NPR Gun Control Program

Geesh, SecDef, his entire comment was directed at this one segment of this one program. No honest reading of his post could find it a bash of NPR in general. In fact, he's stating what an anomaly this program was.

To the gentleman who suggested lying in a letter of complaint, bad idea. Why lie? It's morally unsupportable and only undercuts any credibility your missive might have.
 
Whoever said that NPR's objectivity went out the window wasn't kidding. Seven or eight years ago, they aired some nonsense that claimed that the distribution of wealth in the US was the most unequal in the world. All that I can say is that they have never been to Mexico, among a hundred other places.
 
Wish I'd heard the distribution of wealth program. Since I didn't, I'll speculate it was probably based on the ratio of CEO pay to ground floor workers pay which doesn't reflect well on us...unless you're a CEO of course. By and large, I think NPR is an island of sanity on the airwaves. Some of their stories are too bedtime-friendly for me but their charter isn't to do the shoot-em-up stuff anyhow. Whenever I wanna see a real freak show, I flip over to Fox.
 
Geesh, SecDef, his entire comment was directed at this one segment of this one program. No honest reading of his post could find it a bash of NPR in general. In fact, he's stating what an anomaly this program was.
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No. He raised the segment as possibly reflective of all of NPR. When that perspective is balanced out within the same program, it makes no sense to try and generalize the perceived slant.

I honestly read it, explained how I interpreted it, and actually went back and listened to the entire show, and found that the segment in question though slanted, was balanced by other segments. Even if taking a single entire show that is slanted it doesn't make sence to generalize that out to the entire network which BTW isn't centralized but is made of up member stations anyways. There *is* no NPR that we all get as every station is a little different as they each have different shows.

When one sees an anomaly and thinks it is an anomaly, then asking if that represents the entirety then yes, that is a bash. I went to check to see if it was warranted. Did you? Or do you just want to assume I had some kind of knee-jerk defense mechanism kick in?
 
I don't think it's scary. Our brains are evolving to work faster. We can multitask in ways our forefathers never dreamed of, and be ten times more productive.

We can process input far faster than people in the past could. That's why old 20th century documentaries seem so painfully slow, now. They weren't slow to the people who originally watched them, but we can parse a much faster flow of information. We've trained ourselves to do so.

I think it's pretty damned cool. :)
 
Taken from a Time Magazine article, The Multitasking Generation by Claudia Wallis.

The mental habit of dividing one's attention into many small slices has significant implications for the way young people learn, reason, socialize, do creative work and understand the world. Although such habits may prepare kids for today's frenzied workplace, many cognitive scientists are positively alarmed by the trend. "Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren't going to do well in the long run," says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Decades of research (not to mention common sense) indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. Some are concerned about the disappearance of mental downtime to relax and reflect. Roberts notes Stanford students "can't go the few minutes between their 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock classes without talking on their cell phones. It seems to me that there's almost a discomfort with not being stimulated--a kind of 'I can't stand the silence.'"

Is that "cool"?

NPR...:barf:
 
Well NPR listeners tend to be white upper middle class professionals, the people with money and power, who are also the people with decent attention spans. Coincidence?

Of course in a world of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity not to mention Bill O'Reilly any neutral news story would look like it was radical leftist demogoguery.

Now there are radical leftist news programs, in europe. Take whatever the leftwing press in England say, add the Fox spin and divide by two and you will probably get something close to reality.

It's not that NPR has moved radically to the left, it's that we've misplaced our center.
 
I don't think it's scary. Our brains are evolving to work faster. We can multitask in ways our forefathers never dreamed of, and be ten times more productive.

We can process input far faster than people in the past could. That's why old 20th century documentaries seem so painfully slow, now. They weren't slow to the people who originally watched them, but we can parse a much faster flow of information. We've trained ourselves to do so.
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I disagree. I think you will find that people are making more snap decisions than ever before. Do I like this TV show? Click the channel flip flip flip. The message becomes less and less important to the delivery system.

Additionally, things are flashing so very quickly through the public memory. If it isn't in their face, it quickly fades. Better get things into a sound bite so we can retain it!
 
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