NPR

I used to listen to National Public Radio in the car between home & the park&pride, but since I retired even that short bit of exposure is eliminated. I used to get disgusted by NPR's total emphasis, well, ever since the Iraq war when they relentlessly beat the drums for the Bush Administration. I got so fed up with them reading Bush's press releases word-for-word and never doing any fact checking. It was obvious.

Ever since then, well you'd think with the unmitigated disaster Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be, that they'd have learned a lesson and started to verify stories before they ran with them.

But no, they're still 90% Al Qaeda and ISIS reports of atrocities. All other news takes a distant back seat.

On top of which, for "public radio" they play at least 15 minutes of ads every half hour. They may be sponsorship announcements read by the hosts, but they're still ads. Maybe pledge drives won't support a radio station -- even one that does no original reporting -- but I get mighty sick of ads.

Mention this because I turned on NPR as I lay in bed this morning, wondering if there was any news in the world. I lasted all of ten seconds.

Here NPR is Jackson State University's Cool and Current. JSU is an urban university in the seat of the civil rights fights, they play jazz and have a very academic way about them. I adore them. I listen to the jazz all the time in the car or at home and I love stuff like All Things Considered and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. (Though I could literally beat them to death for Thistle and Shamrock.)

But then I don't rely on them for news. For news I go see the BBC or Al jazeera English.