I just submitted this letter to the NPR ombudsman via their contact page. If it echoes how you feel, feel free to submit it as your own.
Dear Ombudsman,
Ever since Vivian Schiller and her CNN cronies took over the operation of NPR, the service has become an embarrassment. Accurate, comprehensive reporting has been supplanted by inane interviews in which incompetent hosts censor competent journalists. Coverage of cultural affairs has been replaced with the same coverage of pop culture that dominates the celebrity-obsessed commercial media. Unbiased, monotonic delivery that is characteristic of journalistic broadcasting has been abandoned for oratory intonations that characterize irrelevant entertainment sources like CNN. The accurate reporting of facts has been slashed in favor of the cheap, sensational and worthless chronicling of political drama in the nation’s capital. With every day, I find fewer, and fewer reasons to listen to NPR. Every time I turn off the insulting charades on NPR, I am overwhelmed by a strong desire to start a movement to cut federal funding for NPR and to encourage my local public radio stations to find alternatives to this poor adaptation of CNN.
In the meantime, I have found just about enough podcasts to obviate NPR’s sensationalist, worthless reporting. I’m getting the word out, and I’m finding many sympathetic ears. I am eager to see the day when NPR either becomes respectable and relevant again, or dies.
Okay, I thought it was me, thought maybe something was wrong with me because I used to get fulfillment from NPR, now I cannot tell it from any other news station. That would explain a lot, new management. They also changed the schedule of the fundraising. Interesting.
Subscribe to the California Report podcast, whose link appears to the right. I’m still searching for other good sources of news. California Report is simply superb. Now, to find as good a source for what happens outside California….