Spiritual Envy: Religion on NPR
Paul Harvey
More about the excellent religion programming on NPR (and why it enrages our local conservative congressman), which I blogged about previously, in my article on Religion Dispatches today. Public television, I think, does not do so good a job on this (just an impression; I'm happy to be proven wrong on that point).
And while you're checking at this piece, also check out Lisa Webster's companion interview, "Michael Krasny's Agnostic Quest," also at Religion Dispatches. The long-time host of KQED's (in San Franciso) Forum, which I used to listen to while avoiding writing my dissertation, Krasny talks about his new book Spiritual Envy, how Judaism tends to be tied into agnosticism, and what he's learned from years of interviewing thousands of people on a million different subjects.
Comments
Paul, I invested some googling on this, and couldn't find Rep. Lamborn attacking NPR for its religion programming, only for its leftist bias.
You offer this as refutation
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1180
but FAIR is an advocacy group of the left.
This UCLA study disagrees.
There are the usual counterattacks on the UCLA study from the usual places, as usual, on the methodology which is admittedly not airtight, but is still more rigorous than FAIR's.
Be that as it may, I listen to NPR, but on the unquantifiable side, it's my opinion I'm more likely to hear about the effect of the recession on an illegal Korean immigrant than from a small business owner wrapped up in governmental red tape.
As for Rep. Lamborn's push to defund NPR, I sure wish I could find the truth.
According to a Fox News story online:
"NPR President Vivian Schiller says her organization only gets up to 3 percent of taxpayer dollars. But an analyst argues that NPR's $166 million budget is actually made up of more than 25 percent of taxpayer dollars."
Now I tried to find on Google News a "respected" mainstream news source [one of the 18 out of 20 in the UCLA study] that was working this story, but failed.
This could be a failure of my Google skills, or it could be an indication of what "liberal bias" really means---not overt partisanship, what what is "newsworthy" and what is not.
Regardless, Rep. Lamborn has opened a can of worms, and although I do not take the above Fox figures as gospel, I do want a proper accounting. Doug Lamborn is doing the Lord's work. [Just kidding, just kidding, Paul.]
In the least, along with NPR stations acknowledging the support of the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, which "supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world" [NPR, for example], I'd like an acknowledgement of the Taxpayers of the United States of America.
I'd find that an acceptable compromise and alternative to defunding NPR completely. That would be just, and would make me more peaceful, although not necessarily verdant.
;-)
["Verdant," of course, carries a certain eco-political vibe, more than planting trees or soybeans or daffodils. For the record, many conservatives speak not only English but leftish as well. Fortunately, Rep. Lamborn probably doesn't know what it means or he'd be a lot angrier. If he starts catching on, just tell him it means where the Broncos play.]