June 30, 2004
NPR blows monkey chunks
(Category:
News & Notes
)
I had the opportunity to listen to a bit over a minute of National Peoples Public Radio yesterday morning. The story I caught was a blurb about gas prices. Now if you're like me and you use gasoline you might have noticed that the price of gas has plummeted over the past month and a half or so. Locally we're down a good 40 cents a gallon over that period and they're continuing to fall. NPR's take on this?
Gas prices are an average of 45 cents a gallon more expensive than this time last year.
I can't believe I used to think of them as an impartial news source. Bloody posers.
I guess this is good though. If the price of gas dropped below what we were paying last year we'd get the choruses of "It's all about the oooooooilllll".
Posted by Jim | Permalink
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Well, that looks like a factual statement without any qualifiers to me.
I don't listen to NPR, though.
Yeah, it's factual. And anecdotal. And I'd have to be a fairly judgemental bastard to paint the whole program based on a minute of news briefs.
Then again I was in a pre-coffee state and if they're going to be broadcasting that early in the morning they're just going to have to take extra care not to piss me off when I tune in for a minute or two once or twice a year.
Seriously though, I think this struck a nerve with me because I haven't heard any news about the gas prices and they've been steadily and quickly falling. It was the coming of the apocalypse when the prices went up but when they go down you can hear crickets chirping. When I finally did hear a newscast on the gas prices the news was about how much more gas is now compared to a year ago. That irritated the hell out of me.
Unfortunately for me, one of my favorite stations uses npr news and I'm treated to it every day. When it doesn't piss me off, it makes me laugh. I just wish we weren't paying for it.
It is kinda ironic when you think about it - Our countries only "state controled" news source (OK, that might be a stretch - on both counts) is decidedly anti-administration. How many countries can boast that?
They've gone the way of the liberal...
Jim - I have to support you on this one. When prices were going up, they were comparing the numbers to the previous week or month. Now that doing so would no longer serve the agenda (which I've heard them claim in so many words that they "don't have"), they're making the comparison to last year.
Slimy bastards.
I am in total agreement regarding NPR. While you may not want to judge NPR based on a minute of news briefs, I have no problem doing it. I think it makes a healthy government for there to be some amount of anti-administration. However, I don't think it's healthy or helpful to just be Anti-Administration on every single issue. I have yet to hear NPR be objective to one of the Administration's policies, including the months right after Sept. 11th.
Well, the newspeople don't get on the air and announce, "No one was killed today." News isn't supposed to be warm and fuzzy, is it?
It's supposed to be just as warm and fuzzy as it is cold and prickly. The key should be newsworthiness. If the price of gas going up 45 cents in a year is newsworthy then the price of gas going down 40 cents in 6 weeks should be a headliner.