National Public Radio: Survival and Controversy

I want this to be an essay about a valuable American media institution, more than anything else. Because that institution happens to be National Public Radio, I will have to get into some areas of controversy because of the recent events surrounding it.

First of all, what is National Public Radio (known informally as NPR)? It is a non-profit broadcast service that provides content for a number of non-commercial radio stations across the nation. In the Washington, DC, area, where I live, that includes the stations WAMU (88.5 on the dial) and WETA (90.9). It is and always has been partially funded by the United States government.

A lot of what NPR supplies to these stations is in the form of news and news-related broadcasting, although they provide a substantial amount of syndicated entertainment as well. You might get such shows on your local commercial-free station as A Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and the wonderful, useful Car Talk, whose show features, not only Tom and Ray Magliozzi at the mike, but customer relations guru Heywood Djabuzzoff, make-up artist Bud Tuggley and is sponsored by the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.

An institution such as NPR has always had a useful place in the community, but, in this modern day where the ill-advised comeback of unfettered laissez-faire economics has resulted in media outlets being controlled by fewer and fewer people (Anybody ever hear of a guy named Rupert Murdoch?), its place has become essential.

Is NPR entirely free of bias? Probably not, but at least it operates under the mandate of striving for that objective. People have accused it of, not only the expected liberal bias, but conservative bias as well. NPR has also been accused of "elitism," but, come on, does everything we take in have to be reduced to the level of a TV "reality" show? How about we let the people who care about The Bachelorette watch The Bachelorette, and those of us who might like something a little more subtle, listen to those NPR shows like the ones I just mentioned, without being accused of flagrant snobbery. There's room in the media circus tent for everybody.

Then again, maybe those who accuse the media-NPR at the forefront-of "liberal" bias against them have, by their very actions, invited the lion's share of negative news coverage. Do ya think? I do not recall NPR's news team soft-peddling the bribery scandal of Louisiana's Congressman William J. Jefferson, for example, when a Democrat has strayed from the path of righteousness.

If you are not entirely enamored of NPR's news coverage, though, I would still strongly recommend that you avail yourself of the many entertainment packages the network offers us and that you do at least a little bit to support the institution.

What's this, is your narrator going to hit you up for money? No, you need not contribute to your local non-commercial radio outlet if you do not want to. On the other hand, if you think something like NPR is a good thing to have around (and, really, it is), then you can make a far less financially drastic contribution. Here is where the controversy part comes in. Please make note of it.

This past October 20^th, one of NPR's reporters, Juan Williams, made an informal comment about his personal feelings regarding Muslims in a potentially-alarming setting. It was very much like the surprising comment Jesse Jackson made a few years ago that, if he heard a noise behind him on a dark street, he was always relieved to turn and find out it was caused by a white person. There was a huge difference between the two similar comments. It had nothing to do with the words, but everything to do with the person who spoke them. Both Williams and Jackson are black, but, while Jackson was a politician and community leader, Williams was supposed to be a journalist.

As a result of Juan Williams comments about Muslims, NPR fired him on the grounds that he had failed to meet the standard of objectivity the network required of their journalists, never mind that Williams was not speaking on behalf of NPR at the time, but, rather, in an interview with Bill O'Reilly.

There are no easy answers and no good guys in this mess. Everybody came out looking bad, to my way of thinking. In all fairness, we should take a moment to consider Juan Williams' side of the issue.

While Williams had some excellent points to make in that follow-up interview, he was being a bit disingenuous at the beginning. Far from being the heart and sole of objectivity, he had been warned by NPR a number of times for straying too close to the area of bias; for example, referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as Stokley Carmichael in a designer dress. Ex-bleeping-cuse me?

To be sure, if Williams were working for a commercial news network (as he presently does for Fox), then he might have been given a little more wiggle room. Both Keith Obermann, on the left, and Rush Limbaugh, on the right, got off with brief suspensions for their respective instances of misconduct. Even given NPR's more severe mandate for objectivity, as well as the commentator's apparent past transgressions, I think that termination was a little too harsh of a measure. I would have had far less problem with a mandated unpaid vacation.

Unfortunately, Juan Williams' termination provided a number of right-wing characters just the very excuse they needed to start clamoring for the government to cut off NPR's funding. To do so may or may not have the effect of killing the network, but it certainly would make NPR's further survival very problematic.

From the outside (where she good and damn well belongs, let us never forget), Sarah Palin has forcefully joined this anti-NPR campaign, while, from the inside, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint announced plans to introduce specific legislation to cut off the network's government funding.

This is more insidious that it may look at first glance. While Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, it is not a veto-proof one and, of course, they are still in the minority in the Senate. If the House Republicans wanted to do something major, like eliminate the Health Care legislation, Obama could and would squash their effort like a bug, much as Bush did (and was entitled to do by law) with most of the Democrats' initiatives between 2007 and 2009. On the other hand, if the NPR-haters wanted to slip the demise of funding in with a very important appropriations bill, the White House would be in a bind to protect it.

Josh Silver, writing in The Huffington Post, said of this matter: "Using it [Juan Williams' dismissal] to take away public funding is like asking for the death penalty in small claims court."

So now we come to your non-monetary contribution . If you have not done so already, give a listen to A Prairie Home Companion or Car Talk or any of the many fine shows NPR provides us with. I hope you will find, as I do, they are quality material, individually and collectively. They are also part of the bathwater the right-wingers are so eager to throw out with the baby. In my area, the end of NPR would also mean the end of some excellent music I would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, such as jazz and a wide range of classical music.

Once you have given NPR your earnest consideration, then I would ask you to get in touch with your representatives-the postage on email hasn't gone up for years-and let them know you want to keep that voice alive on the radio.

And, even if you are not overly impressed, try to keep in mind, we are all better off with more, not fewer, different voices within our media.

Sources

npr.com

TheHuffingtonPost.com

Wikipedia

YouTube