Yesterday I drove from my mother’s house back home and listened to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered from 4:25 to 6 pm. I couldn’t believe how much trivia I heard. Egypt is in crisis and the Snowden case leads to the detention of a leading journalist’s partner, but NPR’s signature show sounds like Muzak for the entitled.
Some of the stories that the network put time and energy into:
–Texas barbecue, for nearly 7 minutes. Brisket is the Pinot Noir of Texas barbecue and it’s really hard to make, because it can dry out. I feel I’ve heard this story 500 times.
–More food. Two minutes on a book about a duke’s cookbook from the 1930s. Medallions of egg.
–Tech devices are getting rid of buttons. Gesture controls. Clappers. Phones went from dials to buttons once. Who knew.
–How do you pronounce the word “comptroller” in NY city race? I s— you not. Three minutes and thirty seconds.
–A story about some obscure bespoke Paris luggage maker, nearly 6 minutes long. Suitcase that fits the car’s wheelwell. How do you say yawn in French?
–Vacation horror story. A couple goes to the Dominican on their honeymoon, and the groom slips on the pool tiles and gets an X-ray. The production values are lavish: lots of funny musical interruptions. And this is an ongoing series?
–This new novel can be held up to your smartphone and you’ll get added clues about the main character. Nearly 6 minutes.
OK, I’m leaving out the serious stories that I heard, below. But does NPR understand the times we live in? A massacre in Egypt, the detention of Glenn Greenwald’s partner for 9 hours at Heathrow, and they’re not having serious discussions of these issues? Both those stories got under 4 minutes, a lot less than the bespoke luggagemaker with the unpronounceable name.
One of my beliefs about the internet is that it’s undermined the mainstream media by robbing it of a traditional role: questioning authority. If you question authority, you go on internet; and the MSM misses that stuff. That is to say, in the old days, the MSM had to do some serious subversive stuff because it was the only game in town. Now it’s lost that function, so it’s become Muzak.
P.S. Here are the serious stories I heard. They mostly come in at under 4 minutes: Federal task force on Sandy. 3:18. Some discussion of global warming. A great report on national digitized library plans. Japan considers getting rid of constitution imposed after World War II. 5:04. Serious reporting, touching on human rights. Detention of Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda at London Heathrow. Important story, of course. One expert calls it an attack on journalism. But only 3:53. Obama administration resists cutting off aid to Egypt. 3:55. Though there’s the usual prevarication, from talking head Anthony Cordesman, about our interests in Egypt: they’re the Suez canal and a flyway for possible Syrian intervention, before Israel is mentioned. Seriously: a flyway for possible intervention in Syria?
Thanks Phil,
Here’s a story nearly everyone has missed. Secretary Kerry last week in Brazil giving a pep talk to the diplomatic mission there, and lamenting the decline of dictatorships and the rise of the internet because it makes it harder to govern:
“I’m a student of history, and I love to go back and read a particularly great book like Kissinger’s book about diplomacy where you think about the 18th, 19th centuries and the balance of power and how difficult it was for countries to advance their interests and years and years of wars. And we sometimes say to ourselves, boy, aren’t we lucky. Well, folks, ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year.
“It makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest, and that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for. So we need to keep in mind what our goals are and how complicated this world is that we’re operating in.” http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/08/213088.htm
To further abuse Plato’s cave metaphor, the internet let’s everyone see what’s outside the cave, so the role of the philosopher kings [and the traditional news media] to pipe that information into the cave, and to manipulate it, as the Imperial Elites deem necessary for the “common good,” as only they are privileged to perceive it, is threatened, and exercising that manipulation is made harder now by people being able to check the facts and communicate directly . . . tsk, tsk.
I think the internet has been a huge pro for truth…and yea, for propaganda too…but I also think it has a tendency to make people ‘internet activist’—-spend a lot of effort on discussing as we do here —instead of more direct and public or street protest directed at the powers.
NPR=Neocon-lite Propaganda Radio; or, Neoliberal Propaganda Radio (same thing).
Commercial MSM started abrogating their responsibility for hard news before the rise of the internet, when they started paring back their staff of journalists to contain costs and maximize profits. The remaining staff was expected to fill the same amount of space with less time to do investigative reporting, often relying on reworked press releases and news agregators. The rise of the reliance on the internet for hard news was initially a response of consumers seeking real news from alternative sources (and finding international papers more easily accessible than the dated hard copies at the public library) combined with a proliferation of citizens willing to share their opinions (some of whom not only could write well, but had formerly been employed as journalists by some MSM outlets). Slate, Salon, HuffPo, etc. were a response to people who were already seeking alternatives online; they didn’t drive the demand. The owners of major papers have only themselves to blame for cheapening their product and then being surprised that fewer consumers wanted to buy it.
I think NPR has been irrelevant as a news source for at least a generation. William Blum, author of “America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy” , called NPR, National Pentagon Radio because there’s always some four star general or neoconservative pundit trotting out the latest reason why we have to invade this or that country. As for the truth about the I/P conflict, you’ll never hear it there. Of course there’s a lot of junk out there, but there’s a lot in print and on television too. I think you need to know where the source is coming from. For instance, when NBC was owned by GE they were big promoters of the Iraq War. GE doesn’t just make toasters. They make weapons systems too. Big rewards for them in promoting war.
As for the Kerry comment that’s out of the playbook of one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement, Leo Strauss. He always thought the masses were too stupid to make there own choices and had to have some invisible hand guiding them. All very authoritarian and Facist.