Why am I listening to The Beat you ask? Because my car companion for the last 8 years has frustrated me one last time.
I’ve given up the ghost on NPR and even the more liberal and frankly on target, Pacifica.
Oh, I long ago got tired of the ceaseless reporting on the Middle East Crisis (although I don’t know of sixty years of fighting is the definition of ‘crisis.’
I got tired of the endless propping up of Democrats, the so-called champions of the progressive agenda.
It wasn’t even NPR getting in bed with the Bush administration and reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as if they were legitimate.
The last straw came a couple of months ago when listening to a local show about public schools in Pasadena. The superintendent was on the air trying to convince parents that Pasadena (which coincidentally has an increasing black and Latino school population) Public Schools were not as bad as reputed — and it wasn’t necessary for parents to mortgage their families’ future to move to LaCanada-Flintridge for their children to have ’safe’ and ‘good’ public schools.
The guests were discussing public versus private, and one school district versus the next when the host stated that it must be easier to handle kids in the private schools because those kids have a ‘narrower’ band of intelligence. Narrower band? When did family’s net worth become equated with their children’s intelligence? The implication, as bold as it could be, was that it was easier to teach children in private schools because they needed less remedial help, special education, or special classes. I’m not even going to touch this debate except to say that it was the last straw in my embattled relationship with NPR.
A recent Alternet.org article summed it up best — journalists, reporters, the ‘media’ has become increasingly out of touch with those people they purport to report on, and the same is true with NPR. I used to voraciously watch PBS and listen to NPR looking for an outsider perspective on current issues. Instead these days, I get Nina Totenburg, Linda Wertheimer, and Cokie Roberts who are the very definition of insider.
So for now, pass the Courvoisier.
