Radio

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Ina Jaffe, Dogged and Award-Winning NPR Reporter, Dies at 75

      by

      Ms. Jaffe spent decades covering politics and aging in America, and she was the first editor of the NPR program “Weekend Edition Saturday.”Ina Jaffe, an NPR correspondent for roughly 40 years who was known for her unflinching approach to journalism and was the first editor of the network’s initial iteration of the weekly national news show “Weekend Edition Saturday,” died on Thursday. She was 75.Ms. Jaffe, who had been living with metastatic breast cancer for several years, died at a nursing home in Los Angeles, said her husband, Lenny Kleinfeld.Often described by her colleagues at NPR as a “reporter’s reporter,” Ms. Jaffe had a keen sense of the line separating the equitable and the unjust. The breadth of her journalistic expertise grew over the decades, beginning with the politics beat and evolving in later years to analyses that chronicled what it means to grow older in America.In addition to “Weekend Edition,” she contributed stories for the daily afternoon news program “All Things Considered.”In 2012, Ms. Jaffe reported on the Department of Veterans Affairs in Los Angeles leasing large areas of its campus that had been intended to house homeless veterans to unrelated businesses. In part because of a series of stories that she reported, the administration slated more land to be developed to provide housing for homeless veterans. In 2018, two men involved in the lease deals were sentenced on fraud charges.The series won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      White House Provided the Questions in Advance for Biden’s Radio Interviews

      by

      The host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia said the president’s aides provided her with a list of eight questions to choose from.The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by Mr. Biden’s aides at the White House, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said White House officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday.“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” she told Victor Blackwell, the host of “First of All” on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was.“I got several questions — eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said it is “not uncommon” for the campaign to share preferred topics, but added that officials “do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions” by the interviewer.“Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners,” she said. “In addition to these interviews, the president also participated in a press gaggle yesterday as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Larry Bensky, a Fixture of Left-Wing Radio, Is Dead at 87

      by

      A self-described activist-journalist, he was for many years the national affairs correspondent for the community-focused Pacifica network.Larry Bensky, a radio journalist whose reporting on major political events made him the signature voice of Pacifica Radio, a network of progressive, listener-supported stations, died on May 19 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 87.His wife, Susie Bluestone, said he died in home hospice care.Mr. Bensky’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the congressional Iran-contra hearings of 1987 put the Pacifica network on the map, earning him a prestigious Polk Award for radio reporting.Mr. Bensky, who called himself an activist-journalist, brought leftist views to reporting — often on people and issues under-covered by other news outlets — which he hoped would, as he often put it, “stir things up.”That was hardly a fringe view in the progressive ethos of the Bay Area, where he was based, though he still managed to transgress the boundaries on a regular basis. The free-form rock station KSAN, the voice of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, threw him off the air for interviewing workers who had been fired by one of the station’s sponsors.He was later dismissed from his longtime home, KPFA in Berkeley, for on-air criticism of decisions by the station’s owners, though he was reinstated after broadcasting over a pirate radio signal from the street outside. He was known to colleagues as cantankerous, but he was also so knowledgeable about history and politics that he could broadcast for hours without notes or a script.KPFA, founded by pacifists in 1949, was the nation’s first public radio station and the first to broadcast Allen Ginsberg reading his poem “Howl” and to open its airwaves to Patricia Hearst, who denounced her parents as “capitalist pigs” during her kidnapping.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Rex Murphy, a Dominant Pundit on the Right in Canada, Dies at 77

      by

      In newspaper columns and on radio and TV, he was his country’s “premier provocateur,” gaining a wide audience for his conservative attacks on liberals and environmentalists.Rex Murphy, a Canadian newspaper, radio and television commentator who delighted his country’s conservatives with sharp attacks on environmentalists, liberal politicians and what he called their “woke politics,” died on May 9 in Toronto. He was 77.His death, from cancer, was announced on the front page of The National Post, the widely read daily newspaper for which he wrote a column, one of several he had over the years in Canadian papers, including The Globe and Mail in Toronto. His editor at The National Post, Kevin Libin, said Mr. Murphy died in a hospital.In his heyday, in the 1990s, Mr. Murphy was the rare political commentator who commanded a countrywide audience, skewering Canada’s elites as well as its sometimes fragile sense of nationhood. His roots in Canada’s youngest province, and one of its most rugged, Newfoundland, informed a combative patriotism and an affinity for the country’s working class.For 21 years, from 1994 to 2015, he was the host of “Cross Country Checkup,” a popular weekly radio call-in show aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He would listen patiently as cranky listeners aired their views, then delivered his own back, pointedly. For much of that period he gave a weekly segment of commentary on the CBC’s main nightly TV news program, “The National.”“For a very long time, he was Canada’s premier provocateur,” said Tim Powers, a former CBC colleague and friend.In a 1996 profile, the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean’s wrote of Mr. Murphy: “He has become the unlikeliest of Canadian celebrities — a quirkily untelegenic presence who has defied the canons of conventional programming wisdom to etch himself upon the country’s consciousness.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Call on NPR’s Chief, Katherine Maher, to Testify on Bias

      by

      Katherine Maher, the radio network’s new chief executive, has been in the spotlight since an editor published an essay accusing the organization of leftward-leaning bias.Congressional Republicans on Wednesday said they had asked NPR’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher, to address accusations of political bias in the radio network’s journalism during a hearing next week.A trio of Republican lawmakers — Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Bob Latta of Ohio and Morgan Griffith of Virginia — sent a six-page letter to Ms. Maher that notified her of an investigation into the network and requested her appearance on May 8. “As a taxpayer funded, public radio organization, NPR should focus on fair and objective news reporting that both considers and reflects the views of the larger U.S. population and not just a niche audience,” the letter said.The lawmakers, all members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the hearing would be held by the panel’s oversight subcommittee. NPR declined to comment, but Ms. Maher may have a scheduling conflict. According to an agenda of NPR’s upcoming board of directors meeting, Ms. Maher is scheduled to convene with NPR’s board all day on May 8.NPR has been scrutinized by conservatives in recent weeks after the publication of an essay by Uri Berliner, a former senior editor at the network, who said that the network had allowed progressive politics to affect its coverage of major stories. Mr. Berliner, who has since resigned, cited the network’s coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and Hunter Biden’s laptop as examples of bias.Mr. Berliner’s essay has generated vociferous pushback from many employees at NPR, who say that many of his points were factually inaccurate. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor for standards, has said the network’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Covid-19 pandemic and the investigation into Russian collusion by Robert S. Mueller III, a special counsel, hewed closely to responsible coverage by other mainstream news organizations. Ms. Maher, who joined the network this year, has personally been targeted by conservative activists who have combed through her social media history and resurfaced posts that promoted progressive causes and critiqued former President Donald J. Trump. In one post, from 2018, Ms. Maher called Mr. Trump a “racist”; another from 2020 showed her wearing a hat with the logo of the Biden campaign.NPR has said that Ms. Maher, the former chief executive of Wikimedia, wasn’t working in news at the time she made the posts, and added that she was exercising her First Amendment right to free expression.Over the years, Republicans have occasionally threatened to pull government money from NPR, which comes from the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But those threats haven’t resulted in any significant funding reduction for the organization, which generates much of its revenue by selling radio programming to its member stations across the United States. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      I’m happy to debate Trump, says Biden in surprise Howard Stern interview

      by

      Joe Biden sprang a surprise on the Washington press corps on Friday when he gave an interview to the radio host and shock jock Howard Stern.The president also made news. Asked if he would debate Donald Trump before the election in November, Biden said: “I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.”The Biden campaign confirmed to reporters that Biden was willing to face Trump in person. Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump and the Republican National Committee, posted: “OK let’s set it up!”Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has goaded Biden about debating – despite skipping all debates in his own primary this year; withdrawing from his second debate with Biden in 2020; and in 2022 prompting the Republican National Committee to withdraw from the body that organises presidential debates.Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also revealed that when Trump and Biden did meet on the debate stage, in September 2020, Trump had tested positive for Covid-19 but declined to tell the public. Trump and members of his family then flouted Covid protocols around the debate with Biden.The interview between Biden and Stern was announced minutes before the conversation began on air. Reporting the unscheduled stop in New York, the White House pool report said: “At 10.05am, the motorcade made an unscheduled stop at Sirius XM studio in midtown Manhattan.”Jennifer Witz, chief executive of Sirius XM, said: “We are thrilled that President Biden chose Howard Stern. It’s just another reminder that Howard is in a league of his own, regularly lauded as the world’s best interviewer.”That would be up for debate but Stern does have a habit of making news – often, in the case of Biden’s White House predecessor, retrospectively.Trump’s interviews with Stern before entering politics have regularly resurfaced, particularly over Trump’s usually controversial, often lewd and sometimes disturbing remarks.Wirtz said Sirius XM was “proud to offer distinct and varied insights and commentary spanning the political spectrum”.Biden was in New York after attending a campaign fundraiser hosted by the actor Michael Douglas on Thursday.Stern had never interviewed a sitting president before. In 2019, he interviewed Hillary Clinton, the losing Democratic candidate in the 2016 election.A day after the rightwing-dominated supreme court showed signs of delaying Trump’s federal election subversion trial by indulging his claims about presidential immunity, Stern asked Biden why he had to be careful talking about a court the host called “a joke”.“It’s a really extremely conservative court, maybe the most conservative in modern history,” Biden said.He also excused himself for a “Freudian slip” after saying “Trump” while meaning to refer to Richard Nixon.Much of the interview focused on Biden’s long life in politics, as a senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, as vice-president to Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017, and as president since 2021.Discussing the deaths in a car crash in 1972 of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and young daughter, Naomi, the president told Stern he then contemplated suicide.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I used to sit there and just think I’m going to take out a bottle of scotch,” Biden said. “I’m going to just drink it and get drunk.“I just thought about it, you don’t need to be crazy to commit suicide. I thought, ‘Let me just go to the Delaware Memorial [Bridge] and jump.’”He also encouraged listeners experiencing mental health issues to seek therapy.About how he met Jill Biden, his second wife, Biden said: “I got a call from my brother. ‘So I have a girl here at Delaware’ – Jill is nine years younger than I am. He said, ‘You’ll love her. She doesn’t like politics.’”Before that, while he was single, Biden said, he “got put in that 10 most eligible bachelors list … and a lot of lovely women, but women, would send very salacious pictures and I just give them to the Secret Service.”The “proudest thing” he had ever done in politics, Biden said, was securing the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, which he introduced in 1990 and which became law four years later. The law was reauthorised and strengthened in 2013, when Biden was vice-president.The 81-year-old president has attracted controversy through his relative reluctance to sit for interviews with the mainstream press.On Thursday, a day before Biden chose to speak to Stern, Politico published an extensive report about what it called a “petty feud” between the Biden White House and the New York Times.“Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets,” Politico said, “the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organisation catering to an elite audience – and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work.“On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.”Reporting Biden’s interview with Stern, the Times noted that the president “once again told a story about being arrested at a Delaware desegregation protest as a teenager”, but observed: “There has never been any evidence that he ever was arrested at a civil rights protest.” More

    • 63 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Inside the Crisis at NPR

      by

      NPR employees tuned in for a pivotal meeting late last year for a long-awaited update on the future of the public radio network.After many tumultuous months, marked by layoffs, financial turbulence and internal strife, they signed in to Zoom hoping to hear some good news from NPR’s leaders. What they got instead was a stark preview of the continued challenges ahead.“We are slipping in our ability to impact America, not just in broadcast, but also in the growing world of on-demand audio,” Daphne Kwon, NPR’s chief financial officer, told the group, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.For the past two weeks, turmoil has engulfed NPR after a senior editor assailed what he described as an extreme liberal bias inside the organization that has bled into its news coverage. The editor, Uri Berliner, said NPR’s leaders had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace” — at the expense of diverse political viewpoints, and at the risk of losing its audience.The accusations, leveled in an essay published in an online publication, The Free Press, led to a deluge of criticism from conservatives, including former President Donald J. Trump, who called for the network’s public funding to be pulled. The essay also generated vociferous pushback internally, with many journalists defending their work and saying Mr. Berliner’s essay distorted basic facts about NPR’s coverage.But NPR’s troubles extend far beyond concerns about its journalism. Internal documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with more than two dozen current and former public radio executives show how profoundly the nonprofit is struggling to succeed in the fast-changing media industry. It is grappling with a declining audience and falling revenue — and internal conflict about how to fix it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      After 5,631 Yankees Games, John Sterling Calls His Own Walk-Off

      by

      The WFAN announcer was known for his catchphrase, “It is high! It is far! It is gone!” His last game was on Monday.John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman had that special sort of radio relationship where they would often finish each other’s sentences, or more precisely, each other’s lyrics. They might have been announcing Yankees games, but that would not prevent them from dipping into musical theater, a passion for both of them.“It’s something sort of grandish,” Sterling might say on the air, using one of his signature phrases to describe a great play by the former outfielder Curtis Granderson, or perhaps it was a reference a grand slam someone had hit.Right on cue, without any rehearsal other than decades as friends and colleagues, Waldman would add, “Sweeps my soul when thou art near,” reciting the next line of the song from “Finian’s Rainbow.”Sterling and Waldman formed one of the more unusual relationships in sports broadcasting history, but it ended abruptly on Monday when Sterling retired, effective immediately. “I just don’t want to do any more work,” he said Monday on WFAN. “I’ve worked for 64 years, and in July I’ll be 86, so let’s face it, my time has come.”He had announced 5,420 regular season and 211 postseason Yankees games on radio since 1989. With his silky baritone, singsong inflections and signature home-run call — “It is high! It is far! It is gone!” — Sterling became a fixture on the airwaves, bringing his earnest and schticky boosterism to generations of Yankee fans.“He is an original, and there will never be another like him,” Waldman said on Tuesday.Sterling’s last 20 years were spent alongside Waldman, whom he met in 1987 at WFAN. They became fast friends, as much for their love of sports as Broadway. When the former Yankee owner George Steinbrenner suggested hiring Waldman as the first woman to do color commentating on regular a baseball broadcasts, Sterling endorsed the pioneering move.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More