Tag: NPR

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Internet controversy media and media people social media

NPR’s Wide Stance

deep state, wide state, business, NPR

When the term “the Deep State” entered our vocabulary, establishmentarians and insiders were annoyed. They argued the term was meaningless or vague or designated something that did not exist. 

The rest of us accepted the term to identify the parts of the administrative state — coupled with the military-​industrial complex’s corporations — that keep big secrets and act mostly independently of our democratic-​republican institutions, including those who work behind the scenes to effect policy and mold public opinion.

The Deep State is all-too-real.

Now that National Public Radio has been dubbed “state-​affiliated media” by Elon Musk’s Twitter, it may be time to add a new term to our lexicon: the Wide State.

“It was unclear why Twitter made the move,” writes David Bauder of the AP. “Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, quoted a definition of state-​affiliated media in the company’s guidelines as ‘outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/​or control over production and distribution.’”

When NPR objected on Twitter, Musk tweeted back: “Seems accurate.” 

But, but, but, they sputter: only 1 percent of NPR’s budget is from the federal government, and the organization has a well-​established editorial independence!

Well, as the power of the Deep State has shown, directorial independence does not really constitute a non-​state nature. 

It’s obvious that many “private” institutions do exert immense political and governmental power: corporations through regulatory capture; news media through rank partisanship; all organizations that express eagerness to (and have demonstrated repeated instances of) collaborating with partisans in power. 

These constitute the Wide State. 

Of which NPR is a part.

Besides, if NPR lives “only” with a single percentage-​point subsidy, why not cut the umbilical cord and prove its independence? 

And get Twitter to change the label.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
education and schooling government transparency national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

A Faulty Gun Report

While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-​data.”

“This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015 – 2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-​related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats we’ve seen cited on social media, that seems unbelievably high. 

And yes, it is — “far higher than most other estimates,” reporter Anya Kamenetz noted. “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-​thirds of these reported incidents never happened.”

Were they fibbing? Well, never underestimate the power of incompetence. 

Even that’s harsh: remember that reporting requirements are a burden. And filing bureaucratically-​designed forms with the Education Department may be no easier than filing tax returns with the IRS. One of the biggest errors in one school district report resulted from a simple data entry error.

That is not a sophisticated statistical problem, but a simple typo.

Not that there aren’t some difficulties of a not-​so-​easy-​to-​understand nature in the story. For one, the degree to which the report was off is said to lie within “the margin of error.”

So, how big was the error, exactly? What’s the number? Well, of the 240 supposed “shootings,” NPR claimed to be “able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.”

Yet the Education Department bureaucrats will only affix an erratum note to their ridiculous report. 

Nor will it be withdrawn or replaced, as it should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

National Public Railroadeo

The controversy about all the elitist condescension galloping through the halls and programming policies of National Public Radio are both on point and beside the point. Even if NPR’s appeal were universal, it is not the proper function of government to be funding and controlling media.

Just the same, NPR’s appeal is far from universal. It serves not “the public,” but a slice of it — about 11 percent, according to Sue Schardt, member of an NPR distribution committee. She concedes that those who built NPR “unwittingly cultivated a core audience that is predominantly white, liberal, highly educated, elite” but stipulates that it was “never anyone’s intention to exclude anyone.”

True, but not meaningful. Coca Cola would love to get all the Pepsi people, Mother Jones would love to get all the National Review people, plus Esquire and New Yorker people, plus CBS and NBC and ABC people. But every successful enterprise must target its product.

Schardt believes that the way to answer political challenges to NPR’s funding is to expand the base with a broader appeal. The 30-​year incubation period is over, now let’s be all we can be! Prove the nay-​sayers wrong!

Fine with me if NPR tries this — or any other audience-​building strategy. Just not on my dime. NPR would probably do best preaching to the liberal choir as they’ve always done. But, again, in the marketplace. Don’t make the rest of us pay for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Feeding the Narrative

Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!

Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.

Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”

There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them. 

Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico​.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”

Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?

No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.