Monday, August 03, 2009

NPR's sophestry with kids!

http://ncane.com/01n

Okay, sports fans, get a load of this — it will not make you happy, I wager. Last week, a friend of mine wrote,
Hi, Jay,

I have to recount to you an incident that involved my daughter a few days ago. Here goes:

Both of my daughters participate in a student-run theater group called Act 2 Act whose purpose is to raise money for human-rights causes. They are rehearsing The Diary of Anne Frank, to be performed this weekend. They have been doing local radio interviews to promote the play.

My twelve-year-old is playing Anne, and her director — the founder of the group — is 16. They did an interview by phone with an NPR correspondent. She asked some odd, leading questions such as “Isn’t this the first time you’ve ever done something helpful like this?” and “What does this have to do with President Obama?” The answer to the first question is “No, we do this sort of thing regularly,” and the answer to the second is, “Well, nothing.” The kids were really put on the spot. It was all strange and disconcerting.

Well, everything became clear when the interview aired later in the evening. The correspondent shaped the piece to insinuate that the kids had been inspired by Barack Obama to start this theater company and do this play. OMG! (As the kids say.) We all know the NPR mindset, but to stoop so low and take away from these kids their own heartfelt inspiration — that was just disgusting.
Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Could you remind me, once more, why we have government radio, and government TV, anyway? I guess this is what Dan Rather means by “public media” (as if privately owned media weren’t public). It’s bad enough when an ordinary, commercial outlet is shoddy, misleading, or mendacious. But a taxpayer-funded outlet?This may be mere emotion talking, but if there’s one reform I’d like to see, it is to do away altogether with government media in this liberal republic (and you know I mean liberal in an older, honorable sense).

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