NPR: Election Day Eve
NPR
Election Day Eve
Final Thoughts on NPR’s Two Year Election
Coverage
Today when I listened to NPR journalists, who are covering the Trump/Clinton race, foaming at the mouth about how much they have loved covering this election, journalists who have betrayed their audience or perhaps just me and cast us into the winds of nowhere left to go after the election - yes, you, Jeremy Hobson and Robin Young and your unbelievable acceptance of Paris Dennard on Here and Now and yes, you, Steve Inskeep, who this morning on Morning Edition turned a left/right economic discussion into a radio version of a split screen with two guys talking over each other so that neither could be heard, after listening to this pulse-racing non-sensical and anti-intellectual coverage, I have the following analogy:
I may be a surgeon and I may love to do heart surgery but that does not mean that I keep doing the same surgery on the same patient, over and over again, just to satisfy my love of heart surgery. That would rightly be called madness.
You may love your job as a journalist but that does not mean that you go back to the same people, over and over, and listen to them spew the same nonsense and lies without asking them what facts their opinions are based on. Instead you discuss their opinions as “feelings.” That is not journalism. It is voyeurism.
God, I miss insightful discussions - the ones NPR used to be famous for. I’ve been a listener since the seventies. Never have I heard a more disappointing bunch of microphone-pushers posing as journalists covering a Presidential election - you roam around the country, acting as if leaving the east coast requires tremendous effort, you stick your microphones in the faces of anyone willing to say anything to be heard. Does it ever occur to you to dig a little deeper? Did it occur to you this morning, Robin Young or Jeremy Hobson, to ask Paris Dennard what buying shoes at Macy’s, even if he was discouraged by a salesperson not to buy Ivanka shoes, had to do with his support of Trump? Apparently not. I was so ashamed I turned off the radio.
My plan after the election is to encourage KPBS to rid itself of middle-of-the-day east coast-centric shows and instead find some exacting journalism, say perhaps an Hispanic show, an African-American show, a gay talk show, all with a west coast perspective.
Whoever wins, national NPR loses me.