The recent Juan Williams firing scandal has led National Public Radio to realize that they need to develop more FOX News type media tactics if they are to survive. A radical top to bottom make-over has been ordered for the normally passive, low key, informational and culturally oriented nationwide station to bring them into a more aggressive and combative mode. It must be similar to the transformation Sarah Palin went through when she went from being the Governor of America’s least populated state to being the Cinderella of the U.S. Tea Party.
Gone will be the listener friendly, soft spoken ‘hippiesque’ days of the past programming where the agenda would include the seductive mating dances of Kurdish honeybees or the hand carved fishing boats of Sumatran fishermen or the impenetrable poetry of high altitude Peruvian lake dwellers.
There is no more room for leisurely, intellectual listening in our modern, fast paced and unsocial world. Media mutton must be served fast food style- quick, non-nutritional, cheap and fattening. If it sticks in your mind for more than 30 seconds or doesn’t cause you to run out and buy something, then modern radio doesn’t want it.
The new face of NPR will be bold, hard hit and pock marked. In other words, rough and tough. Always accused of being liberal, NPR will now fall into line with the goosestep of Fox New’s hard hitting right wing agenda.
The names and themes of many shows will show this change in ideology, such as:
Morning Edition will now be changed to ‘Morning Rendition’- announcing new suspected Al Queda recruits who have been shipped to other countries for ‘processing’.
All Things Considered will now be ‘Only Right Wing Considered’.
Face of the Nation will now be ‘Rape Of The Nation’.
On The Media has been changed to ‘Control Of The Media’.
From The Top to ‘From The Top Of The Economic Class’.
Science Friday to ‘Creationism Sunday’
Whad’ya Know to ‘We’ll Tell You What You Should Know’
Hearts Of Space to ‘Hearts So Base’.
Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me to ‘Wait, Wait… Don’t Shoot Me’ (With new host Dick ‘Shotgun’ Cheney)
Prairie Home Companion to ‘Prairie Home Gated Community’
and Intelligence Squared US to ‘Intelligence Lowered By Half”.
NPR Commentators are being retrained to speak more belligerently and confrontationally. They are learning the art of dressing up stories to make them seem more dramatic and to give the news items ‘shading’ to lean them toward a predetermined, conservative point of view. Newt Gingrich himself has been hired on to teach interviewers the art of denigrating opponents to humiliate them in the public’s vision and in the use of catch phrases to cut down and intimidate adversaries.
All of the investigative researchers have been fired and supermarket tabloid writers hired in their stead which will result in a great savings to NPR because they do not need to travel to investigate their stories. The captive fantasies of the writers can conjure up better stories than the dried out old researchers ever came up with.
Cutthroat lawyers have been hired who can bend and manipulate U.S. laws to protect the station against any lawsuits and to instruct commentators on how to use four letter words in such a way to not get stopped by the censors.
Public funding will continue, but more emphasis will be placed on getting big name sponsors that will splash their advertisements across 50 percent of the air time like it is on most radio channels. And especially welcome are all those big corporate sponsors who can now spend limitless amounts of money on whoever holds their political fancy. NPR now can and will sell out to the highest bidder, just like the big boys.
National Public Radio’s old motto was “Be Nice To Everyone”. The new motto will be “No More Mr. Nice Guy!”
The gloves are off, America!