NPR Radio Tells It Like It Is

I’ve been listening to NPR Radio again recently because it’s highly reliable as a new source (click on link for documentation) and because it also covers local area news at regular intervals.

 

Excerpt from the link above:

“A factual search reveals that NPR has not failed a fact check [emphasis mine].

“Overall, we rate NPR (National Public Radio) Left-Center Biased based on story selection that leans slightly left and Very High for factual reporting due to thorough sourcing and very accurate news reporting. (5/18/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 9/4/2018)”

 

Yes, indeed — facts do have a left/liberal bias

 

And it’s far from easy when top-ranking public officials lie as often (or more often) than they tell the truth: https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2017/02/10/514325168/npr-increasingly-challenged-by-misinformation.  (The first link , in parentheses, is Donald Trump’s PolitiFact score)

 

I can’t claim NPR Radio is non-stop enjoyable or uplifting. Pressing issues all over the globe frequently appear front and center during the news and in other segments, leaving listeners feeling that we’re all on the edge of a dangerous, deep, deadly precipice that too few people seem to recognize.

 

There are very few shiny objects to help listeners pretend we aren’t in a very dark place environmentally, economically and politically. No one is pointing and yelling, “Squirrel!” to shift our attention away from to essential facts and issues, something I find commendable and refreshing.

 

Oh, there are plenty of intervals that offer a smile or a grin, for sure. NPR Radio covers arts and culture–movies, books, personalities of note, etc. (they even covered me once, from the Las Vegas Star Trek convention)–but the focus is on people who are taking stands, taking steps, or pushing for the populace to wake up and do what needs to be  done to turn the ship of state around in time to prevent worldwide catastrophes from escalating and ruining us all.

 

Naturally, the powers that be on the far right would like to see NPR Radio (and PBS, too) silenced because it covers their policies, too, fairly and honestly (without editorializing), exposing the skeletons in  the closet, the tawdry tactics, and the policies that are inimical to our country’s stated value of “liberty and justice for ALL”, something we have failed miserably to accomplish, despite more than 200 years of efforts to “create  a more perfect Union”.

 

I can’t say I come away from NPR radio feeling unbridled joy and optimism, but I do know that if (and only if!) people would tune in and take it all to heart, there would be increased reason for optimism because we’d come together as citizens (the vast majority of us) to head off the catastrophes we’re headed for as long as we remain divided into camps of “the informed” and “the misinformed/dis-informed”.

 

Willfully ignorant citizens are impossible to change.(The link will take you to humorous take on them.) But I think most people really do want the facts so we can reach conclusions that are based on facts instead of phobias and  political posturing and pandering…

 

Don’t you?