One helluva demographic
: Tom Biro finds that NPR went to Google and bought the keyword “beheading.” Now that’s a brand association for you: When I hear beheading, I think NPR….
16 responses to “One helluva demographic”
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As I just posted on Tom’s site, our tax dollars paid for this?
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What’s wrong with NPR buying “keyboards”? Do you expect them to use a mouse all the time?
[ insert saturday night live “nevermind” here… fixed… thanks…. – jeff ] -
No, Mark, your tax dollars likely didn’t pay for this. According to NPR’s website, only “a very small percentage – between 1-2 percent of NPR’s annual budget – comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.”
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Isn’t it more likely that NPR has paid to have their ad placed in connection to any search that results in a number of Iraq references? I don’t know how exactly one pays to have an ad placed on Google, but that seems more probable to have your ad placement determined based on the results of a search, not the keyword itself.
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Tim Brio corrects me (privately), indicating that when using the Google AdWords service, “you actually have to supply the words you would like to come up in relation to.”
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My god, NPR is on the side of the terrorists! Or…wait, why is this anything anyone should spend one millionth of one second on?
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Actually, djangone, I don’t think anyone said that at all. The point was….isn’t it kind of unfortunate that NPR chose to attach their brand to “beheading” as an advertising term?
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My first thought was: Why would NPR advertize to individuals seeking further info on beheading?
I have it!
They believe they have a unique offering in this area.
Sound effects!
Anyone who has ever listened to NPR’s on the scene reportage has experienced the cheezy old time radio sound effects.
You know the ones; the peasant women mashing dried maize, infants crying, researchers trudging through the rainforest, etc. The ones that sound like someone forgot and left the mike on.
Perhaps they feel listeners would appreciate the combination slicing sawing sound, followed by running liquid, while hearing a description of the beheading process.
Or maybe it’s just because Naked Propaganda Radio is losing more and more listeners such as myself, who love classical music, but cannot any longer tolerate their socialist agenda. -
Tom said: “isn’t it kind of unfortunate that NPR chose to attach their brand to “beheading” as an advertising term?”
This is narrow thinking. NPR is attaching a brand to anything. They simply realize that given recent event, a large proportion of people using the search term “beheading” are searching for news about events in Iraq – something they can offer. -
(typo above) sentence should read: “NPR is not attaching a brand to anything”
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John: you apparently don’t have a good understanding of socialism (or NPR, for that matter) if you really think NPR supports such an ideology. If NPR supported a socialist agenda, they wouldn’t allow corproate underwriting that helps keep them afloat, they wouldn’t produce & distribute the Motley Fool radio show, and so on.
in fact, a revealed that NPR is quite similar to other major media outlets in its reliance on an “elite majority” of government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives for its news, reactions and commentaries.
And regarding NPR’s apparent liberal bias, this study revealed that when looking at partisan sources (during news programs in June 2034) -
NPR is not losing listeners, Mike. That wasn’t even a good try. Their audience has grown 56% over the last five years and has doubled in the last ten. It’s what Newt Gingrich listens to while driving to work.
It’s one of the great mysteries of how life evolves that I now find myself driving to work listening ruitinely every morning to NPR.
   –Newt Gingrich, 2/7/04, Keynote adress to NPR station managers. -
Michael
I know when I’m listening to collectivist crapola.
I went to google and typed npr & socialism. On the first page returned was this link:
http://www.kplu.org/kplutravel-cuba.html
Obviously this is not proof of anything other than a delegation of NPR listeners having a great time; apparently ignorant of, or oblivious to, anything but the cultural enrichment to be had in Castro’s Cuba.
Ironically enough, the KPLU Travel Club junket was named “Cuba in Depth”
Just beneath is this link:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/rushton200310300857.asp
It is a National Review opinion piece by Sean Rushton on the subject of NPR’s coverage of the Senate Judiciary Commitee’s hearings on the Bush Administration’s nominee to the DC Court of Appeals, Janice Rogers Brown, who is a conservative black woman.
The Liberal Establishment is very afraid of nominees to the judiciary who have adopted a restrictive interpretation of the Constitution.
The founders highly valued personal liberty, private property rights, and limited government.
In order to advance the collectivist agenda, an expansive reading of the Constitution was required, and was the norm, in the period beginning with FDR and continuing after WWII when the Democrats controlled Congress.
Call it Socialist Lite if you like, the trend is being reversed, and it seems that NPR takes a negative view of this.
Again, not evidence, but it gives you a sense of why even though I love some of their musical offerings, I can no longer stomach NPR’s biased reporting and commentary.
I am not going to spend any more time on this, but I’m certain that a refined search would yield more.
As to why NPR cannot possibly have a Socialist agenda because they accept corporate sponsorship, that is your logic.
It is something akin to saying that Saddam Hussien and Al Qu’eda cannot possibly be enemies of the United States concurrently because one was secular and the other Islamist. -
I’m with you, John. The heated protestations on the subject make me think we’re attacking someone’s god. A respected friend urged me to give NPR another try. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t get past the smugness and small-mindedness, content aside (and the content was not all, but mostly, blatantly slanted). I still respect my friend and just have to conclude that intelligent people can be blind to each other’s perspectives.
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I, for one, will beheading for the other end of the radio dial.
