A different view, in English too!

I used to listen to BBC America, thinking that I was getting more of a worldview of the news of the day. Since I don’t speak another language fluently, it seemed logical to me. Now I listen to THE BBC and there is a decidedly different flavor to the questions asked and to reporting of the effect America’s policies have on European and other world countries. Their journalists are much more aggressive when questioning heads of companies or heads of state. NPR (formerly National Public Radio, a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States - according to Wikipedia) interviewers are professional and deferential when interviewing politicians or CEOs for a story. The journalists at NPR have lost much of that in depth, pry it out of them, word it so they have to respond, challenge the bastards attitude they used to have. I have been listening to NPR since the 70s. I noticed a distinct difference in the quality of the broadcasting when the George W. Bush administration was in power. It appeared to me that there was a distinct lack of real reporting that was anything like that which I had heard from the NPR of old or from THE BBC. I always thought that NPR was above any blackmail or political influence. I guess I was wrong. The Bush administration tried to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting every year. In 2005 the congress proposed deep cuts to PBS stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, essentially muzzling any real reporting on the administration or any of its policies by NPR which receives funding from the CPB. That appears to be political blackmail to me. Americans have no idea how much credibility and good will we lost overseas during those 8 years. And yet no one here was reporting the awful truth that the Bush administration was destroying much of what America had stood for in the world. Our policies were viewed through the distorted lens of a politically stifled, underfunded public media. When there were demonstrations in other parts of the world about US policies, especially regarding the war in Iraq, our news services ignored them. People traveling overseas got an earful. I did when I went to Central America. My good friend who lives in Maryland did when she visited several central European countries. It is scary that our freedom of the press could be so restricted by a determined administration. If it could happen once it could happen again. We need to be more vigilant in the US about ALL our freedoms or we will surely lose them. We need to have a news media in this country that is not state run or sponsored, that gives deference to no administration. Give a listen to the media overseas. We may not like what we hear, but knowledge is power and truth is not held hostage.