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http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/11/everywhere_i_go_as_much.html

Roger Ebert's Journal

Midnight at the oasisy Roger Ebert on !ovember 1"# 2010 1:02 $% & 1( )omments 

Everywhere I go, as much as I can, I listen to NationalPublic Radio. It's an oasis of clear-headed intelligence. Carefully, atiently, it resents

 rogramming designed to ma!e me feel "ust a little better e#uied to reenter the world of

uroar.

*'ve written be+ore about the ,isintegration o+ -ournalism# o+ the lowere, stan,ar,s

everywhere in to,ay's me,ia. $s a nation we once sai,# give us the +acts an, we'll

mae up our own min,s. !ow we say# spare us the +acts an, mae up our min,s +or

us. e have grown impatient# an, the national attention span shrins until even a

10minute vi,eo on ouube can seem unen,urable. !uggets o+ celeb gossip

,istract us on our way to oblivion. 3tu,ies ,ocument the way the internet is

+ragmenting our min,s.

I'm art of this. I'm a romiscuous $weeter. I don't read as many boo!s as I once did. It is robably good for me that I see si% or ten movies a wee!, none of them vulnerable to fast-

forwarding or channel surfing. &ou "ust have to sit there are watch the suc!ers. y latest (reat

ovie, )urosawa's masterful *Red +eard,* was more than three hours long and I felt cleansed of 

clutter afterwards.

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 NPR brings fresh air into my mind, and not "ust with $erry (ross's show. $he hosts seem calmand civilied. $heir #uestions are good ones. &ou never catch them being clever for the sa!e of

 being clever. It's not hay tal!. It's in good taste. NPR obviously ma!es a lot of effort to bring in

guests that are aroriate to the sub"ect a lot of re-roduction goes on. $here's no catering to re"udice. No agenda.

$here are radio essays from around the world. ocal sounds and voices, sometimes with atranslation. $astes of /frica or /sia. 0oods and rituals, emergencies and heartbrea!, music and

whimsy. / taste of ++C news. 1ome rogramming from Canada. 2our after hour, day after day,its standard of #uality is daunting.

I've mentioned before that I cannot get into a ta%i in Chicago where NPR is not either laying, or 

 re-tuned when the radio is turned on. $he driver is invariably /frican or 1outh /sian. I as!,

*&ou li!e NPR3* I have been told, *I hear more about the rest of the world.* I've also been told,*I hear more about /merica.* ore than once I've been told, *I want to learn.*

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 NPR surely is the voice of /merica -- the voice I hoe the world is listening to via the internet. Itis the voice of our better nature. 4e are not all snarling dogs of eft and Right, feasting on

shreds torn from the +ody Politic. 1ome of us 5maybe most of us, when the mood is right6 are

!ind, curious, sane. 4e are interested in other eoles, other lifestyles, other choices. 4e do notdemand that the media tell us over and over again the things we already believe. 4e are oen to

new ideas.

In my mind the most */merican* rogram in /merican broadcasting for some time now has been

the Prairie 2ome Comanion. 4hen I listen, it's almost li!e 4illa Cather and I have our ears bent over the same old Emerson tableto set in a farmhouse in the 7a!otas. (arrison )eillor's

gift as a storyteller is in direct descent from ar! $wain. 2e stands there and does his

monologue all without notes, and it's li!e he's so smooth because he's telling you a story thatreally haened.

I was listening the other night. 2e was remembering an unfortunate football game in which a!e

4obegone layed the other team to a tie. Neither team was good enough to score. Nobody had

told them about time limits. 2our after hour they layed, as the daylight faded and fansabandoned their seats, until both teams collased e%hausted on the field.

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1ometimes )eillor is funny in a different way, funny in the way that observes a truth about

human nature. $here is his recollection about three sons who gathered at the bedside of their

dying mother in a!e 4obegone. It was #uiet, and they were sad, and she lased into slee, or

maybe a coma. Conversation ran down. 1ilence began to build to an uncomfortable length. $heysmo!ed and sighed and cleared their throats. 0inally, deserate to brea! the silence, one as!ed,

*4hat do you thin! about those new 0ords3*

a!e 4obegone doesn't e%ist in innesota or anywhere else. +ut for an hour on 1aturday night itdoes, on NPR. $he networ! ums civility into our society day after day. 1ometimes its stationsalso lay classical music, which few commercial stations lay anymore. /nd "a, the only

indigenous /merican music. /nd they fund local news coverage. NPR is "ust lain reassuring.

Recently some have claimed it is leftist. $hat baffles me. No one ever seems to cite something

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they heard that offended them. $hey "ust believe in general that it's left wing. I began to as!

myself why that was. $onight there was a discussion about 1arah Palin's new reality $8 show.

$he host so!e to the $8 critic of the $oronto (lobe and ail and to a coordinator of the show'sonline resence in social media. $he #uestion involved whether the show was, as claimed, *non-

 olitical.*

&es, said the (lobe and ail, citing cuhan. $he show need not contain a single a olitical

syllable to be olitical it was olitical because Palin is running for something, and it romotedher image. No, said the show's so!esman 5who turned out to be a 7emocrat6. 9ne of his "obs is

to organie a networ! of bloggers around the show, some of them ro and others con. y own

oinion, which no one on the show shared, is that such blogs would serve a olitical urose byfocusing on the issue of whether it was olitical.

+ut never mind. /ll three were calmly-so!en and rational, no one threw any charges, and the

discussion really was about whether a olitician could be on a reality show without ma!ing it

 olitical by e%tension. 9f course, by even as!ing that #uestion you may oen yourself to charges

of bias, but why3 &ou have an oinion about Palin. I have an oinion about Palin. NPR got meoff of Palin and started me thin!ing about the nature of the media in cuhanes#ue terms.

Understanding Media was ublished in the :;<=s, but it's still relevant.

Earlier, NPR aired a reort about ban!ing. It rofiled a century-old ban! in North 7a!ota thatcirculates its deosits within its community. Eight ercent of the stoc! is owned by the

emloyees. $he rest is owned by a charitable trust. /ll the ban!'s rofits go to local and state

charities. $he money stays in North 7a!ota, for the use of businesses and agriculture. 9ne

 ban!er mentioned *Predator ban!s* that enter a mar!et to drain its resources. 4hat was the olitical bent of that reort3 7oes that ban! sound li!e 5:6 a conservative oster child, or 5>6

socialism3 aybe it's "ust an interesting ban! because of the times we live in.

$hursday a bill was introduced in Congress to end funding for NPR. /ctually, NPR doesn'treceive a dime of federal money, but the bill would have forbidden member stations to use

federal funds to ay for NPR rogramming. $he measure failed, >?; to :@:. In the ne%t

Congress, who !nows how it will do3

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4hy is NPR seen a threat and not a national resource3 I thin! it's a threat because it deals in

information and not in the trivial. It encourages thoughtfulness. It tries to loo! at more than one

side. It has a way of ointing out errors and drawing obvious conclusions. Its very e%istence is arebu!e to media outlets that deend on oulariing an ideological arty line. Aust thin! it

through, if you haven't lost the !nac!.

 

[ 11/19/10: As several reader have pointed out, I carelessly used "!" as a #lan$et ter% when I 

 should have written "pu#lic radio&" '