A lot of people were up in arms when Juan Williams lost his gig at NPR for going on Fox to talk about how he was skeered of the Mooslims. It should come as no surprise that he fell ass-backward into a $2 million contract from Fox, which is doubtless more than he could get at NPR for anything.
NPR has a problem, and it’s not that it’s some sort of hotbed of liberalism or political correctness. That’s the rap that always comes up, and it’s the same right-wing horseshit they’ve been spewing for 40 years; hell, a letter-writter in the Economist last week asserted that all media in the US other than talk radio was liberal – apparently insufficiently satisfied with the fealty of the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNBC, the morning show on MSNBC, half the newspapers in the country, all the stations of Sinclair Broadcasting, etc etc. No, NPR’s problem is that they are synonomous with soporific terminal earnestness; the soothing tones of thoroughly unironic, Very Serious newsreaders and commentators.
The problem has come when the likes of Juan Williams or Cokie Roberts have staked a position with one of the Sabbath Gasbag shows, up there spewing the same old blatherskite of conventional wisdom that every other Beltway pundit partakes of – and have used their NPR branding to give them some sort of imprimatur of being Very Serious People. So when Juan WIlliams starts talking about how people dressed as Muslims scare him shitless, or Cokie starts saying that Real Americans don’t go to Hawai’i because it is strange and exotic and not, you know, A FUCKING STATE, people get the impression that these are Serious People making Serious Political Observations. As opposed to insider pundit douchebags trading on the reputation of their employer.
Personally, I don’t think NPR keeps pace with, say, the BBC World Service – it’s obviously not as global in orientation and its mission is slightly different. But it’s also constantly playing defense against allegations that it’s merely the liberal version of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, which is an insult to all concerned (I think the radio assholes of the right would be APPALLED at the insinuation that they were as boring to hear as NPR). But if they’re really trying to do some sort of serious, detatched, journalistic programming that’s thoughtful and insightful rather than emotional and only tenuously connected to fact, well, it’s no wonder they’re a public broadcaster dependent on the goodwill of government and donors. Because right now, there’s certainly no actual market for anything like that.