Radio is an intimate medium. Disembodied voices heard when we awake or just before we fall asleep. A companion on train trips or a long commute to work. For many of us, radio information and news is synonymous with National Public Radio (NPR). NPR is our trusted guide to the world, the teller of important news, the honest source of our information. So when
the New York Times reports, as it did today, that the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is considering redirecting the funds it gives to local stations to push them into buying more music programs and fewer NPR national news shows, my reaction was one of deep sadness and loss.
In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.
The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.
This is one of a series of moves that can only be termed a jihad against substantive journalism by the CPB, the nongovernmental agency that provides federal funds to public broadcasting. This jihad is directed by
CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, but he has willing and witless allies. Reportedly board member Gay Hart Gaines, a major Republican donor, commented that public radio ought to be skewed away from news, based on the comments of a cab driver she conversed with lately. (Unfortunately, Ms. Gaines must not be exposed to many Washington, DC cabs, many of whose drivers are ardent listeners of NPR news.)
CPB board member
Cheryl Halpern, another Bush donor, also has been critical of NPR's coverage.
NPR member stations reportedly also are very troubled by CPB's decision to burden them with two bias nannies - or ombudsmen, as the CPB calls them, one from a conservative background, and one from a not-so-conservative background.
NPR already has had an ombudsman in place for five years. When public radio stations met recently, according to The Times, there was substantial support for a resolution calling on CPB to "refrain from interfering in constitutionally protected content decisions" and to fulfill its mission of protecting public broadcasting from government interference.
The whole notion of fact-based substantive journalism is absolutely foreign to Tomlinson and his supporters on the CPB board. NPR is not supposed to be liberal or conservative, it is supposed to be accurate. It does its job when it reports news, and news will sometimes sting the authorities in government.
All the power in Washington right now is in the hands of Republicans. So speaking truth to power may appear to the unenlightened to be exhibiting bias. It is not.
NPR is a beacon of light in very murky political times. We cannot let that beacon be dimmed.
