Glad you wrote this. Starting bout 25 years or so ago (end of 1990's/early 2000's), I began noticing a difference in their advertisements, which always seems to be a good indicator of what they're really about. It gradually (and then rapidly the last decade or so) morphed from many advertisements for local/regional businesses to advertisements for GE (...and even Exxon/Mobil!)... starting to hear the GE ads convinced me that I would never hear/read any reporting on the horrible/non-existent job they were doing cleaning up our local section of the Hudson River... that was now off-limit reporting.
But mostly, I always thought of NPR in roughly the same light as the NY Times, and a few other similar outlets... basically, tools perfectly designed for the more educated (most definitely NOT to be confused/substituted with more intelligent) to create the illusion of some type of intellectual distance between that reader/listener and the rest of us "commoners", by using more complex wording as a way of massaging the egos (egos that every one of us humans have)... all while imparting the EXACT same overall/general conditioning that the less/non "high-brow" outlets feed us... the "conditioning" being that the "for-profit at all cost over humanity" system is working just fine but just has some glitches that need to be worked out.
Oh yeah, hey Bill... the Capital Region my entire life, about 120 years my family's lived here but have/had close extended family in the Middletown and Hartsdale areas.
Glad you wrote this. Starting bout 25 years or so ago (end of 1990's/early 2000's), I began noticing a difference in their advertisements, which always seems to be a good indicator of what they're really about. It gradually (and then rapidly the last decade or so) morphed from many advertisements for local/regional businesses to advertisements for GE (...and even Exxon/Mobil!)... starting to hear the GE ads convinced me that I would never hear/read any reporting on the horrible/non-existent job they were doing cleaning up our local section of the Hudson River... that was now off-limit reporting.
But mostly, I always thought of NPR in roughly the same light as the NY Times, and a few other similar outlets... basically, tools perfectly designed for the more educated (most definitely NOT to be confused/substituted with more intelligent) to create the illusion of some type of intellectual distance between that reader/listener and the rest of us "commoners", by using more complex wording as a way of massaging the egos (egos that every one of us humans have)... all while imparting the EXACT same overall/general conditioning that the less/non "high-brow" outlets feed us... the "conditioning" being that the "for-profit at all cost over humanity" system is working just fine but just has some glitches that need to be worked out.
Hey Bob - I grew up on the Hudson River - Tarrytown. Where you at?
Oh yeah, hey Bill... the Capital Region my entire life, about 120 years my family's lived here but have/had close extended family in the Middletown and Hartsdale areas.