We Used to Listen to NPR for the News
by June 10, 2002 12:00 am 74 views
We were less than impressed with the bridge-collapse coverage aired May 27 on National Public Radio, which is broadcast nationwide and locally on KUAF-FM, 91.3, the radio station at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
NPR relied on a Washington Post reporter based in Tulsa, who made it sound like Interstate 40 is a seldom-traveled road mainly for people from Texas who are trying to get to Oklahoma.
The NPR reporter told listeners that 20,000 vehicles per week travel I-40. Federal transportation authorities had been on television several times by that point saying 20,000 vehicles normally travel that section of road per day. They added that the number could be twice as high during each day of the three-day Memorial Day weekend when the bridge collapsed.
In trying to convey the importance of I-40 to listeners in the rest of the country, the NPR reporter said the interstate primarily is traveled by people from Texas heading east.
Interstate 40 is considered by many people to be the main thoroughfare across America. Stretching almost coast to coast from Wilmington, N.C., to Barstow, Calif., it parallels much of the famed old Route 66. I-40 goes through the panhandle of Texas for about 200 of its 2,500 miles.
Why didn’t NPR use its reporters at the UA? We certainly would have gotten a more accurate and interesting report.