In February of this 12 months, NPR announced in an internal memo that its “financial outlook [had] it has darkened considerably in recent weeks.”
Prescription drug? Elimination of “many” already vacant positions and decimation (in the unique sense of “one-tenth”) of the media company’s existing workforce.
The proven fact that the broadcaster already implemented a November 2022 employment freeze, travel restrictions and $20 million in budget cuts made the most recent pill even harder to swallow.
Would “the whole lot considered” have to limit its competence to “certain” things?
News had barely arrived from NPR’s Washington, D.C. headquarters when the broadcaster called an all-employee meeting to discuss layoffs and listen to staff’ views.
Predictably, the waking hands of the media company had a grudge against the air.
Never mind that NPR arranged the layoffs with an eye fixed to preserving the prevailing racial balance, according to CEO John Lansing.
Staff members who had spent most of their careers tracking racism in the broader world now turned their binocular gaze to their bosses.
According to a report by Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman, employees at a general meeting “barbecued” NPR executives in regards to the “races and identities” of those that were fired.
![Screenshot taken from NPR.org](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-21-at-114010-AM.jpg?w=939)
Invited by Lansing to “reject [their] rhetoric,” the injured staff explained [that remark] because the tone-keeper and I felt uncomfortable.”
(For the woke up, feeling uncomfortable and experiencing actual death are functionally indistinguishable.)
But what else to expect?
Before coverage of Ukraine brushed aside other priorities, it seemed that each second or third article on the public broadcaster was about alleged “racial and gender inequalities.”
The “prejudice” narrative was the one lens through which these staff were trained to see events, even people who occur to them.
It’s price pausing for a moment to consider a couple of recent weak points which can be unfortunately representative of NPR as an entire.
Take the topic of transgenderism, NPR’s idée fixe, which sometimes seems to be the broadcaster’s only journalistic concern.
To the consternation of each conservatives and reality-oriented liberals, late last month the NPR newspaper reported that “there is restricted research” supporting the notion that male biological athletes have an inherent physical advantage over females.
Although the broadcaster withdrew the claim two days later, the incident was nevertheless revealing.
Common sense, hard data and the experience of billions of generations are nothing compared to the demands of modern left orthodoxy.
![Screenshot from npr.com.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-21-at-120223-PM.jpg?w=1024)
If such a thing is feasible, NPR’s race coverage is commonly much more insidious, engaging in a nuanced victimhood essentialism that robs people of color of their full, complex humanity.
Within the last 30 days alone, the public service broadcaster has aired stories about racism in the selections of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the farming industry, the struggle to legalize marijuana, the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation policy, technology investments and the Oscar vote.
Last 12 months there have been stories of racism in bands, within the so-called environmental justice movement, within the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and within the phenomenon of “silent smoking cessation.”
The media company is so obsessive about racial prejudice that it could bring itself to no objection when (white) race hustler Robin DiAngelo claimed on air that “racism is the muse of the society we live in.”
Although the interview in query took place lower than a month after George Floyd’s death, it differs little in tone and tone from the prospects broadcast on NPR almost every day.
In our seek for NPR’s platonic ideal of storytelling, we’re searching for coverage that touches each of these enthusiasms in a single fell swoop.
Example: “Students resist erasure of black and LGBTQ people in a single of California’s whitest counties” (11/6/22).
Other: “For LGBTQ People of Color, Discrimination Unions” (11/25/17).
By entering less familiar territory than race and gender, the broadcaster occasionally ventures into narrative combos that come close to self-parody.
“Delivering abortion pills to Ukraine through the war meant being creative,” the media company reported in early March, proving once and for all that the left’s obsession with abortion knows no bounds.
“Doctors are pushing health care to address climate change,” announced NPR in 2020, to the delight of non-sequitur enthusiasts nationwide.
Actually, an honest listener could probably discover a grain of truth in any of the aforementioned stories, despite their almost comical slant.
![NPR logo](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Media_Twitter_NPR_24217-0e84a.jpg?w=1024)
The issue lies within the sheer ubiquity of such material and the dearth of conservative retorts from a broadcaster who is outwardly nonpartisan.
For each dozen references to “pregnant people” on NPR, there’s roughly zero defense of traditional gender ideology.
The result, from gender to crime to climate and beyond, is an ever-changing Overton window that only moves in a single direction. What’s the golden mean in a given topic?
For NPR devotees, that is somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders.
And who’re these devotees?
According to data compiled by Nielsen and consulting firm GfK, the typical NPR listener is white, over 44, and “somewhat to very liberal.”
They’re 92% more likely than the typical person to work “in the highest management” and 191% more likely to “work on an area organization committee”.
The unkind summary of these traits is that NPR’s listeners are Karens who’ve the time and money to meddle within the affairs of others.
Nevertheless, even when one rejects this characterization, it will not be difficult to see that NPR is each driven and guided by the aesthetic and ideological needs of a selected audience.
For instance, consider the easy-to-sneer categories that so many NPR “voices” fall into:
Frightened white woman. (Mary Louise Kelly stares at a melting iceberg and doesn’t even know its pronouns.)
Harmless gay. (Ari Shapiro won’t ever hurt you want your ex-husband did.)
Overzealous foreign correspondent. (Eleanor Beardsley pronounces the name of the French president – Macr-HONK – as if it were also the mating cry of the Canadian goose.)
Could any refrain be higher calibrated to please the wealthy, the smug, the overeducated, and the woke up?
![Screenshot from NPR.com.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-21-at-114340-AM.jpg?w=1024)
In brief, NPR is a luxury good, the sonic equivalent of first-class air travel and tailor-made suits. On condition that it’s, the apparent query is why the remaining of us pay for it.
Ask a liberal to subsidize “The Sean Hannity Show” and he’ll rightfully choke on organic kale.
Yet conservatives and other taxpayers insure NPR for tens of thousands and thousands of dollars a 12 months. What can we get for our money? A soothing voice that ignores or distorts right-wing positions, practices infinite credulity towards our opponents, and pushes the national conversation in clearly damaging directions.
If we’re going to vote, I’d give money to Hits 104 FM just as quickly.
We vote, of course, and calls to withdraw NPR from funding are an everyday feature of Republican-led congresses. HR 1632, a proposal to “eliminate taxpayer funding for partisan broadcasting stations” by NPR and PBS, was introduced by Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) just last month.
Unfortunately, such proposals, together with repealing Obamacare and killing Amtrak, lie within the realm of political fantasy, partly since the GOP would somewhat raise funds than solve the issue.
Yes, Senate Democrats may strut during times of united Republican control of Washington, but folks, horse trading! Redirect my tax dollars from NPR and I’ll happily transfer the equivalent amount to the barreled, union-enhancing “public works” project from the bridge to nowhere chosen by the liberals.
Is defunding NPR really that vital? Yes.
Nevertheless unpopular conservatives could also be, we too are members of “society.”
The organization that was supposed to serve us turned out to be rejected and as a substitute torments us. It could possibly’t stand it.
Depriving public radio of taxpayer support ought to be the highest Conservative priority in the longer term.
Heaven knows the bastards deserve it.
Reprinted with permission Washington Examiner magazine.