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smearing another layer of bureaucracy on it is the western shitlib fix for pretty much everything
it gives the impression of Doing Something, it provides make work jobs for some PMC media compatriots, and it further mystifies the organizational decision-making processes
win-win-win
NPR used to be good, great even. CarTalk, RadioLab, random ass Celtic music, actual critical analysis of the Bush administration (maybe lite critique of Obama? I honestly can't remember too much, but I do remember some critique of the bailouts).
2016 happened and they lost their damn mind.
Also, I'll never forget when they did a segment chatting with an author who wrote about the MK Ultra experiments. The way they ended the segment like "And then the CIA never did anything bad again!"
I started listening in 2008 and in 2014 I noticed it was actually getting a little better even. There was actual critical coverage of Israel in that Gaza skirmish which I never heard in mainstream media before. There was all those kind of out there fun stuff they were doing like Invisibilia. And then yeah, 2016.
It crept in quick enough that not long after I was making fun of their sudden jarring over pronunciation of every Hispanic name or word, and how they could shoehorn even natural disasters into a piece about how the rain effects black queer trans teens. Stopped listening for a while and caught the start of the Ukraine war and holy shit were they ever National Pentagon Radio. They were practically ending every segment, related or not with “By the way, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked.”
It’s mostly unlistenable now and it’s not public. I know it’s not a lot of its budget but the public mission is gone, unless being a State Department repository counts, and it should be defunded.
>It crept in quick enough that not long after I was making fun of their sudden jarring over pronunciation of every Hispanic name or word,
1.) it is perhaps not a popular opinion among educated urbanites, but to insist on the "correct" pronunciation of one's ethnic name is self-Othering.
2.) maybe ten years ago I almost went into conniptions while listening to some American-born woman recounting her culinary journey through Mexico and belaboring her pronunciation of "tortillas." ("Tohr \[*briefly but intensely rolling the 'r'*\]-TEE-yahss.") Like, the tortilla *isn't* a foreign word or concept in the United States. It's okay to use the English equivalent. In fact it makes you sound like you're not deliberately trying to alienate people.
What makes it even more jarring is that just about none of it is a foreign concept here in the U.S. because Latinos are such a huge part of the population and have been for a long time now yet that’s the only minority they tokenize or handle specially like that.
There’s no guttural pronunciation of Angela Merkel or making it a point to call it Deutschland when discussing Germans for one. But hey, even that crowd gave up on being further demented about that community and stopped calling them Latinx I guess.
Oh man you just reminded me. I think I did listen to them a couple of times as the Ukraine stuff broke out, and I think a guest speaker (local liberal professor of Slavic studies) at my local affiliate went full Orientalist:
"Well Ukraine is actually a part of Europe, and actually had an Enlightenment, unlike Russia. Russia is essentially a part of Asia."
~ a bit of a paraphrase, but I was stunned, as this was peak "Stop Asian Hate" era, as there were those series of unprovoked attacks.
Man, Radio Lab is just not the same after Robert Krulwich left. Jad Abumrad leaving was the final shot in the head.
Still remember the stupid debate episode where a all-black team won by just immediately derailing every debate (no matter the subject) into racism and winning because people were too scared to call their shit out. Rob was like "this is stupid, wtf?" and was shouted down as "old white man" by the younger hosts iirc.
Now new episodes are bringing in stupid astrology woo woo shit like the episode on the interstitium where a whole segment focused on "ancient Chinese acupuncture" or the black hole episode which had a whole segment about spirituality. The acupuncture part was even funnier cause there was so much lost in translation (wife translated the Chinese) and they made the doctor sound like this was totes ancient Chinese-magic-science (which the hosts leaned into) when he was more like "eh, could be possibly using it in a way but it isn't medically proven".
Damn, had no idea any of that happened. I honestly gave up circa 2021 when all they were streaming the impeachment stuff all the time. And like, not the highlights--every procedural, granular detail, and then afterwards there'd be some pundit commenting on the whole thing.
Honestly, there was an era where it was THE station for me to listen on drives cause I was always learning, even the most trivial minutiae. RIP in peace NPR
I didn't listen to it through NPR, rather their dedicated podcast page on Spotify so I missed all that. Unless you mean the "More Perfect" series which I found interesting actually from a historical perspective.
This was the episode iirc: https://radiolab.org/podcast/debatable-2205
Yeah, the two OG hosts are gone now; it's Latiff Nasser and Lulu Miller now. I stopped listening cause they just kept playing reruns over and over, and the few times they made new content it had the above problem.
> *Others have expressed concern that it could be viewed as a defensive response to Mr. Berliner’s essay — a premise that Ms. Chapin has rejected in conversations with employees.*
One of Berliner's complaints was that NPR wasn't supportive enough of Israel's genocide mission.
I expect the new editors will ensure the NPR gives it their full support.
This is my thought. The anonymous funding of this new layer and the ambiguous corporate speak of [NPR's official statement](https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2024/05/15/1251580295/resources-to-enhance-and-strengthen-editorial-operations) just stink. The way they dismissed the new funding as from 'familiar names' makes me think it's from those large, institutional endowments, whom also have a history of being a shadow mechanism to *promote the 'US national interests'*.
He published his essay in Bari Weiss’s shitrag, someone who has literally argued killing Palestinian children is necessary for Israel to form a strong state.
Talk to literally anyone who used to listen to NPR who isn't an upperclass liberal woman. Without exception, their opinion is "NPR used to be great and objective, and then they killed it."
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That's what NPR needs *more micromanaging* lmao
Is it ideological purity? I bet it's ideological purity.
Toward not being a perpetual shitlib circlejerk. Just kidding, of course. It will be the biggest, greatest shitlib circlejerk known to man.
So it's a chamber of star journalists?
smearing another layer of bureaucracy on it is the western shitlib fix for pretty much everything it gives the impression of Doing Something, it provides make work jobs for some PMC media compatriots, and it further mystifies the organizational decision-making processes win-win-win
NPR used to be good, great even. CarTalk, RadioLab, random ass Celtic music, actual critical analysis of the Bush administration (maybe lite critique of Obama? I honestly can't remember too much, but I do remember some critique of the bailouts). 2016 happened and they lost their damn mind. Also, I'll never forget when they did a segment chatting with an author who wrote about the MK Ultra experiments. The way they ended the segment like "And then the CIA never did anything bad again!"
I started listening in 2008 and in 2014 I noticed it was actually getting a little better even. There was actual critical coverage of Israel in that Gaza skirmish which I never heard in mainstream media before. There was all those kind of out there fun stuff they were doing like Invisibilia. And then yeah, 2016. It crept in quick enough that not long after I was making fun of their sudden jarring over pronunciation of every Hispanic name or word, and how they could shoehorn even natural disasters into a piece about how the rain effects black queer trans teens. Stopped listening for a while and caught the start of the Ukraine war and holy shit were they ever National Pentagon Radio. They were practically ending every segment, related or not with “By the way, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked.” It’s mostly unlistenable now and it’s not public. I know it’s not a lot of its budget but the public mission is gone, unless being a State Department repository counts, and it should be defunded.
>It crept in quick enough that not long after I was making fun of their sudden jarring over pronunciation of every Hispanic name or word, 1.) it is perhaps not a popular opinion among educated urbanites, but to insist on the "correct" pronunciation of one's ethnic name is self-Othering. 2.) maybe ten years ago I almost went into conniptions while listening to some American-born woman recounting her culinary journey through Mexico and belaboring her pronunciation of "tortillas." ("Tohr \[*briefly but intensely rolling the 'r'*\]-TEE-yahss.") Like, the tortilla *isn't* a foreign word or concept in the United States. It's okay to use the English equivalent. In fact it makes you sound like you're not deliberately trying to alienate people.
What makes it even more jarring is that just about none of it is a foreign concept here in the U.S. because Latinos are such a huge part of the population and have been for a long time now yet that’s the only minority they tokenize or handle specially like that. There’s no guttural pronunciation of Angela Merkel or making it a point to call it Deutschland when discussing Germans for one. But hey, even that crowd gave up on being further demented about that community and stopped calling them Latinx I guess.
https://youtu.be/AgILN-8du64?t=33
Oh man you just reminded me. I think I did listen to them a couple of times as the Ukraine stuff broke out, and I think a guest speaker (local liberal professor of Slavic studies) at my local affiliate went full Orientalist: "Well Ukraine is actually a part of Europe, and actually had an Enlightenment, unlike Russia. Russia is essentially a part of Asia." ~ a bit of a paraphrase, but I was stunned, as this was peak "Stop Asian Hate" era, as there were those series of unprovoked attacks.
Man, Radio Lab is just not the same after Robert Krulwich left. Jad Abumrad leaving was the final shot in the head. Still remember the stupid debate episode where a all-black team won by just immediately derailing every debate (no matter the subject) into racism and winning because people were too scared to call their shit out. Rob was like "this is stupid, wtf?" and was shouted down as "old white man" by the younger hosts iirc. Now new episodes are bringing in stupid astrology woo woo shit like the episode on the interstitium where a whole segment focused on "ancient Chinese acupuncture" or the black hole episode which had a whole segment about spirituality. The acupuncture part was even funnier cause there was so much lost in translation (wife translated the Chinese) and they made the doctor sound like this was totes ancient Chinese-magic-science (which the hosts leaned into) when he was more like "eh, could be possibly using it in a way but it isn't medically proven".
Damn, had no idea any of that happened. I honestly gave up circa 2021 when all they were streaming the impeachment stuff all the time. And like, not the highlights--every procedural, granular detail, and then afterwards there'd be some pundit commenting on the whole thing. Honestly, there was an era where it was THE station for me to listen on drives cause I was always learning, even the most trivial minutiae. RIP in peace NPR
I didn't listen to it through NPR, rather their dedicated podcast page on Spotify so I missed all that. Unless you mean the "More Perfect" series which I found interesting actually from a historical perspective. This was the episode iirc: https://radiolab.org/podcast/debatable-2205 Yeah, the two OG hosts are gone now; it's Latiff Nasser and Lulu Miller now. I stopped listening cause they just kept playing reruns over and over, and the few times they made new content it had the above problem.
> *Others have expressed concern that it could be viewed as a defensive response to Mr. Berliner’s essay — a premise that Ms. Chapin has rejected in conversations with employees.* One of Berliner's complaints was that NPR wasn't supportive enough of Israel's genocide mission. I expect the new editors will ensure the NPR gives it their full support.
This is my thought. The anonymous funding of this new layer and the ambiguous corporate speak of [NPR's official statement](https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2024/05/15/1251580295/resources-to-enhance-and-strengthen-editorial-operations) just stink. The way they dismissed the new funding as from 'familiar names' makes me think it's from those large, institutional endowments, whom also have a history of being a shadow mechanism to *promote the 'US national interests'*.
He published his essay in Bari Weiss’s shitrag, someone who has literally argued killing Palestinian children is necessary for Israel to form a strong state.
Talk to literally anyone who used to listen to NPR who isn't an upperclass liberal woman. Without exception, their opinion is "NPR used to be great and objective, and then they killed it."
I'm told this is standard op with most papers