3/1/2023 0 Comments Rss feed npr hourly news![]() Like your local school board, public radio is mostly all about local support, from local listeners. When those kinds of mistakes blur into conservative calls for “defunding NPR,” the argument devolves into near-uselessness, like calling for the abolition of the Department of Education to solve a problem with your local school board. Conservatives who make that mistake are as wrong as someone who mixes up the functions of the federal government and your neighborhood community association. Tucker Carlson suggests that public radio ought to fund itself privately, and he is more than happy to do his part and make his own private donation to that funding model.īut if conservatives want to challenge any general “NPR liberal bias,” they ought to understand first what exactly they are talking about.Ĭonservatives who criticize NPR often make the mistake of mixing up the different functions of NPR news production, the independent public radio producers, and the operations of their local public radio stations. He’s also fond of accusing the NPR listenership of being upper middle class whites with college degrees and foreign cars. He is a member and a supporter of his local public radio affiliate. Conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson, whose father Robert once headed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is an avowed, proud public radio listener. I don’t think most conservatives would be the slightest bit afraid to admit their public radio listening habits. And this is where it gets tricky.įirst, let’s make it clear, lots of conservatives listen to public radio and support it financially. A conversational reference to public radio never, ever fails to move the conversation to something positive.īut it must be said, and I am here to say it for a person with conservative political views, public radio can sometimes be a challenge. At any gathering of friends or strangers, there is almost always an occasion where I can begin a conversation with, “I heard something interesting on public radio…” It is never a stretch to do so the inexhaustible wealth of human interest on public radio makes it easy to cite something uniquely on point almost anywhere, at almost any time. It even serves as a kind of a social test for me. ![]() Public radio gives me pleasure, at all hours of the day. Keillor’s political leanings as a member of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party were not much in doubt, but that the voters in Lake Wobegon might be something like 53-to-47 percent Republican. It is the pure "Americanness" of Garrison Keillor, reminiscing about the Sidetrack Tap in Lake Wobegon. It is also the opera on a Saturday, or Professor Longhair on “American Routes” from New Orleans. It is the voice that wakes me every morning on my clock radio, it is my companion in the car, and the source that I turn to when something newsworthy happens. To some, that term might sound like an oxymoron straight from the writing staff of The Colbert Report.įor just about all of my adult life, public radio has been my life’s soundtrack.
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