Public Radio: almost free.
There are two things I look forward to on my drive to and from work every day:
It’s been nice to have a news source that’s both independent and journalistic. There are very few conflicts of interest for a source like WFYI since they don’t accept funding from political campaigns and they don’t allow political ads on their station. Even better, there are really no ads at all on the station. There’s occasionally a brief pause to identify local station sponsors, but no sitting in the car for ten minutes of my twenty minute drive waiting for programming like on the commercial stations. It’s also a public station that’s funded by the public, so the programming is geared toward pleasing the consumers of the station rather than to push an agenda for a target segment. There’s also a far more journalistic approach to the news. Rather than labeling their nouns with charged adjectives like some stations (*cough *cough) the folks at WFYI and NPR choose to actually report the news based on facts.
Here are two examples of the same story, one journalistic and the other clearly commentary bias:
NPR
and
Rush Limbaugh
Now, if any of the 3 people who read this happen to be Rush listeners, they’re probably saying, “but Josh! NPR is liberal!” And if so, I invite those people to examine the difference in the links I posted where NPR didn’t give their opinion on the delivery of jokes at the dinner, while Limbaugh explained why John McCain clearly won the joke-off and deserves to be president over a terrorist.
That reason alone is enough for me to enjoy NPR. On the flip side of the coin, I do enjoy some of the liberal satire. Not surprisingly, Colbert and Stewart round out my top 5 TV shows behind The Big Bang Theory, The Office, and LOST. However, I don’t want them to actually report stories to me because I know their bias is extreme. I want them to make me laugh at the banality of American politics, not to report the news. NPR also avoids that trap.
This past week or so has been their annual fund drive, and for the first time ever I donated to a public service (not my first donation ever, just to one of this nature) and became a member of WFYI to show my support for what appears to be the last of a dying breed of journalistic media sources. They don’t consult politicians or other journalists for commentary on economic matters, they consult economists and economics professors. They don’t let politicians talk over one another, they interview them separately to get actual responses rather than yelling diatribes. After a debate, they check the facts, they don’t poll a panel of journalists to see who they think won. When a story breaks, they don’t cast blame, they report facts.
It’s nice.
I encourage anyone reading to give it a listen. If it piques your interest, support it. Keep alive the last of a dying breed.
