Air America is dead.

Remove all ads!

The lions always go after the slowest buffalo in the herd first, Snook. If a media colossus like clear channel was forced to consolidate in the wake of this recession, less well positioned stations never stood a chance.

Broadcast radio isn't going anywhere, Kitrax. I'm talking about local radio. Local broadcasters, local advertising, local news coverage, the works. Radio is one of the best advertising deals out there for small businesses and one of the fastest, most dependable means of disseminating information. When a station switches to the affiliate model, most if not all of those advertising slots will go to national ads.

Remote broadcasts, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to drive people to a storefront -- regularly used by both businesses and charitable activities to great effect -- are simply not possible when the announcer is some guy in Texas simulcasting for 124 affiliates. The loss of local radio will hurt local business, and as media continues to consolidate, local news coverage will continue to lose its depth. This may not seem like such a big deal at first blush, but it's a hell of a lot more noticeable when you are trying to find substantive information about your mayoral candidate's platform. An announcer in Texas isn't going to be reporting on the mayoral race in Cedar Rapids, IA.

 

Chandos, James Harris is the black guy that hugged McCain at one of the conventions durring his campaign. It stirred up a few weeks of controversy.

DR: at the time, I happened to be listening to NPR in a work vehicle (someone else was driving). I don't usually listen to them anymore, but that instant stuck with me.

 

So you lazily condemn the entirety of NPR as extremist ideologues who "often present a liberal spin so extreme it makes me wonder if they're living in the same world as the rest of us," based on a single atypical instant of your own poorly-interpreted listening, where you furthermore felt the need to manufacture the intent of a racist accusation you didn't actually hear. Excellent.

I think the confusion about the world 'the rest of us' live in is your own.

 

I'm not familiar with this, so I can't comment on it, NOG. I don't really want to go back and relive that campaign again, although I'm sure the next one will be far worse and probably start another civil war.

 

DR, I realize you like NPR, but please don't assume I'm an idiot or delusional. I didn't have to interpret or manufacture anything to find the racism in that speaker, it was plain to hear.

I stopped listening to NPR in the first place because of they're tendency to put a liberal spin on things. It wasn't usually anywhere close to thaas bad as the above, and I don't intend to portray that as a typical event, but it was persistent enough to be annoying. I got sick of only hearing half the story and needing to go online to other news services (CNN among them, not just FOX) to get the rest. That particular event was just an example of how extreme it can get.

 

NOG, NPR employs lots of extremely conservative republicans. Any liberal spin you find there is more than compensated for by the likes of Rich Lowery and Jonah Goldberg. Studies looking at where NPR does its sourcing and at the partisan affiliations of its commentators have consistently shown that NPR is not liberally biased. NPR is frequently accused of conservative bias as well.

The December 2005, NPR ombudsman and former Vice President Jeffrey Dvorkin ran a column downplaying accusations of a conservative bias on the part of NPR, but in that very column, his own figures indicated that 63% of NPR experts from think tanks came from right-leaning organizations while only 37% came from left-leaning organizations. Some organizations argued that this was "smoking gun" evidence of conservative bias (and a lack of critical thinking on the part of Dvorkin, who tried to use those figures to refute that claim) on the part of NPR. This game can be played from either side of aisle, though, and I'll promise not to accuse NPR of holding a conservative bias if you promise not to accuse them of a liberal one. NPR has no systemic, top-down bias. They do, however, have diverse commentators with diverse points of view.

 

Aldeth, of course I'm being partisan. However, I also do believe that the government has no business whatsoever funding a broadcast network. If NPR and PBS cannot support themselves like all other radio and television networks and stations do, then they shouldn't be in business.

If they're such great and wonderful "products", they should be entirely capable of competing in the radio and television marketplaces.

 

Excuse me? You mean like AIG, or CtI, or Bank of America, or GM? But I DO agree with you. I believe that the government should stop all taxpayer money to ALL corporations right now. Alll of it! Agreed?

 

Baloney. The point is that "market success" is an indicator of what the people want.

I didn't say that all Dems favor the FD. However, for the ones that do, it's entirely about partisan hatred. Furthermore, as I've mentioned before, there have been rumblings about trying to attack conservative talk radio with a different "weapon" ... by passing laws or regulations requiring a much higher degree of local content, thus limiting the reach of syndicated conservative talk shows.

I'll never "stop worrying" on this front as long as these hateful marxist wannabes are in the majority in Congress.

I'll never, EVER, refer to you-know-who in anything OTHER than demeaning ways. BHO is about as non-demeaning as it'll ever get. I always call him "Obummer" in RL. This isn't about race for me. Not at all. It's about him being nothing more than a closet marxist.

((I do agree that "BO" is a rather unfortunate pair of initials...))

And for all the crap that GWB took for his accent, this current "Hahvahd"-edumakated moron can't even pronounce the word "corpsman" correctly.

Drew, if you reread my initial reply, I actually did mostly talk about the economic aspects. I only mentioned the politics peripherally and how they related to the economic factors. You were the one who felt the need to talk to the political points directly.

---------- Added 0 hours, 8 minutes and 33 seconds later... ----------

Actually, I do think think that there's a difference. If some radio or TV network had to fold, in the great scheme of things, it's not going to take down all that many jobs, or cause massive problems in the economy as a whole. The problem with the corps you mentioned is that they are often major parts of the national economic infrastructure, and if they go down, can cause massive disruptions.

Furthermore, some of those companies were experiencing problems brought on by excessive government meddling in their businesses in the first place. When the government tells a mortgage lender that it MUST give loans to people who have no business getting those loans... and when those people start defaulting on those loans, whose fault is it really? The lender? Hell no. It's the government's fault for forcing the lenders to make bad loans in the first place.

Mind you, I'm not keen on the government helping out those corps. But I'm also not fond of the government forcing businesses to make bad financial decisions and then trying to pawn off the blame for those bad decisions on the businesses themselves.

 

Drew, I fully expect the media world to react to this much the same way they have to everything else: generate an artificial crisis if they can't find a real one. It's a favorite tactic of theirs, because it works. I'm hoping to see a downplay or even death of the celebrity-frenzy that has become a major part of the media, but I'm not too confident on that.

 

Prove it. Saying it doesn't make it true. You may view everything as a partisan issue, but that doesn't mean the rest of us do. I'll not waste my breath arguing with a brick wall on this.

Marxist wannabe? How on earth do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you're constantly throwing around ridiculous accusations like this? If you think that the democrats are Marxist, I'd hate to see what you think about the actual socialist party in our country, let alone the American Communist Party. Since the socialists and communists really are socialist and communist, they must be completely off your chart.

 

I assume nothing. I'm not calling you out because I like NPR. I'm calling you out because you're wrong, you've formed a very false impression of NPR, and have taken it upon yourself to badmouth them by way of a sweeping statement about their programming that is dreadfully inaccurate. As far as what was "plain to hear," you may be right (I'd bet this person was an invited panelist, not a regular NPR host, making your point moot). But we've established in other threads that being able to tell what is and isn't "plain to hear" in regards to racism isn't exactly your strong suit, now is it. Forgive me if I don't take your word for it.

Again, what NPR do you listen to? Because it's not the NPR the rest of us do. The NPR I tune in to every day goes to great pains (sometimes, to the point of irritation) to strike ideological balance and present all sides objectively. If NPR is too much liberal spin for you, and if Fox News is "as close to balanced as it gets," as you've stated more than once, then the problem of imbalance here is you. Have you considered that you spend so much time listening to conservative news sources that your pointer for what constitutes "spin" may need some recalibration? I know you don't like getting called out for your tendency to pull things out of nowhere and not back up your claims (who does?), and you can neg-rep me all you want. But you made a sweeping condemnation about an entity you obviously have a very weak understanding of, and your response to this call out was pretty weak sauce. The proper response from you should have been something along the lines of "you know, despite the impression I got, maybe I don't know enough about NPR to make a sound judgment" and left it at that.

 

While I will be the first to concede that bank deregulation - which goes back at least to the late 1980s - was a major contributing factor to the housing meltdown, I think that the lenders do bear some responsibility. Perhaps you know more about this issue than I do. I was under the (perhaps false) impression government deregulation of banks allowed banks to make loans to people who would have otherwise not been able to get loans. Nowhere have I heard that the banks were forced to make these loans as you state. Typically government regulations set minimum standards that must be met. However, lenders, as private companies, can at their discretion set higher standards above and beyond the minimums. Just because the government allowed banks to give mortgages to people without checking their credit scores does not mean that they forced them to do so.

 

Systematically, the government forcing the banks to lend would necessitate a law that obliges bank to give credit. Which is preposterous. I would be extremely surprised if such a monstrosity existed under US law. If it would we would have seen spectacular lawsuits aimed on compelling the banks to lend, and heard a deafening outcry from the banks.

The insistence of 'forcing' has IMO primarily to do with assigning blame. And for that, facts are an inconvenience that can only get into the way.

 

No, you are quite ignorant on this point. I would suggest you stick with the facts, rather than a feeble attempt to concoct your own. It's painful to hear such talk that has no test in the real world.

Rather than the previous "moron" from Yale?

Was heavily lobbied for by the industry. Wall Street wanted the deregulation to be able to bring investments, commercial banking and mortgage loans under one roof, including insurance companies. Wall Street got what it wanted, and the taxpayer got stuck holding the bill and the bailout.

 

I'll admit that my experiences with NPR may not have been representative of the norm. One of the problems with having a schedule is you tend to be exposed to the same things (i.e. the same people on the radio at a particular hour in the day). The one incident, however, was quite plain. I remember this guy calling Mr. Harris a bigot and a 'house n*gger'. From his accent, I assumed he was black himself, so I'm assuming it was racial outrage that a fellow black man could oppose Obama (be it the man himself or just the promise of a black man running for President). If you can think of another implication, please tell me.

That was about 6 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what program it was.

If I ever called Fox 'as close to balanced as it gets', it was long ago and I've corrected myself since. The closest to balanced I've seen recently is CNN, simply because they'll attack anyone on any side so long as it gets them ratings.

I neg-repped you for your sweeping assumptions that I was reading gross hate into a perfectly innocent statement, when you didn't even know what I was talking about. This is almost as bad as Dr. Scepticus claiming pplr was imagining the attitude of the people in her forum link, except that I can't link you to a transcript. If you had asked who this guy was, if you had asked what he said that made me think that, or if you had asked what happened to him afterward, that would have been better. Saying, without actually knowing anything about what was said, that it must have been perfectly innocent is a mistake.

I based my assessment on my personal experiences. You contered with your own experiences, but only in a vitrolic attack on me that denied everything I had experienced ever happened and presumed I was a liar. Forgive me if I didn't respond kindly to that. Drew actually provided a polite, reasoned counter-arguement, and I admit my experience with NPR has never been thorough. I actually would have said this in my last post, but I was trying to get back on topic. So much for that pursuit.

There was a special program debuted under Clinton (I think) that gave 'incentives' to banks who gave large loans to first-time home buyers. I don't now what the 'incentives' were, but in some cases federal 'incentives' can essentially force someone to do something.

I don't know the details of the program, but I heard many of the defaulting loans came from it. The rest came from the banks realizing they could actually make money on such loans and continuing to make them even after the program was repealed. Combine that with the deregulation, the bundling, and the bursting housing bubble (and maybe a few other factors) and you get what happened. Again, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Yes, I think that's the point.

 

There have been many first time home buyer programs over the years. While I do not remember the specifics under Clinton, we had them under Bush and Obama as well. However, the "incentives" are not in place to to force the banks to do anything. The incentives are for the prospective home-buyer, in the form of tax breaks. The incentives are not there for the bank for making the loans.

 

I can tell you, categorically, that this person was not a paid NPR host. It had to have been a guest panelist, who I'm certain wouldn't have been invited back. This also may have been the show of a local talk radio affiliate, which is common in some markets. Not all NPR stations play NPR programming all day long. Where I'm at, it's only on during drive times (with classical inbetween). I have to get online streaming for the rest of their programming.

Fair enough.

You said, and I quote, "at the time, I happened to be listening to NPR in a work vehicle (someone else was driving). I don't usually listen to them anymore, but that instant stuck with me." A work vehicle trip implies a brief, isolated incident outside of your normal listening habits. As does the word "instant." This is the only explanation you gave me, and since your rather specific declaration that:

...was so ridiculous and strayed so far from the reality of NPR's actual programming, I had no choice but to conclude you just pulled this out of your ass. So again - the sweeping generalization here was yours, and my response was proportional to what you actually wrote.

Stop. I wasn't calling you a liar. Lying implies you knew the truth and actively said the opposite. Me telling you you're "full of sh*t" means you don't know what you're talking about but spoke authoritatively anyway. There's a difference. The flawed assumptions started with you, and if you want me to make better assumptions based on what you write, then please write more clearly. To wit:

I didn't have to. You attributed this to NPR hosts, meaning an extreme institutional bias was at work in what you heard. I didn't have to know the quote or who said it to know your assumption was way off the mark. NPR would never have such a horse's ass on the payroll, period. Invited guests are another story, on any network. You have also grossly-misread innocent statements before, so that factored into my response.

Regardless - your admission that your experience with NPR has never been thorough was what I wanted to hear you say from the get-go, so thank you. I see these absurd attacks on NPR often and I challenge them whenever they arise. Sorry you bore the brunt of it this time.

 

That's what was different about this one. It was targeted to get those typically unable to get a loan into a house. To do that, they gave incentives to banks who gave loans to help these people buy a house. I read a whole article on it that explained it thoroughly, and the article actually said it was dangerous and could destabalize the whole housing market if things take even a tiny dip. No one payed attention, and the result was far worse than that article feared.

And you apparently missed the next sentence where I wrote: "I don't usually listen to them anymore," That was specifically put there to indicate that this was not a single incident that I formed my opinion off of, but rather a unique experience after a longer period of experience. I.e. I used to listen to them more often, but I don't anymore.

You said:

This was right after I claimed I had heard someone say something, so, yes, I think you called me a liar.

Actually, no. I attributed it to one man. I assumed that one man was a host at the time from the way he was speaking (can't remember any specifics now), but I may have been mistaken. Regardless, I only accused one man of saying that.

In the future, try to be more critical and less emotional (from the words used, I read a lot of emotion in your posts, correct me if I was wrong). Keeping a cool can keep you from making big mistakes.

 

Do you have the link? Is this a recent article? The current incarnation of the first time home buyer program incentives people to buy, not banks to lend. In fact, given the backlash from the recent housing implosion, it's actually pretty hard to get a loan at this point if you don't have good credit. If this is an older article that deals with the NIVA and NINA loans that were prominant during the 2005-2008 time frame, then I agree with your assessment.