1/29/05 to KQED and NPR

I thought you might want to know why, after 15-20 years of steady pledges to various local(and distant) NPR radio stations, I will not be pledging to my local station(KQED) this time. If I hadn't been laid off twice in the past 14 months(due to this administration's economic failures about which you refuse to report in depth), perhaps this wouldn't have come up, but I now have to be very careful with my money and NPR isn't, at this time, a priority. I have to say, though, that if AirAmerica was asking for a pledge they would get it in a heartbeat.

It may just be my rosy remembrance of the past, but I recall being able to, gratefully, rely on NPR to deliver pertinent, critically analyzed news. I no longer feel that this is the case. The first time I have ever turned NPR off in disgust was a couple of weeks ago when someone, I don't remember her name, did a story on a couple who were going to attend the "Service Member's Ball" during inaugural week. It was an utterly useless and hokey story apparently meant to reassure us all that our current crisis isn't in fact a crisis. She wrapped it up by following these people around a mall to choose the ball gown and ending up at JCPenney(product placement?). Never did this reporter address the obvious: an obscene $40 million on an inaugural while we are at war for no reason(even the administration can't decide on one), a token ball given for service members to prop up some false sense of taking this whole thing seriously. This story was a waste of time, bandwidth and my previous pledge.

I am, right now, listening to "Wait, wait, don't tell me!"(perhaps for the last time) and Peter Sagal was just talking with Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent whose questions are no longer accepted by the President and treating this fact as if it were just another of those things about which we should shrug and laugh. This is a crisis for what you profess to be your business!! This forcedly non-opinionated commentary about very hot items is offensive. Yet it is just this semi-laissez faire attitude that has become the hallmark of NPR. Just about the only critical political analysis found on the network these days is given by Garrison Keillor!! Utterly unthinkable just a few years ago.

I have heard a long story about the trials and errors of a British rock group consumed by drug use. THIS IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING NEWS!!! And if you can't be bothered to critically analyze the wars and lies(documented) of this administration you certainly shouldn't be covering this kind of stuff.

NPR is at grave risk of becoming as fluffy and marginal to real news as any of the mainstream provincial press. Too bad. Like I said, I can remember when the opposite was the case. I will continue to support KUT(1700 miles away) because I rely on it 2 hours a week to keep up with new music from Latin America, but KQED will have to go on without me for the time being.