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?