The Bell Finally Tolls for National Propaganda Radio

Public media can be a great thing, but the current iteration treats America like a foreign country

Greg Collard and I were joking before the last America This Week that the show needed an onscreen “Big Bird Counter,” to highlight the inevitably enormous number of Sesame Street references in media this week, while the fate of NPR and PBS is debated.

From the New York Times op-ed page today:

For most of its history, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have been a combined net plus for American citizens. They produced pioneering programs ranging from NOVA to This Old House to Frontline, and introduced Americans to cool foreign programs like Doctor Who, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and I, Claudius. The quintessential PBS show was informative and quirky without pulling ideological threads, even if its Masterpiece roster sometimes over-scratched the upscale viewer’s costume-drama itch. From nature shows to comedy to documentaries, PBS was a sound counterweight to the boobs-and-car-chase lineups on commercial TV, providing the most remote communities with quality programming.

It should have run forever. National Public Radio ruined the enterprise, turning the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-income audiences micro-dosing on Marx and Kendi. Forget conservatives, NPR’s trademark half-whispered stylings linking diets to rape culture or denouncing white teeth as a hangover of colonialism began in recent years to feel like physical punishment to the most apolitical listeners, like having a blind librarian hacksaw your forehead. Even today’s New York Times piece couldn’t argue the bias issue, instead offering a mathematical deflection: