Making a difference

May 31, 2020

I sent my local NPR station a msg the other complaining about their obvious deliberate suppression of any mention of the fact that there are Caucasian poor people, and that their working at division among the non-rich was a reason I don't donate to them. I noticed today that when they were talking about who is at risk, they finally did include "low-income people", not just talking about people of color.

This was my msg, sent on May 18:

I am on a limited budget, but would make a small donation if your station, and NPR in general, were not in the service of the power elite who give you big donations. Eg., you almost never admit there are Caucasian poor people. On the extremely rare occasions you do, it is during or right before a pledge drive. This is also about the only time you have programs that your rich donors would not care for, like inequality and the way the working class (of all races) have been losing ground financially. Listening to you, no one would know how the republicans blocked almost all of President Obama's attempts at fiscal stimulus, much less the reason, which there is no secret about, that they did it to try to make Obama look bad and get a republican as president. I could go on, but I know it will not have any effect. You are giving your big donors what they need, which is to help divide ordinary people into tribes that don't work together for their mutual benefit.

Your Covid-19 info is helpful, but does not make up for your overall effect, and I expect gives an excuse for not covering other things.

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Most of the time it is just a matter of omission, but there have been several times when it was more obvious. Eg., twice in March, on a 1A program, they mentioned low-income whites, then said, something like that was not something they could discuss. Wish I had noted the dates & times to get the actual recording.

I discovered the difference between their coverage at pledge time some years ago, when I kept a log for at least a year and a half of their news coverage, to see if my observation of their non-coverage at that time of global warming was accurate. Because confirmation bias is normal. I found that not only was I right about that issue, I saw the difference in the coverage of other issues during or immediately before their pledge drives, which I hadn't noticed.

They did start covering global warming after the big oil companies, some of which are their donors, finally admitted that global warming is happening and is caused by humans. Before that, it was a complete blackout. I remember a program they had about hurricanes. They were interviewing someone who was supposed to be an expert on hurricanes. When he was talking about what causes them, there was no mention of warm water! He didn't sound happy in the interview, but I don't know if that was normal for him or not. I know NPR edits interviews, so maybe he mentioned the important role of warm water on hurricane formation and it was edited out?

Even after they started allowing global warming to be mentioned, it was only occasional for awhile. It still seems to me that they often/usually don't mention it when it seems appropriate, sometimes when even commercial media does.