Checking Out of NPR

This morning President Obama asked the country a provocative question: What might you be doing to reinforce the circus the 2016 presidential campaign has become?

As I haven’t had a TV since the mid-80s and now only have Netflix, I had to look to the radio, on which I listen to NPR news, but with which my dissatisfaction has been growing. Initially, NPR was much like BBC: funded almost totally by government and its editors independent of legislators—the way it must be.

The Republicans, I believe, kyboshed that by reducing taxpayer funding, so public radio is forced to hustle money, and as a result has begun pandering to listeners and funders, so we hear far more denatured news, sports and music features.

But it’s the coverage that is truly lacking. NPR and other U.S. organizations gave us “experts” who opined that Donald Trump was a temporary phenomenon, and who, as he won primary after primary, had to admit they were wrong. Trump is not gone; he’s going strong.

These “experts” can’t even help us connect the dots, either. This afternoon, NPR will air report on a drug epidemic in Indiana.  What is the correlation between this and the demise of the middle class, the personal misery it entails, that probably propelled the rise of Donald Trump? Don’t hold your breath to hear.

Most NPR stories are sympathetic to immigration, both in Europe and here. This is where coverage ends.  I want to know the effect of immigration on the whole society. To what extent has it been responsible for demise of American unions? The depressed minimum wage?

There are an abundance of climate change features on NPR, always describing the sea level rise, the effect on a particular animal or area, but never really zeroing in on what we know the is source of it: people.

News organizations seem to have forgotten how to approach a story. Rather than plumb the most neurotic, obsessive or sensational, such as NPR did this morning on the question of obesity, they need to tell us how it affects us all—the whole rest of the society. With more people are insured under Obamacare all of must pay because of the correlation between overweight and medical conditions.

Though I have supported NPR for over 30 years, but lending a critical ear to their coverage, has forced me to refuse to do any longer. Eric Sevareid, where are you when we need you more than ever before?

Eulogizing Mr & Mrs Trickle-Down

Though it would have been the perfect moment to connect the political changes of the last 30 years—notably the progressive dissolution of the American middle class that has resulted in current ugly election campaign—no pundit did so. Rather, it was a round of eulogizing Nancy Reagan when she passed this week: Her contributions to stem cell and Alzheimer’s research were lauded; more embarrassingly, her slavish devotion to Ronald, whose policies precipitated this disaster. Now, incidentally, tearing the Republican Party apart.  

When he died in 2004, Reagan himself, the author of this horror, who espoused free trade, which became NAFTA, supported even by Democratic President Bill Clinton, was praised to the high heavens. We see now what free trade has wrought— the 1% obscenely wealthy, everybody else on the skids, the American Dream undermined, and Americans on the warpath. It hasn’t even helped poor Mexicans that much.

            Not that Mr. Reagan was content to stop there: he opposed universal health care and kept ordinary citizens of the still wealthiest country in the world from having what all other first world and many 3^rd World ones have. He reduced taxes, cut back social services, built up the military, and conned most everybody with his trickle-down and rising boats theories.

            Americans voted for this handsome con man, and despite the damage he did, Ronald Reagan remains one of our most popular presidents. Until we honestly assess this couple and the damage they did to America—which we apparently won’t do it means acknowledging our role in the con, we are not going to come to terms with it.

            No matter how ugly the debates get.