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Comment by washadjeffmad | Hacker News Reader

NPR does an excellent job of manufacturing a facade of being fair and disinterested, but in recent years, they've become more brazen about being a PR campaign for wealthy elites, their enterprises, and their politics, a la the Pareto principle. If you're against that, then NPR has been pretty intolerable for the past decade.

NPR member stations are on the whole decent, but the way NPR came out in force against Sanders showed both how out of touch and unabashedly unreasonable they could be when called to toe their betters' line. I'd been a regular supporter through the early Car Talk and Science Friday days, ending with their disgusting behavior during the primaries.

Pulling off making everyone look biased but you is quite a feat, and I'm impressed how many still consent rather than admit their emperor's indecency.

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Fwiw, I feel the same.

What annoys me the most about NPR is the relentless gaslighting. They act / speak as if they don't have an agenda (i.e., bias) and the rest of us are too stupid to see it. There's a smug "we didn't say X or Y" attitude but the problem is the questions they don't ask, the subtle ins and outs they pretend don't exist. Their news feels redacted to the point it looks like Swiss cheese.

I enjoy the speciality shows (e.g., Hidden Brain) but the sociopolitical current events on the local NYC and PHL stations is gringe-tastic too often.

Oops. I should have said, "Their news feels redacted to the point it looks like Swiss cheese, and smells like Limburger."

are there elites that are not wealthy? or does wealthy elite just sound better as a soundbite?

Academics, artists, and public intellectuals reasonably qualify as elite while often not being wealthy.

Also lot of journalists. Though it is questionable are they part of elite. But they act like they are and follow same talking points. While not making much money.

A lot of people in professional jobs who identify with the wealthy to distinguish their place in the hierarchy from the next layer down.

Elites as defined by having an agenda, and perhaps a station to enact it from. Bureaucrats, politicians, academics, etc generally have different domains of influence and aren't all wealthy.

NPR are proud of their sponsors, and prouder yet of how very little all of the public's dollars make up of their revenue in comparison.

That's definitely not the definition of an elite.

The Rasmussen poll on elites[0] has a nice working definition of "those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile" as well as a fascinating material difference in the beliefs of that 1% of the population as compared to the rest.

If I may editorialize, perhaps we can also posit that if someone does not meet these criteria but nevertheless shares the same opinions as the elite, then they are desiring to join the elite.

[0]: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/...

There’s perhaps wealthy people who are not elites.

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