National Public Radio
The Editor
Morning Edition
National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001-3753Tuesday February 3, 2001
Sir:
"The News - brought to you by kind permission of... Kuwait!"
I was shocked today when I heard Bob Edwards, host of "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio announce: "This morning's show is made possible by a grant from Kuwait, in thanks for their liberation by the United States 10 years ago" (in the Gulf War).
How can a mainstream radio news station claiming to disseminate news which is fair and objective take any money from a foreign government?... Especially one like Kuwait, with such an oh-so glaring and obvious political agenda ??? No wonder American journalists - along with the White House's foreign-policy administrators whose interests almost all of them serve - are as despised and discredited as they are today all over the world.
If "news" is now being bought and paid for like a cereal commercial, by interested parties, it's American voters who are disenfranchised - being subject, effectively, in this way, to what amounts to 'censorship' by media manipulation...! Who knows?... National Public Radio's next hosts may be the Kosovo Liberation Army!!!
Is this what you really believe is meant by "democracy" ???... i.e., Tell all the folks out there what it suits the government to have them hear about the way the USA is run, who the world's "good-guys" are and who are the "bad," while pocketing money from any goddamned source at all that happens to suit your immediate purpose and just let it go at that...!!!
National Public Radio's "news" coverage has always been highly suspect. But blatant bias on this scale is right off the dial and registers an unacceptable disgrace that deserves the widest public exposure!
John Jay
London, England