[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Fwd: Save NPR and PBS

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

Another example of the liberal/left fracture.


On 2/12/11 11:50 AM, Belden Fields wrote:
> Well said Mike. I could not agree with you more. What NPR brings to us is at
>  least civil and intelligent discussion of public affairs. We may disagree
> with the policy or ideological positions of the speakers, and we may feel
> that the range is not broad enough (fortunately we have McChesney locally),
> but civility and intelligence are rare enough over the commercial airwaves
> that we should not forsake NPR and PBS, There is some very good broadcasting
>  on both of these if one searches it out. Purity we don't have--and never
> will even on our community outlets. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't want
> ideological purity. I will contribute to NPR/PBS, just as I do to the IMC and
> WEFT. Thanks again Mike. Belden On Feb 12, 2011, at 11:22 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK
> wrote:
>
>> Efforts should be made instead to tear down the effective censorship of Al
>> Jazeera and promote Link TV, Free Speech TV, etc.
>>
>> "I heard them say the revolution won't be televised / al-Jazeera proved
>> them wrong, Twitter has them paralyzed..."
>>
>> --Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum
>>
>> On 2/12/11 10:42 AM, Mike Lehman wrote:
>>> While I really can't dispute the criticisms of NPR (and PBS) and am
>>> regularly disappointed by them, I think it's wholly counterproductive to
>>> presume that the elimination of either would benefit those seeking
>>> alternatives to the present system.
>>>
>>> Society needs more spaces where something other than FAUX News and
>>> Corporate News Network prevail. It may not be a perfect space, and
>>> certainly never enough to justifiably satisfy some critics, but
>>> eliminating "public" broadcasting would serve FAUX and CNN, rather than
>>> weaken the system that make the broader conversations our society needs
>>> so difficult. Neither CNN or FAUX is subject to public pressure, while
>>> "public" broadcasting is, however much it still falls short of what would
>>> be ideal.
>>>
>>> I can see people saying they won't lift a finger to help PBS and NPR. But
>>> urging others to join the Republicans in helping eliminate one of the few
>>> spaces left where a progressive argument at least gets aired from time to
>>> time isn't something I consider to be an effective strategy to building
>>> alternative media spaces that challenge the status quo.
>>>
>>> The masses of teeming apathy have to have someplace comfortable to start
>>> a journey to alternative ways of looking at the world and our society.
>>> Slamming the gate to the path to move from the garden of evil into the
>>> garden of justice and peace is not going to cause more than a very few to
>>> look to jump over the fence instead.
>>>
>>> And I doubt if either is going away, even if the Repugnicans/Tea Party
>>> get their fantasy of eliminating both. They'll just become more dependent
>>> on corporate cash -- and that will make all the things they are
>>> criticized for worse.
>>>
>>> Far better to waste such physic and political energy on better
>>> alternatives so that once people are roused from their sleep, they have a
>>> place to grab a cup of coffee to steel their nerves to go beyond the
>>> conflicted American dreamscape that PBS and NPR offer. Revolution is what
>>> we build, not what we help reactionaries tear down. Mike Lehman
>>>
>>> On 2/11/2011 10:11 PM, David Johnson wrote:
>>>> I have had no use for NPR ( National Public Radio ) and PBS TV for
>>>> quite some time.
>>>>
>>>> Cases in point....
>>>>
>>>> The propoganda campaign they aired when Reagan died a few years ago (
>>>> may his soul rot in hell ) that presented Reagan as an idolized icon,
>>>> with NO counter view of Reagan and his disasterous foreign ( can you
>>>> say " war crimes " ) policy and his disasterous neo-liberal /
>>>> neo-conservative domestic policies.
>>>>
>>>> Then there was the coverage of the People's Historian Howard Zinn when
>>>>  he died a little over a year ago. The ONLY view about Howard Zinn
>>>> presented on NPR was the trash job on Zinn done by David Howoritz.
>>>>
>>>> NPR is nothing but FOX " news " for the intelligencia.
>>>>
>>>> The reason of course for NPR's de-evolution is the ever increasing
>>>> reliance over the years on corporate funding.
>>>>
>>>> I could care less if NPR goes off the air. It would be one less
>>>> corporate news outlet. What suprises me is the large number of
>>>> seemingly well educated and supposedly " compasionate and progressive "
>>>> people who still listen to NPR's corpoarte trash and consider it an "
>>>> opposition " and " objective " news source.
>>>>
>>>> David J.
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. ESTABROOK"<cge at shout.net> To:
>>>> "Belden Fields"<a-fields at uiuc.edu> Cc: "Walter
>>>> Feinberg"<wfeinber at illinois.edu>; "Fred Coombs Fred Coombs"
>>>> <coombs at rainbowtel.net>; "SFcore"<sf-core at yahoogroups.com>;
>>>> <sadougla at illinois.edu> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 9:01 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [sf-core] Fwd: Save NPR and PBS
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> National Propaganda Radio? Why?
>>>>>
>>>>> NPR reports on Obama's war in the Mideast probably don't differ
>>>>> formally from official Russian accounts during their invasion of
>>>>> Afghanistan. They would have discussed how can we get victory, how
>>>>> can we destroy the terrorists, will this tactic work, will that
>>>>> tactic work, we're losing too many soldiers and so on. We assume that
>>>>> no one in the official Russian media asked, Do we have a right to
>>>>> invade another country? And of course NPR doesn't do that either.
>>>>>
>>>>> But NPR has far less excuse. With media under totalitarian control,
>>>>> if you said the wrong thing you'd go off to the gulag. Here it's just
>>>>> willing subordination to power. The result is no main-stream
>>>>> journalism - even (particularly?) NPR - that goes beyond the college
>>>>>  newspaper cheering for the home team.
>>>>>
>>>>> Chris Hedges prefaces his important new book, "The Death of the
>>>>> Liberal Class," with a passage from Orwell's suppressed introduction
>>>>>  to Animal Farm:
>>>>>
>>>>> "At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it
>>>>> is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without
>>>>> question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other,
>>>>> but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was
>>>>> 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who
>>>>> challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with
>>>>> surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost
>>>>> never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the
>>>>> highbrow periodicals" - and, he might have added, on highbrow radio.
>>>>>
>>>>> During the presidential campaign Obama said that the spectrum of
>>>>> discussion in the United States extends between two crazy extremes,
>>>>> Rush Limbaugh and NPR. The truth, he said, is in the middle and that
>>>>>  is where he is going to be - in the middle, between the crazies.
>>>>>
>>>>> Obama has a way of telling the truth about his right-wing politics,
>>>>> certain that no one will hear him. NPR certainly won't tell.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/11/11 7:55 PM, Belden Fields wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <http://pol.moveon.org/nprpbs/?id=26078-17377114-0nf7g3x&t=1>"Congress
>>>>>>> must protect NPR and PBS and guarantee them permanent funding,
>>>>>>> free from political meddling."
>>>>>>> <http://pol.moveon.org/nprpbs/?id=26078-17377114-0nf7g3x&t=1>...