BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004
REMOVAL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Let's
see if I've got this straight. NPR's Morning Edition has some
13 million weekly listeners, putting it in the same ballpark as Rush
Limbaugh and Howard Stern. Its audience is up 41
percent in the past five
years, according to NPR's own numbers. And the host since 1979, Bob
Edwards, has been pushed out, with no replacement having yet been
named.
Edwards tells the Washington
Post that he blames
Jay Kernis, NPR's senior vice-president for programming, saying, "I
think it's a style thing. I think he's tired of listening to me."
Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else, unless there
was something going on behind the scenes that we don't know
about.
Here
is NPR's own announcement of the change.
Nothing lasts forever, of course.
But Edwards is still only 56. NPR's drive-time newscasts, Morning
Edition and All Things Considered, though not perfect, are
by far the best broadcast news programs on the air - far better than
PBS's wretched NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
The only good news to offset this
announcement is that William
Marimow, a former editor of
the Baltimore Sun, has been named to a top position at NPR.
Marimow is a Pulitzer winner and a respected journalist, so Edwards's
removal shouldn't be seen as a sign that NPR is lowering its
standards.
What it is a sign of
remains, at this point, impossible to say.
SMEARING CLARKE.
Josh
Marshall is keeping track
of the Republican smear campaign against former counter-terrorism
official Richard Clarke.
posted at 8:53 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
