Tag Archives: National Public Radio

local news, national news

Higher gas price = safer highways

Here’s a thought that perhaps didn’t cross your mind; I didn’t think of it.

It’s the idea that skyrocketing gasoline prices slow drivers down, make them think about quick starts and stops and keep them more alert on our streets and highways. Yes, they conserve fuel by driving more slowly while starting and stopping with more care — but they also make the streets and highways safer for everyone else.

A discussion on this topic occurred this morning on National Public Radio.

The interview discussed the plummeting gasoline prices and what it might do to drivers’ awareness of the need to conserve fuel. Accordingly, if drivers no longer are as concerned about fuel economy, they likely might drive more quickly and revert to relatively hazardous driving habits — which, therefore, make our public thoroughfares more dangerous.

Wow! None of this ever occurred to me.

Gasoline in Amarillo as of this morning is down to $1.87 per gallon of unleaded regular; diesel is down to around $2.85 per gallon. None of this really means I’m about to go speeding around the city with nary a care in the world. I trust it won’t do the same to others, although still others might throw caution to the wind and push the pedal to the metal.

Energy analysts tell us the price of oil is continuing to fall and will keep falling for the foreseeable future. It’s below 50 bucks a barrel as of this morning.

I’m not one to want to pay more for a product I consider essential to my existence.

Therefore, I’ll settle for paying less for gas — and hope that my fellow motorists will continue to observe safer driving habits.

 

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In defense of National Public Radio

I want to rise in defense of National Public Radio, even though NPR really shouldn’t need little ol’ me to defend it.

I spoke the other day with a friend in the media business and she mentioned what I consider to be something of an urban myth about NPR. It’s that it’s considered to be “too liberal” for folks in the Texas Panhandle, this bastion of rigid, rock-ribbed conservative Republicanism. My friend, I should add, doesn’t share that view, but merely was telling me what she has heard over many years from friends, colleagues, neighbors and everyday strangers.

NPR’s critics are well-known. Another friend, the great editorialist Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has referred to NPR as “National Propaganda Radio.” I’ve conversed over the phone with Republican U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry’s staff members who feel compelled to whisper the term “NPR” when talking to me; they don’t want their colleagues in Mac’s D.C. office to hear them saying nice things about the public radio network.

It’s all hogwash.

I have two points to make about NPR.

First, High Plains Public Radio came into existence in the early 1980s, headquartered in Garden City, Kan. But in the late 1990s, HPPR opened a studio in downtown Amarillo. It came here thanks to the hard work of several prominent Panhandle residents. One of them was Mark Bivins, an Amarillo businessman who hardly could be labeled a flaming liberal.

I have talked with Bivins at length about HPPR and his take on it simply is that it presents news and analysis fairly and without bias. That’s why he is such an ardent supporter of HPPR’s mission in this region.

My second point is a bit more specific. It concerns the Affordable Care Act and the media’s coverage of it. Another friend, Mark Haslett, is a former newspaper colleague who, in his previous life, was employed by HPPR at its Amarillo studio. He’s a longtime broadcast and print journalist who understands the concept of fairness and bias in reporting the news. Incidentally, Mark has returned to public broadcasting.

Haslett told me some years back that NPR had handed down an edict to its member stations that the effort to change the nation’s health care system shouldn’t be called a “reform.” Haslett said NPR’s mandate was to refer to it as an “overhaul.” The term “reform,” Mark said, connotes an improvement; “overhaul” is a neutral term that doesn’t tilt the discussion in either direction.

Therein lies an example of the fairness and objectivity that NPR seeks to build into its news reporting.

Is it deemed too “liberal” by some folks here? Sure. I accept that. I also must insist that those critics are viewing that particular medium through their own bias. If a news organization doesn’t present news and analysis to fit their own world view, then it’s biased.

I’ll stick with National Public Radio any day.