From The Daily Dot
National Public Radio recently announced that it would be ending the broadcast of the national weekday program Tell Me More with host Michel Martin on August 1, 2014, eliminating 28 positions as part of a larger effort to end the company’s persistent budget deficits.
According to the National Public Radio website, Tell Me More is a daily NPR news-talk program, hosted by award-winning journalist Michel Martin. The show is produced in “association with the African American Public Radio Consortium, representing 20 independent public radio stations that serve predominantly black communities.”
But to be quite clear, Tell Me More is not simply a show for African-Americans or other minority groups: it is a patently American show for many different reasons.
With her weekly “Barbershop” and “Beauty Shop” segments, Michel Martin leads no-holds-barred conversations that take place on current affairs from men’s and women’s viewpoints. Her regular “Moms” segment, (which, of course, includes dads and grandparents) is one of “the original segments and consistently among the most popular, featuring practical advice from every day parents and recognized experts.” Finally, her weekly “Faith Matters” segment addresses the “powerful role of faith and spirituality in everyday American life across denominations and religious traditions.”
For over seven years, her show on NPR has dealt with everything from pop culture to religion to parenting to technology in a way that very few public radio shows tackle today, and I think that NPR is being editorially short-sighted and financially myopic in their decision to end the amazing seven-year run of Tell Me More in August.
In the interests of full disclosure: since the first days of the show seven years ago, I have appeared on NPR as a regular weekly on-air commentator for the “Barbershop” segment over 300 times. So I am not even going to try to pretend that I am not extremely disappointed by the cancellation of Michel Martin’s show, in yet another tone-deaf move by the NPR ivory tower.
Luckily, I am not the only person who thinks that it was a horribly short-sighted decision.
“I think it’s an awful move,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson for an exclusive interview on the cancellation of Michel Martin’s show. “Tell Me More gave us voices, topics, stories, personalities, news and views that simply do not exist elsewhere on NPR. Michel [Martin] is a masterful interviewer who somehow always makes her guests abandon their talking points and get real. With the nation becoming more diverse every day, it’s distressing to see NPR heading in the other direction.”
In an era where hyper-partisan shouting matches on network television take place in four-minute interview blocks on places like FOX News and CNN, it was wonderful to have a show like Tell Me More on NPR to provide long-form journalism. During its 18-interview segments, panelists who represented a panoply of political, ethnic, religious and ideological backgrounds could discuss the nuances of an important societal topic without having to worry about getting their “talking points” inserted in.
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman and lieutenant governor of Maryland Michael Steele echoed that sentiment when he told me, “The cancellation of Michel’s program is incredibly short-sighted. Not only is she a gifted broadcaster, but she brought smart, sophisticated radio to her audience.” According to Steele, NPR should know better.
In a time where NPR is regularly lambasted in conservative circles for having a “super-liberal” bias, these are strong words of support for Michel Martin’s show from the former head of the Republican Party, showing that people of all political persuasions felt like the show was a safe-zone in the American marketplace of ideas.
NPR’s own television critic Eric Deggans also told me, “Tell Me More is a wonderful, incisive and imaginative look at the diversity of our world in many different forms. It never comes at an issue in the way that you might expect and always finds a new insight other programs seem to miss. Those of us in public broadcasting know it takes time to build a signature show, but Tell Me More has grown rapidly into an amazing part of NPR’s broadcast offerings. There should be some way that NPR and its member stations could provide the time and broadcast clearances to make a program like this possible. It is speaking the language of America’s future and the time to invest in that future is now.”
