now, then as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if you lose your federal funding and go out of business entirely. We have entirely too many radio stations that are already dedicated to pleasing Republicans and no one else, I don't need my tax dollars to pay for another one.

Also, why hold off on your Planned Parenthood spots when they are paying to underwrite your programming? Did you also suspend your Ally Bank spots when the mortgage crisis was ongoing? No, you didn't. How about Apple? How much is Apple paying you guys to mention ipods and ipads in practically every story you report on in a given day? I gave it a shot and listened one day a few weeks ago on my way to and from work, lunch, and then home. I heard 4 tech-related stories and every one of them mentioned an Apple product despite the fact that the stories were not specifically about Apple. Are those underwriting contracts more valued than the Planned Parenthood contract?

If this was solely a local decision, Mr. Curtis deserves a suspension of his own. If this was a national NPR decision, then it's just another example of NPR scrambling to please the right and leaving their journalistic integrity somewhere back in the mid 1990s. Local decision or not, Mr. Curtis's reasoning for suspending the spots comes from the top - it's just another example of NPR bowing to Republicans in order to what? Save themselves? Any idiot who pays attention to how Republicans work can tell you that you could put Sean Hannity in the place of Steve Inskeep and it wouldn't make you Republican enough for them to want to save your funding.

Want to know how you can save yourselves? Report the news - the actual news. Tell us what's going on in Iraq - and don't sugar coat it. Tell us what's happening in Afghanistan, Libya, Japan, Portugal, etc. - and stick to the facts. When Paul Ryan introduces legislation that will eliminate Medicare, report that. Don't tell me that Paul Ryan is "an adult" for putting forward an insane budget plan that will take health care access away from more than 55 million Americans. And when the GOP plans on shutting down the government because they want to take away health care access from millions of American women by eliminating Title X funding, don't pander to the GOP by suspending your Planned Parenthood ad spots. And definitely don't tell your listeners that it's because Republicans want to cut federal funds to abortion - because that's not a FACT, that's a lie straight from every Republican mouth - and anyone with journalistic integrity who did their homework would know that because the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funds for abortion.

NPR spends weeks every year begging their listeners for money. "Please fund our station! You won't get this news anywhere else! You won't hear these stories anywhere else!" Well, that's bullshit, NPR. There's this thing call the internet. It's where I get my news - and I find plenty of stories here -and if I want to hear them being reported, there's this thing called podcasting. There are plenty of journalists out there doing their jobs with integrity - and they aren't afraid of Republicans. They don't change the way they report a story because the GOP makes demands that they should.