Toxic NPR

I only listen to NPR when I’m driving and I rarely drive these days. Their editorial policies have changed dramatically over the years so as to be utterly unrecognizable. When NPR started (1970) and became a kind of boomer showcase that reflected an earnestly of what was then a liberal point of view (pain, ignorance and war was not so good and compassion, peace, and knowledge were good) that was a welcome contrast to the major media which was vaguely liberal that was way over-dignified and, well, Ted Baxterish. NPR tended to look at issues in depth and with an often irreverent but not disrespectful stance. It could be relied on to show a fairly broad spectrum of viewpoints not often available on other outlets. It struck a chord with most of us. It stayed away from far left discourse but occasionally gave it voice as it did with the right.

Something happened when NPR became more successful. Producers, reporters, and news-readers became increasingly concerned about careers as they made families, bought houses, and needed mony to feed their various addictions, just like everyone else. By the eighties this trend became even more pronounced as people who ran and staffed NPR recognized that their leftish tendencies and “off the reservation” forays into corners that made the rapidly forming “establishment” nervous were not going to cut it at CNN or Fox or any of the other major networks.

We have to understand that the period between 1965 and, more or less, 1978 was a time of rapid and extreme change in society where the traditional power-elites also were in disarray. NPR found itself, when it started, to be in the middle of major societal changes and kept a relatively open mind. The old Northeastern establishment had seen these splits particularly with their youth who rejected the old polite elite society and wanted a more rock n’ roll aesthetic. They tended to hold progressive cultural views on race-relations, sexual politics, dress-codes, recreational drugs and had a love-affair with “openness” and free-expression.

In 1978 money entered the Democratic Party and moved it sharply to the right. NPR, which knew its listnership was mainly sympathetic to the Democratic Party went with the flow. In 1980 Reagan’s win and the desire to return to “normalcy” which meant a return to a 1950s America captured the imagination of all but the emerging professional class made up of former flower-children and their sympathizers who were now concerned with marriage(s), house payments, children and, above all, professional advancement. While these people held on to their socially progressive views, their views of the economy and foreign affairs tended to drift to the right as their incomes and wealth grew. The needs of the working class still had some sympathy but since 1978 money came to dominate the political process it was easy for the oligarch class to forget about the bottom 80% who were seeing, continued growth in productivity but no growth in pay --this trend that continues to this day.

he views of the working class was characterized as being full regressive social tendencies on women, religion, guns, race, war and so on. The do-your-own-thing movement of the 60s gradually married the consumerist radical materialist culture of the boomers parents and the love generation retreated into creating the culture of narcissism that the boomers created for all.

NPR followed this trend and, like the rest of the media, during the early part of the Reagan administration, decided to ignore concerns about human rights and became, bit by bit, to be the cheerleaders of American Exceptionalism and imperialism. The opposition to war was forgotten as the idea of war and violence towards enemies (as dramatically rendered by movies and TV) gradually diluted what was left of compassion except, of course, for selected “victim classes” like African-Americans, Hispanics, women and the homosexual/bisexual/ambi-sexual communities while class-struggle and imperialism became concerns of the few on the more radical left and, increasingly, as time passed, the libertarian anti-authoritarian right.

Gradually, NPR became increasingly staffed with journalistic careerists who care almost exclusively for their careers and, also increasingly, came from upper-class/upper-middle-class backgrounds and posh university backgrounds. NPR became a farm team for media players like Fox and CNN. Staff were able to join other celebrities journalists at parties, vacations with Washington and corporate heavy-hitters and became part of the ruling class elites as junior partners, of course. Having friends and lovers in powerful place made life much easier for not only NPR staff but all staff in all major news organizations.

There is nothing essentially “wrong” about any of this. What is wrong is that people who turn on NPR still believe that this organization along with all the other mainstream media outlets are reporting realistically and independently on what is going on in this country and around the world. This is obviously and objectively false as the notion that the US. news media is “objective” or “fair and balanced” because such things are not possible—they would not be possible even if the media companies were not owned by corporate oligarchs but because they are their views and approaches to “news” will be pro-oligarch, pro-war, anti-working-class both economically and culturally. It is no problem for the media to denigrate, for example, religion and traditions seen as “primitive” by people who live in LA and NYC. If you have a choice of working f

with the powerful who wisely paid special attention to media personalities who were essential to manufacturing consent. Perks, vacations on Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, extravagant dinner parties with celebrities and so on was heady stuff for many in the media. The old-guard who believed it was better to maintain some distance from the powerful or true investigative reporters gradually faded when their stories were, increasingly, killed and their lack of cooperation with the powerful was duly noted by ambitious editors and producers.

NPR like every media outlet today is just like other networks except stylistically it is not as overwhelmingly boring and stupid as the cable channels and makes an attempt to show a bit more nuance—they will go a bit more in depth about the media Narrative but almost only interview and talk to members of the ruling class or those who work directly for them. You will never hear anything about positive reforms that have happened over the decades in other industrialized countries like universal medical care, family leave, free or low-cost education, much lower crime rates and levels of incarceration, and lower levels of violence particularly in the relationship between police and citizens. You will never hear about the extraordinary corruption of the military-industrial-complex, or the cruel brutality of the US. military that has destroyed major sections of the MENA region. You never hear anything but a one-sided account of Cold War II which we are now in the midst of not because there is any real conflict but because the State requires conflict to maintain power and money going into the most corrupt sector of our society—the military. You never hear anything positive about about any country designated as an “enemy” by the National Security State. NPR is a propaganda agency like other specifically engineered for the upper-middle class and up demographic.

I don’t blame NPR for this—they were just doing what any industry would do to keep themselves in business—I blame the chumps who funded and still fund this company—stop it right now people. Public TV also has gone through a similar change and, again, the fault lies with the audience of self-satisfied elitist professionals who are obsessed not with justice or peace but safety and security and thus are now more conservative than traditional conservatives such that the left, basically Bernie Sanders voters, are further from power than they were at any time since a legitimate left emerged towards the end of the 19^th century and the excesses of the Robber Barons. Today’s Barons have nothing to fear from the left and NPR is one of the chief tools keeping a legitimate left from emerging other than a kind of cartoonish version of the left that is displayed by young people’s obsession with gender, race and culture. This version has no intellectual foundation other than the absurdity of a perversion of post-modernism that is opposed to both dialogue and free-inquiry.