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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdib08w wrote

Reply to comment by you_give_me_coupon in A critique of Brave Little State's segment on Airbnbs by headgasketidiot

Yeah, I pasted this elsewhere in the thread, but an argument much like you're making is laid out in some detail here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/npr-is-not-your-friend

The whole thing is very Manufacturing Consent. I don't doubt the reporter's honestly; I just think that, as Chomsky famously said in that interview, the people who end up doing the reporting are the kinds of people who believe the kinds of things they do. When's the last time anyone at VPR gave an openly anticapitalist framing of an issue? I think On The Media is probably the only NPR show that dabbles in leftist thought. Meanwhile, there are like 10 different shows that are just neoliberal apologia (How I Built This is just capitalist great man propaganda. Science Friday has tons of uncritical coverage of corporate products, etc.).

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BeckyKleitz t1_jdj6kao wrote

Oh now see...I like Science Friday. I hate it that I've missed it again today. :(

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdj7khe wrote

It's not a bad show per se. I like listening to the cool shit people are doing. I myself do R&D at private companies for a living, and I think some of the stuff I've made is pretty cool. But it does very uncritically report on the R&D of private companies while avoiding the greater context in which they're being made, and clearly views private companies in the market as the vessel through which technology progresses, and humanity with it.

I think they could do with a dose of critical theory every now and then, especially when they start talking about medical technologies. Those can get pretty hard to listen to.

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