NPR News Yesterday (1/13/05)

I listened to Morning Edition from 8 to 9, The Connection from 10-11, and a bit of All Things Considered between 4-5:30. There were two stories that had PR angles, one about the inaugural and one about major league baseball.

The inaugural story featured a public relations person from the Ritz-Carlton hotel justifying the hotel’s rate hike of 20% during the events in Washington (“We charge what the market will bear!” she said.), and reporting on some of the more outrageous requests the hotel has gotten from guests paying (in some cases) $2000/night. She really tried to cast the best possible light on inaugural excess, but you just can’t make something so crass sound good, especially with all the bad stuff going on elsewhere in the world. The piece was probably cast as a fluff piece, but NPR cannot resist moralizing when people are dying of AIDS and whole villages have been destroyed, and there is not enough money to go around. Selfish Americans (Republicans)!! Shame on you! As a follow on to the fluffy PR piece, there was some serious reporting about protesters on the inaugural route getting shortchanged (or outright denied) space to express their views. This report was well balanced in that it also took some republican supporters’ views on the subject, including interviews with several republican group spokespeople who were also getting shorted on space along the route. But, the reporter took care to point out that denying certain groups access was tantamount to curtailing freedom of speech, since these groups would be excluded from media coverage of the event, thereby loosing their ability to voice concerns about the Bush administration.

In the afternoon, the folks from major league baseball (MLB) tried to get their point across about drug testing, and how great their system would be. The nice thing about this story was its balance – it did a good job giving voice to all interested parties. Part of the point of the story was to showcase how MLB executives were spinning drug testing measures, trying to make them look more stringent than they really were, while minimizing the news that drug use was widespread in the sport. The report ended positively, so the MLB PR folks did a good job communicating the drug testing plan to NPR – well enough to convince the reporter that the drug policy is at the very least a step in the right direction.

THe Connection was about Social Security reform. I love listening to people express their opinions about stuff like this, which is why I enjoy listening to call-in shows on NPR. It gives you a richer, more nuanced view of an issue like privitization of SS.

There were also several stories about Aceh Province, Iraq (how about that, no WMDs! Duh), and the La Conchita mudslide (what a nightmare), likely taken from the wire services. All in all an interesting day of news on NPR.