Why I’ve Given Up Listening to NPR

by Richard Kostelanetz

So hysterically anti-Trump has not only the NPR network but my local station become that, after a few minutes, I turn away. Whatever “news” can be interpreted to indicate Trump’s incompetence or failure is featured, no matter how dubious the “explanation.” I’m waiting for some solemn report about how laboratory mice aren’t mating as often as before to be portrayed as another illustration of Trump’s baleful influence. When on WNYC Leonard Lopate interviewed a young Syrian woman about how Trump has made the condition of refugees worse, she spontaneously replied, insufficiently prepped it seems, that Obama was worse, leaving Lopate speechless. I heard some wag suggest that if Trump announced a cure for cancer, NPR would report on the expected unemployment of oncologists. Etc., etc. By contrast, whenever an NPR announcer reports that the stock market has gone up again, as it has, nothing more is said, even though over 100 million Americans own stock.

How much longer will NPR insult listeners who are smart enough to see through its fabrications and agendas? How would anyone knowledgeable judge media gleefully exposing purportedly minor gaffs of Trump while ignoring, by contrast, the massive scandal of, say, the Clinton Foundation(s), which were widely aired on passionate websites?

Consider as well some alternative truths: 1) In the last respect, an American press increasingly disrespecting its mission to tell the unbiased truth helped get Trump elected. Smugness backfired. 2.) Hillary made the mistake last autumn of believing the fake news, truly fake, that victory would come easily to her and so did not campaign concertedly enough. 3.) Rather than accept responsibility for the results of their fake news, some American media are continually trying to reverse reality with gossip about “impeachment,” which won’t happen.

4.) A soft press, by contrast, can make a president go soft, as happened with Obama, while a more critical press encourages combative courage, which Trump certainly has. 5.) Too many in American media are too intellectually limited, if not smug, to consider secondary effects. 6.) Just as Obama’s fakery helped Bibi win the last Israeli election, so the pro-Hillary American media helped Hillary lose. Will they ever learn this last truth?

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One Response

  1. They play to their base contributors, another reason the US Govt should not be involved in financing that travesty. Let the DNC pick up whatever costs the elite doesn’t cover.

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