NPR’s Scott Simon raises an interesting issue this week about whether all listener complaints are valid:
Jeffrey, I think we had an illustration of an interesting and valuable point today. We had on a three-person singing group called Innocence Mission who has recorded an album of lullabies. The e-mail response we received was overwhelmingly hostile. People didn’t write just to say, “I don’t care for that kind of music,” but disparaged the singers, our taste in music, and our waste of their resources of time and support in airing such treacle. Of course, several vowed, “I am never giving another dime to W*#& again….”
On a guess, (Weekend Edition Saturday producer) Matt Martinez logged in to Amazon.com. As I write this, just after our West Coast feed has finished, the Innocence Mission CD of lullabies has jumped from a ranking in the several thousands all the way up to number 2, just behind Tina Turner’s Greatest Hits. The average ranking that consumers give it is 4 and a half out of 5 stars. While Amazon is guarded about hard numbers, I think it’s safe to assume that the interview on our program moved several thousand people to order that CD.
When we receive even 20 e-mails complaining about something on our air, it is our tendency to say, “Everybody hated it,” or “A lot of people hated it.” Sometimes, it even makes us shy about trying something similar again. But I think the figures on Amazon demonstrate that, in fact, most of our listeners actually liked the music disparaged by our pen pals in the audience. Several thousand of our listeners logged in to Amazon and paid $15.95, plus shipping and handling, for music they heard on our program (and this doesn’t even account for those listeners who may order the CD from other services, or even walk in to a music store).
I think it’s good to remind ourselves that scores of e-mails not only represent a small percentage of the audience, they can badly misrepresent the sentiments of millions.
Ignore the Listeners?
Scott raises an important point. Listeners aren’t shy about letting NPR know when they feel deeply about an issue. (I am not talking here about write-in campaigns, which are easily detectable because the letter writers all use the same phrasings.)
As ombudsman, I tend to forward only those e-mails that, in my opinion, have a significant and valid criticism to offer about NPR. I try to make sure that I am not prejudging the opinion and, if I err on one side, I hope that it is on the side of the listeners.
I also received a few e-mails of complaint about the children’s music segment on WESAT but did not find the criticism significant or valid. I filed them but did not send them on to the program staff, because I won’t forward e-mails that are rude or abusive.
Fortunately, I receive relatively few of those. But if you, dear listeners, want to ensure that I make your concerns known, please refrain from sending those less-than-helpful suggestions that defy the limits of physical possibility.
John Waters Redux
Scott’s observation relates to something I wrote a few columns ago in which I supported listeners who objected to an interview with John Waters.
Waters is a filmmaker and cultural phenomenon who is, as I mentioned, not to everyone’s taste.
My conclusion in that column was in support of the listeners who complained. I wrote that Waters was inappropriate for a Saturday morning audience.
Scott’s e-mail has caused me to rethink that position.
I think that NPR has an obligation to present ideas and the people behind them, but that it should do so in a way that doesn’t make listeners lose confidence in NPR’s ability to explain the world. Although Waters makes a living being outrageous, I think, in retrospect, that his interview was worthwhile because he represents something worth considering in American culture.
Journalists, especially in broadcasting, are always walking that line between giving the listeners what they want and what they need.
I think listeners needed to hear Waters, and I was wrong to support those listeners who objected to hearing him on WESAT.
How the program chose to present him might be worth revisiting.
However…
A couple of caveats: First, I believe deeply that NPR journalists and program producers have, for the most part, pretty good instincts about what works and what doesn’t on the radio.
There have been a couple of spectacular “clangers,” when NPR has tried out something new and flopped. No need to go into them again. But NPR is still capable of innovative approaches and needs to remember the successes along with the failures.
Second, NPR needs to make sure that its own instincts are tested, from time to time, in the harsh light of public opinion. If NPR aired only what interested the folks who worked here, the accusations I sometimes receive about self-absorption and journalistic narcissism would be correct.
Giving the listeners only “warm-and- fuzzy” radio might make some listeners happy, but it would send others, I am sure, in search of something edgier and more journalistically rigorous.
Too many contented listeners would also, I hasten to add, make an ombudsman superfluous. But I also need to keep asking if every complaint I forward is really valid.
Too Much Irony?
One listener who thinks that the Waters interview was symptomatic of self-absorption is Logan Anderson:
I’m going to be brutally honest with you: I don’t listen to NPR much anymore. Back in the early 1980s, when I first began listening to the network’s news broadcasts, I found them intellectually stimulating, an audio version of the very best newspapers in the world, yet totally different. I remember the installment novel that Sunday morning host Susan Stamberg had, especially the George Plimpton chapter with God in the bathtub. I remember the on-air plays, the stories that used audio so effectively blended with spoken words that you could close your eyes and, voila, you could see it in your mind.
Things are different now… they’ve changed, and not for the better, in my opinion. What happened to originality, to reporters beating the bushes for their own unique stories, for something totally unique to NPR and its news presentation? Now, it’s almost as if your assignment editors simply cruise the day’s papers, clip out interesting stories and inter-office mail them to reporters with “Do it for xxxday” notes attached.
When NPR does attempt to do something out of the ordinary today, it comes across as condescendingly smarmy to many listeners. The perfect example of that was the Waters story. Yes, Waters is a unique figure on the American cultural landscape, but the story had this “stick it in the eye” feel to it that made me squirm as I listened.
NPR is at its best, in my opinion, when it retains its intellectual generosity and resists the temptation to present its observations with ironic detachment.
