I’ve heard a lot of complaints about NPR, but never that it exacerbated hearing problems. Now we can add that to the list. NPR’s ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos notes that a story on tinnitus (ringing in your ears) which included sounds associated with the malady got a lot of unhappy comments: “I have tinnitus and I […]
NPR is wondering out loud about an interview suggesting that climate change may be depleting the natural food supply for bears at Yellowstone National Park, causing them to attack and kill people. Global warming is reducing the production of fish and pine nuts, thus prompting hungry bears to assault several campers last year. That was […]
NPR has released an exhaustive audit of its Israel/Palestine dispute coverage for the first quarter of this year. Since NPR doesn’t do public audits of its environmental, mobile phone, or country music coverage, I’m guessing that the review reflects the fact that anything you write about the Israel/Palestine subject is grist for the protest mill […]
Over the last three weeks NPR has released some interesting statistical data about itself through its Ombudsman’s office. The data bolsters common knowledge, that NPR’s politics are moderate-to-liberal. Here is a summary of the revelations. Listeners First, the plurality of NPR listeners identify themselves as liberal, but a considerable percentage see themselves as either “conservative” […]
The latest round of the ongoing battle over public broadcasting has concluded, and lo and behold, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting lives. The new budget preserves funding for the CPB at $445 million for 2013, albeit with drastic cuts to smaller public media funds, and the complete elimination of the Department of Commerce’s Public Telecommunications […]
Susie Rotolo, Bob Dylan’s lover in the early sixties, died last month, and NPR recently played an excerpt from a 2008 interview with her. I was very moved by the interview, and felt that it gave me a startling and fresh perspective on an important part of Dylan’s early work—his love (and hate) songs, and […]
The NPR galaxy is in shock following the resignation of its CEO, Vivian Schiller. She received a vote of no-confidence from NPR’s board following the release her development director Ron [no relation] Schiller’s off-the-cuff remarks with a conservative group pretending to be the Muslim Brotherhood. Among Schiller’s comments, that the Tea Party isn’t “just Islamaphobic, […]
It will be “a joint initiative to respond to the current federal funding crisis on behalf of public broadcasting,” explains the press release, announcing the creation of a new organization: the Public Media Association. PMA will be run by National Public Radio and the Association of Public Television Stations. “NPR is proud to join forces […]
There are two controversies raging in radioland right now over the appropriateness of words broadcast across the airwaves. One of them is playing itself out in Canada; the other in the United States. The Canadian debate involves the word “faggot”; the US involves the articulation of the word “gringo.” Following these discussions, I’m wondering if […]
The review of NPR’s firing of Juan Williams is out. The NPR executive who gave Williams the axe over the telephone has resigned. And NPR’s ombudsman Alicia Shepard warns that the brouhaha could prove “costly” for the radio service. “The Williams firing was a very costly management mistake on many levels,” Shepard opines. The commentary […]
