Radio

Now that everyone and their dog is hooked up to the Internet, over-the-air radio stations don’t get much ear time, especially among my demographic of young tech workers living in big cities. But I still like it for its simplicity. You hit the power button and it is on. It also isn’t as completely overtaken with utter crap like television is.

Usually the only place that many people listen to the radio is in their car, that place where audio technology lags behind the home by a good ten years. Well, thankfully, I rarely drive. And I am not about to put ear buds in when I am on my bike. No, that wouldn’t be safe 🙂

When I was in New York City last summer for a week or so, my first Couch Surfing host had a radio in her bathroom that she kept on most of the day. I had an awesome Grundig radio sitting around that I wasn’t using, so in our new place I’ve put it to use in the bathroom.

So far I have been just listening to KQED, 88.5, San Francisco’s NPR station with some of its own local programming as well. I have been getting pretty frustrated with it lately, because of problems that I already knew existed. NPR is essentially a bull horn for the government’s propaganda machine, even though they do it while attempting to sound respectable by leaving out the yelling, the majority of ads, and the fancy sound effects and gimmicks. Surely, this is an improvement over corporate TV news, but what really matters is the substance of the broadcast, and in this area they are just as bad as corporate TV news.

In multiple mentions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have not heard talk of the civilian death toll, which is probably over a million combined, or the United States’ responsibility for this death toll. These things are by far the most important aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the war in Pakistan, which gets no mention). The guests interviewed or quoted for NPR’s pieces on these wars are US, Iraqi, or Afghan government and military officials, never representing or discussing the will of the people of any of these countries.

I wonder what would happen if NPR brought on Dahr Jamail, Amy Goodman, or the unthinkable – the parent of one of the countless children that had been murdered by the US war machine.

I think I will be learning how to set the station favorites on my radio and trying out KPFA and KPOO.

Update: And, of course, Pirate Cat Radio, which is what inspired this post to begin with.