Annoyed at NPR

[elfs]

This afternoon, as I was driving home I was skipping my Japanese classes and listening to the news. Two entries-- blurbs, really-- during the NPR All Things Considered newscast caught my attention and annoyed me.

The first was an article about one of the groups claiming to be the Somali Government in Exile. The group has received the backing of the Discovery Institute, a group according to NPR "better know for its opposition to Darwinism."

"Darwinism" is a bugaboo of right-wing AM radio. It doesn't exist as a meaningful term in biology. Nobody has used Darwin's theory of descent and selection in its original form... ever. The moment he proposed it other biologists piled on; many were wrong with their contributions, and many were right but we wouldn't know that until long after they died. "Darwinism" as it is used today is the bizarre parody of biology and evolution that you can hear on Sunday afternoon on the evangelical radio stations: monkeys-to-man, 747-in-a-junkyard, the whole straw man bigger than the final event any Burner ever saw. NPR should have done the responsible thing and said that the DI is opposed to the teaching of evolutionary biology, the unifying principle of science without which biology is nothing more than an interesting collection of facts with no relation one to another.

The other was an article on Reparative Therapy^[?], discussing a convention of quack practitioners. The blurb stated that "Reparative Therapy seeks to convert people away from homosexuality, but most experts believe no such cure exists."

Maybe the announcer wanted to put quotes around the word "cure," but quotes are really hard to hear across the radio. What I heard was NPR giving a nod to the right-wing's wish to emphasize the disease model of homosexuality, and that's just plain medieval, and NPR should have known better.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Ah yes, NPR, National rePublican Radio.


You should hear the RIAA-rimming toadies they parade forth when explaining DRM to the masses…

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Comments like yours reassure me that NPR is exactly where it needs to be, given how many of my conservative friends accuse NPR of being National Palestine/Pro-choice/Pervert Radio (or dedicated to many other nominally liberal objectives). If everybody hates NPR, excellent: they're doing their job, goring someone's ox on a weekly basis.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I won't argue with you. But I will point out that NPR is doing too much uncritical repeating of what they're told. Hey, would it really kill them to like, y'know, check to make sure that what they're reporting as fact isn't really just someone's opinion?