erin, I too am an avid listener and supporter of NPR. I grew up listening with my father when he would drive me to school in the mornings. Back then, I couldn't stand it and wished we could listen to music, but I really appreciate that he introduced me to it at such a young age. I know it is off topic, but I wonder what you think of them getting rid of Talk of the Nation? I was really dissapointed, it was a fantastic show and I tuned in to listen to it live almost every day, because I never knew if the topic would shift in to an area that I had expertise in and would like to call in and participate. -In an era when people can TIVO their telivision programming and stream any NPR program anytime, Talk of the Nation required someone to stop what they were doing and listen at a specific time each day. -There has to be value in that from a marketing perspective, right? This is why live sporting events are so valuable to network television. Anyways, I found it to be a giant bummer. I miss Neal Conan. As for Terry Gross, I have a love/hate relationship with her. She gets fantastic guests and she has a great breadth of knowledge, but I feel like sometimes she has her mind made up about what the answer should be to her questions before she asks them. -A small criticism that I've shared IRL with cW a number of times. I'm a BIG Diane Rehm fan. In fact, go to this page and search "hubski". Yeah.... that was me. I'm an unapologetic proselytizer of Hubski. I used to go running with cliffelam who is a conservative fella. We would listen to the Diane Rehm show while driving to the trail. We would count the amount of times they said something that was pro-right or pro-left or anti-right anti-left. It was almost always 50/50. Pretty balanced journalism imo. I think cliff would disagree though. No matter what though, the worst journalism out there is CNN. FOX and MSNBC are both giant piles of garbage, but at least we all know they're biased. CNN is supposed to be objective. -Ha.
Well, that one day we counted it was 50/50 and I was surprised. I've counted since and will say that DR is more balanced than her guest hosts, but I've never gotten her higher than 70/30. Of course, the choice of subject matter is also another way to skew the conversation. So you have "how will we clean up this oil spill" rather than "how can we have energy independence in the next 5-7 years." See how that changes things? -XC
I miss Talk of the Nation, too. If I could not catch it live, I would listen to the podcast in the evening. To me, the brilliance -- regardless of when you listened to it -- is that mainstream media brought the public into the conversation. That is a very difficult thing to do, and TotN pulled it off masterfully. I read NPR nixed TotN because they felt they had a similar product in "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook. He's okay, but I liked Neal Conan better. Yes, I've noticed Terry Gross throws out the occasional leading question. It is not a good practice, but sometimes it helps moderate an interview or open up a new path of discussion. I wouldn't call Diane Rehm's show journalism, especially the round table discussions. But I agree, there is always good balance. And the debate is civilized. I may not agree with the guests sometimes, but at least it's not the riled-up screamfest that dominates television. It is no secret FOX and MSNBC target specific demographics. I laughed at all the recent changes at CNN, because it seems like they are not trying to be objective, but both FOX and MSNBC, with a little TMZ thrown in. How is it no one at CNN had the idea of, 'Hey, other networks are so skewed, why don't we go back to our roots and practice real journalism?' This void does exist in television news. You would think last-place CNN would try something out-of-the-box and shake up the landscape. What's even more hilarious is Time Warner broadcasts 'The Newsroom' on HBO which is based on bringing respectability back to television journalism, yet Time Warner is doing the exact opposite with their own cable news network. Oh, the irony.