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Thread: When did NPR merge with Pacifica? NPR's news shows have always leaned left, but I find now it's just propaganda, and I can't even listen to it anymore. They rarely have any guests with a non-left perspective, and when they do they grill them harshly (except for never-
Trump Republicans, but only when they are talking about how much they loathe Trump). Then they have their left-leaning guests who spout arrant nonsense, and then don't question even the most absurd and counter-factual statements, and instead give them leading questions
that even them to spout even more nonsense. Today they had a guest, a pediatrician who was very involved in activism about the lead in the Flint water supply, and who just wrote a book on the issue. The first question I'd ask as a journalist: is there any scientific evidence
that the amount of lead in the water supply caused identifiable harm to the children of Flint, as opposed to just being above regulatory limits? Of course, that wasn't asked. The author attributed the Flint situation, in part, to "neoliberal capitalism." The water system was run
by the Flint government, so it would be logical to ask what capitalism had to do with it, much less neoliberalism. Or how a socialist alternative would have prevented government corruption and incompetence. Nope. Then the interviewer asked whether this would have happened if
Flint had not been a poor, mostly-black city. The author took the invitation to talk about of course not blah blah blah. Now, a keen interviewer might have asked about the health crisis in rural America, with opioid addiction, a decline in the life expectancy of working-class
whites, and so on, and thus how we can distinguish a racial issue from the interplay of wealth, political influence and so on. But of course not. And of course, one has to question why a pediatrician, even one active in the Flint situation, has any particular insight into such
issues to begin with. This is hardly the only example. I've lost track how many times I've heard guests on NPR state, and hosts state or imply, that Michael Brown was "murdered," without any mention of the Obama Justice Dept. report concluding that the officer who shot him acted
in self-defense. I could go on and on. If you wonder why people who aren't on the left are driven to things like One American News, and you think it's solely b/c they are partisan idiots, think again. NPR has become a more sophisticated version from the left.
(Why did I listen even when it leaned left? Because despite that lean, I felt I was more informed after listening. Now, I feel that overall if anything listening to an NPR broadcast makes me less informed, not to mention that all the unasked questions and question-begging
is infuriating, why waste time listening to journalists not doing their job?)
