Saturday, December 23, 2006

News source...

Those of you who know me might know that I listen to quite a lot of National Public Radio. I listen on my way to work, on my way home from work, and before the electricity went off and my clock at work was reset I listened at work too. When they are playing classical music I listen to CDs, which isn't really when I'm in the car so well...

I've defended it before Mark Robinson and the Sauer parental units who seem to think it is the product of the communist party. I'm a socialist guys... do you know of any socialist radio stations? This is my primary news source. I'll read other stuff, watch the occasional world news and sometimes something will entice me to watch local news. I don't have cable.

Here is my problem. NPR is real news peppered with special interest stories. The real news for a year focused on New Orleans and Katrina evacuees. While the rest of the world moved onto the news story of the day, NPR focused on their plight. I did too, after all they were in my classes... or rather they were on my roll. Since the election season NPR has made a transition to discussing the quagmire that is Iraq and had a tremendous focus on the ISG. Every morning I wake up to hear that indeed we aren't winning the war, that we might indeed be losing it even after our key objectives have been accomplished and we have declared victory. "We aren't winnin'; we aren't losin'."

My complaint is not that it is biased, everything is biased. If you know the bias you use your brain to figure it out... my complaint is that there are many many other things going on in the world, in the nation, in my state, and in my city that I don't hear about... and as a result I'm not doing well on the NPR news quiz. I do ok, but only because I'm really good at making educated guesses. This seems a shame, since I'm not doing well on the news quiz that THEY put out.

I've also been caught off guard when the following have been referenced by my friends/coworkers: Taco Bell and e-coli, Pam Anderson & Kid Rock's split, the death of Steve Irwin, Andy Pettite going back to the Yankees... there is a hole in my life. I'll admit I wasn't more than twelve hours behind... and friends can count as news sources.

Still I aspire to be a news junkie... and I need help.
Ideas?

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Instapundit and Pajamas Media. Best of the online news. Once you start getting your primary news online, you'll never go back, and you'll wonder how you lived without it.

I was going to hold off my post about getting the news for a few days, but this inspires me to start composing it in my head for writing tonight.