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| In response to his plummeting poll numbers, Bush will probably |
on Friday, December 31st, Ira Glass said:I'm still not convinced that the NPR excision was entirely innocent, but Ira Glass is, in my view, one of the good guys and certainly his views on all this should be taken into account. And thanks, Ira, for taking the time to respond here.
Hi everyone -
I produced this David Sedaris story for Morning Edition back in 1992, and broadcast a much longer, uncut version of the story this Christmas on the show I host, This American Life.
I understand everyone's concern and alarm over this, believe me. Every week it seems, I have to call my attorney to ask if it's still okay to say a phrase like "pissed off" or "god damn" in the current FCC environment.
But I'm guessing that the reason NPR cut Crumpet from David's story had nothing to do with fear of the FCC, the right wing, or its own listeners.
When I first produced Santaland for Morning Edition, the show gave more time to feature stories. In the current news environment, NPR understandably wants to devote more time to news and analysis, so features get shoved in smaller segments at the end of the hour. To run Santaland today means running it shorter. So someone at NPR had to cut over two minutes. I urge you all to listen to the original story and ask you to think about what you'd cut. Every section of the story works; every section makes a different point. It's really a judgment call.
I believe this was an entirely innocent editorial decision. I might've cut the same stuff myself.
As a longtime NPR producer, I think there's a lot the network can be criticized for, but honestly, it's a pretty gay-friendly news source.
Consider please: 490 public radio stations - which is to say, nearly the entire public radio system - ran our version of David's story last week. The program directors are not shy about letting me know when I broadcast something that gives them heartache or heartburn or grief from their listeners. I've not gotten one complaint.
So ... while I understand everyone's alarm at Snowball's excision ... and while I think it's vitally important to sound the sirens when something like this happens (I didn't know about the cut till I read it here and thanks for that) ... I think this case is not more proof of the Rising Tide of Badness that so many of us feel right now.
As for boycotting your local station at pledge time over this, I hope you'll keep in mind that your local station probably RAN David's story on our show this year, that your local station doesn't control Morning Edition's editorial decisions on this kind of thing in any case, and then do what you think is best.
Replies: 1 Comment
on Friday, December 31st, Ira Glass said:
I know it's dorky to amend my own post, but I just reread the NYT quote in Clif's original post:
Before the broadcast . . ., which told of a brief and disappointing flirtation with another elf named Snowball, the "Morning Edition" producers worried about Mr. Sedaris's discussing his homosexuality. "You very seldom hear a gay man on the radio," Mr. Glass said. "I mean one who isn't talking about being a gay man with AIDS or discussing gays in the military. We got a lot of letters that said, 'Thanks for letting David Sedaris on the radio, not as a gay person, but just as he is.' "
It's not accurate to say the Morning Edition producers "worried" about the gay content of the original story. If anything, I was the only producer who had a shadow of worry, and my worry was simply that my bosses might be worried.
The way Snowball got on the air in the first place is this: I finished a version of the story that was going to be broadcast the following morning. I listened to it again after the show's Executive Producer went home for the night, and thought that the version I'd made lacked something that had been in the original. Something about the mix of anecdotes felt wrong. So I swapped out one of the stories David tells, and swapped in Snowball. Snowball hadn't been in the earlier version.
I wasn't sure if this was the sort of thing I should check with the higher-ups on the show. Suddenly they had a first-time commentator outing himself during drive time. I called the show's Exec Producer Bob Ferrante at home and told him about the change and his attitude was "you called me at home for that?" There was no question in his mind. The Snowball story seemed funnier and more interesting to him too, so of course it should be in there. I always thought that was sort of great. Morning Edition became the first network news show with an openly gay commentator because of a quick late-night phone call.