National Provincial Radio

My apologies for talking about National Public Radio, but there are times when it becomes too galling to ignore.

Listeners know that one of the delights of their programming comes from talk shows during which an incensed caller exhibits a blithering provincialism expressed in colorful language. Some other part of the world is proclaimed untrustworthy, cowardly, whatever – a conclusion reached in indignant ignorance. Yesterday, one caller said of Afghanistan that the British should have no say there because they had “cut and run,” an unusual swipe against a country that has 10,000 soldiers committed there until at least 2013.

Now, I know that every country’s media has a navel to celebrate. If the developer of, say, a new zit cream is a Canadian, the press up there will let you know, again and again and again. Especially if that Canadian is a success in the USA. It’s a national pathology.

Similarly, a friend in Paris believes that the Alliance Française, a global network of French-speaking clubs, receives government subsidy solely to make French people believe that their country and culture have influence absolutely everywhere. An earthquake in Bolivia? French television contacts the Alliance Française there and interviews one of its members, who fluently explains that, oui, the quake shook the ground. You see, people speak French everywhere… I know this delusion from experience. When a group of middle-management people I was teaching in Paris took a group holiday to Egypt (off the French beaten paths to Tunisia and Morocco), they came back truly astonished that all the hotel staff and tour guides spoke English, and not French.

Back to the radio. This morning there was a lot of chatter about Wikileaks. And how their Afghanistan documents were being interpreted. By The New York Times. Absolutely nothing about The Guardian and Der Spiegel. Nothing. Those publications, which also got the document dump from Wikileaks, were not even mentioned in a subordinate clause, as if the programmer deliberately want to avoid mention of something foreign. Is it really that hard to say, even in a two-second aside, that Wikileaks gave the documents to the English and Germans? Will it offend people? And, I ask hopelessly, does what they have reported warrant analysis? The Guardian, by the way, focuses on civilian deaths; the Times on US national security – but you knew that already.

I didn’t think so.

This is the radio station that regularly reports on the sad deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan by saying that, today, of the x number of soldiers killed, y were American. End of story.

And the others? Is it really offensive to the American public to identify them? It’s not hard: just leave the US Army press release and go to a foreign website. Why not say, for example, two Poles, and one Briton? It takes three seconds, and it’s news. Why is this deliberately – and it is deliberate – left out of reporting on the war? Why is it taboo to mention other nationalities? Would it diminish the image of American martyrdom by saying that other countries are taking a hit? Would listeners be distressed at the loss of our monopoly on virtue? Would they stop plunking down a hundred bucks every pledge drive to get their NPR hoodies?

I think I know the answer. They want that provincial caller to remain in the dark, to enliven their talk shows. It makes for great radio.

Far-fetched, you say? It goes further than that. The NPR crew have become their audience. In the same program about Wikileaks and The New York Times, they took a break to report about change at the top of BP. How an Englishman had been replaced by an American. The reporter and the host of the show glibly chatted about how this might be a good PR move because the new man had “no accent.” Not “no foreign accent” or “a familiar accent,” mind you, but “no accent” whatsoever. You see, we don’t speak with an accent. But everyone else does. Especially when they’re speaking French.

President Palin, would you care to comment?