My Letter To NPR and PBS: Why I Cannot Support You

"In a Time of Universal Deceit,
Telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act."
— George Orwell

The letter below is one that I am writing to NPR and PBS. I will also copy a link to this full blog post. 

Every day I am witness to the devastating consequences of the failure of the American mainstream media to inform us. This epidemic of disempowerment and propaganda is costing us dearly. I weep when I think of our seven adult children and our five grandchildren aged 2 months to 4 years. Truly, my heart just aches! And I am furious!! How dare the American mainstream media betray us so completely... and our children and all children!?! The mother bear in me is fiercely standing up to the insanity and immorality of the complicity with the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street and the big banks, the military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, and all the huge multinational corporate interests which have long been destroying our nation and the Earth. And the climate refugees we're seeing at our borders — and the hurricanes and tornadoes, floods and droughts, wildfires and heatwaves, melting glaciers and rising seas, severe freezes and other catastrophic storms, starvation and dislocation, lack of access to water and even clean air to breathe — are all related to the climate and ecological crises.

It is also true that the grave negligence of the corporate media to speak the truth and hold the powerful accountable is also part of what is to blame for the current narcissistic fascist who occupies the White House. If we had been an informed populace — and just taking the issue of global warming alone — anyone who denied human caused climate disruption and the need for urgent radical change would have been laughed off the stage. And our discourse all the way through would have been different as our values and our tolerance for violence and the propaganda of polarization would have been significantly less. So much would be vastly different if the American mainstream media had never shifted to prioritize profits over the rights of the people to be informed.

"The most violent element in a society is ignorance." — Emma Goldman

As I learned at the rally in June in support of the youth who are suing the government in Juliana vs United States, every single American President since John Kennedy has been informed about the impending crisis to life on Earth if we fail to dramatically change and transition off of fossil fuels. And yet our government and our media has failed to act out of allegiance to and complicity with the late stage neoliberal free-market capitalist system that is destroying the viability of sustaining a habitable planet. And this support of the extreme redistribution of wealth upwards is also resulting in endless war, unfathomable suffering and loss, and crushing poverty for millions in the United States and billions worldwide. And now we're in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Yet, our corporate owned media and our corporate owned government fail to act. They know that the huge financial structures of power would need to collapse in order for a world to be born which protects and cherishes life rather than destroys it. And they choose to not give up their power.

And they continue to be the grandest enablers of all time, propping up the current fascist who occupies the White House or the neoliberals who are running against him. Yet, the most dangerous of the 1% don't care if it's a fascist or a neoliberal sitting in the White House. Either way they get what they want — drill baby drill, endless war, and growing material wealth, and all in the midst of crushing poverty, ever growing violence and displacement, suicide and sickness, addiction and despair and hopelessness. But they don't care.

And we Americans don't even know what neoliberalism is. (Please go here: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2018/12/we-live-in-world-that-has-been.html.) Or that a sixth major extinction is occurring and that the climate and ecological crises threaten most life with extinction by the end of the century if radical changes doesn't happen NOW. Most of us don't even know what we need to know to save ourselves and even our children and grandchildren. Instead there is this epidemic of silence, complicity, greed, and disempowerment. 

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

I have often written "another world is possible." But the truth is that it may not be. We may have already squandered too many decades on inaction, greed, propaganda, and ignorance. That said, it is never too late to do the right thing. Truly, we all need to do the right thing. And if we humans were ever needed to inform ourselves, share what we are learning, stand up and act, and rally together nationwide and globally to work towards the highest good for us all, now is the time! We are all needed!

Bless our Sacred Earth Mother and all her inhabitants  

— Molly

"So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us." — Naomi Klein

"We will prosper in the pursuit of life, or we will perish in the pursuit of money. The choice is ours." — David Korten

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To NPR and PBS:

In recent months you have held your membership drives. I am writing today to inform you of why I cannot support you. I write you as a 68 year old mother, grandmother, and Elder woman who cares deeply about all life on Earth.

First, I need to thank you for the programming that you do which is done well, of benefit, and demonstrates quality broadcasting. There is programming that you do well. And for that, I am grateful.

It is also true that when I hold all that is important and valuable that you cover well against your longstanding failure to inform the public about the most critical issues of our time, the balance of the devastating consequences of your silence outweighs all the positive contributions that you make. This is because the most critical issues we face in America and globally are related to the climate and ecological crises which now threaten all life on Earth. This is not to say that you have taken no steps to report the facts. You have taken some. And these are woefully inadequate. Day after day I hear you report on the crisis — the devastating floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and more — but without calling it a crisis and connecting the dots to human caused climate disruption. Your failure to make the climate and ecological crises your priority — as it needs to be for our nation and the world — makes you complicit in adding to rather than working to alleviate the catastrophic consequences of human caused climate disruption. This crisis needs to be named and it needs to be in your daily programming throughout each and every day.

I have actually long held some deep concerns about your negligence in accurate reporting in other areas — the justifications and lead up to war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, our unsustainable economy and its devastating consequences to our nation and globally, the takeover of our political system by large financial interests, and other ways in which you have demonstrated a consistent pattern of reporting for the powerful rather than holding the powerful accountable. This is not true independent investigative journalism. Too often there has been a marked silence or corporate bias on the issues you choose to report on. And given that I have for years been listening to both corporate and independent media, I am very aware there are many voices that I hear within independent media resources which I rarely or never hear on NPR or PBS. It is also true, as Desmond Tutu has stated, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

Recently I have posted several articles, videos, interviews, and speeches by a variety of voices who are calling out the corporate media for their failure to report on the climate crisis. These include Bill Moyers, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Dahr Jamail, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, climate scientists, Indigenous people and Elders, and others. (Please go here for Bill Moyers speech: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/22/what-if-we-covered-climate-emergency-we-did-world-war-ii.) And then, of course, there is 16 year old Greta Thunberg, who rightfully states, "You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes...This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind." 

There is a reason why the vast majority of Americans do not know that we are facing the greatest crisis in all of human history. There is a reason why millions of children in our nation and worldwide are rising up today demanding that we adults engage NOW in the radical changes that are needed to make possible for them a habitable planet.  

These actions by children are a terrible indictment on our utter failure as adults to inform ourselves about the crisis and to act to protect them and their futures. We have squandered decades. And one undeniable fact of why we're faced with this most extraordinary crisis today is the failure of the corporate media to divest from their corporate donors and to inform the public. NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and all media resources which are not independent have failed to act to bring us the most vital information to the well-being and the very lives of us all — information which first became known decades ago. Decades. 

The large corporate and individual donors — including the Koch brothers and many others — who have been infecting our media and political systems over the past 40 years are poisonous to the American people and to the planet. These are the financial interests which adhere to the ideology of free market neoliberal capitalism and which influence shows like "Planet Money," "Market Place," "How I Built This," "PBS Newshour," and others. They also stand as obstacles to truth, to consciousness of a much larger picture, and to programming which would embody incredibly different values and visions. Without corporate ties, new programs might instead be called "Planet Earth", "How We Built This", "Community Place," etc. And rather than consistently referring to us as "consumers," we would be referred to as citizens, human beings, the people, and our national and planetary community. This is what we all need — the facts, the truth, and reports on the national and global movements which are acting to dramatically and radically transform the cultural values, belief systems, and stories that we live by. 

The failure to courageously embrace integrity and a profound commitment to truth has made NPR and PBS — and all American media which is beholden to large corporate donors — complicit in that which threatens the lives of all our children and grandchildren and all of life on Earth. Instead of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, and the toxic Old Story of free market neoliberal capitalism influencing what we believe and serving to divide and polarize and misinform us, we urgently need an American media which is truly independent and which will give us a New Story — one which values life rather than destroys it. 

Please divest. Please refuse to continue to be complicit in this dire emergency that humankind and all of Earth's inhabitants now face. Please do the right thing. Please tell the truth. NOW. The eyes of the children are watching. 

Sincerely,

Molly Strong
Vancouver, WA

**Please also go here for the letter and post I am sharing to my blog and to Facebook: My Letter To NPR and PBS: Why I Cannot Support You — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-letter-to-npr-and-pbs-why-i-cannot.html

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Half the solution is first coming to fully see the problem. For more information on the failure to address the climate and ecological crises, and what is urgently needed now, please go here:

Bill Moyers, What If Reporters Covered the Climate Crisis Like Edward R. Murrow Covered the Start of World War II? — https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/bill-moyers-climate-change.php

Naomi Klein, Because "The House Is on Fire," Naomi Klein Takes Centrism-Obsessed Media to Task for Failed Climate Coverage — https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/01/because-house-fire-naomi-klein-takes-centrism-obsessed-media-task-failed-climate

Greta Thunberg, Austrian World Summit Speech, Vienna 2019 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFO6p4lurw

Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, and others, CJR Event on Covering Climate Change — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO9DKk07SCY

"Call It a Crisis": New Report Details Failure of Cable and Network Outlets to Accurately Describe Climate Emergency — https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/29/call-it-crisis-new-report-details-failure-cable-and-network-outlets-accurately

Naomi Klein CRJ Nation Comments — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDlqMA9iu8

“Who Is the DNC Loyal To?”: Dahr Jamail Questions DNC Veto of Primary Climate Debate, Interview by Amy Goodman of Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now! — which also illuminates the difference between what we see on NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc. and true investigative journalism.

Noam Chomsky, "Worship of Markets" Is Threatening Human Civilization https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-worship-of-markets-is-threatening-human-civilization/

When NPR Is More Dangerous Than Fox News — https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2019/07/when-npr-is-more-dangerous-than-fox-news.html

 *****

For more information, 
please consider these books:

Naomi Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal — https://naomiklein.org/on-fire/

Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out — http://billmckibben.com/falter.html

Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption — https://www.dahrjamail.net/the-end-of-ice/

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate — https://thischangeseverything.org/book/

Rabbi Michael Lerner, Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto To Heal and Transform the World — https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520304505/revolutionary-love

Riane Eisler, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future — https://rianeeisler.com/