NPR is mentioned only in passing across the excerpts of The Bob Zadek Show, and never as the subject of an episode. The program’s guests reference it twice: once as a contrast to Pacifica Radio’s KPFA, and once as an example of how media outlets adopt the “Asian American” category that one guest argues does not correspond to how people actually identify. The excerpts do not describe NPR’s founding, funding, governance, programming, or editorial practices.
Pacifica Radio and KPFA as distinct from NPR
In a 2018 episode on immigration enforcement, Bob Zadek introduced guest Mitch Jeserich, describing him as a fellow radio journalist who hosts Letters and Politics on KPFA, which Zadek characterized as part of Pacifica Radio, “a very interesting radio network.” Zadek told listeners that many of his audience members in Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Sacramento might not know about KPFA specifically or Pacifica Radio in general, and asked Jeserich to explain the network. ICE in the Age of Trump (2018)
Jeserich said KPFA is “one of the first public radio stations in the country,” born in Berkeley in 1949. He said that while there were other quasi-public radio stations, KPFA was the first radio station that successfully operated on listener contributions alone, which he said it still does. He stated that KPFA is separate from NPR and in fact predates NPR. According to Jeserich, the station was created by pacifists in the late 1940s who were troubled by the commercial nature of radio, which was then the popular means of information. He said the station is now most associated with expressing progressive ideas, and he named Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman as one of its most popular programs. He described Pacifica as a radio network with five stations across the country and many more affiliates, and said his own program, Letters and Politics, attempts to dive into the history behind the news of the day. ICE in the Age of Trump (2018)
The excerpt does not state NPR’s founding date, its relationship to KPFA beyond Jeserich’s statement that the two are separate and that KPFA predates NPR, or any details about NPR’s structure or funding.
The “Asian American” category and media usage
In a 2022 episode with David Bernstein on the borderlands of legal whiteness, Bernstein discussed the federal classification system that he said Caspar Weinberger, as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1973, decided to create. Bernstein said the classifications were published officially in the Federal Register as law with the statement that they were not meant to be used for qualifications for any government program — in other words, not for affirmative action — but that they were immediately used that way. He described decades of jockeying over which groups fell into which category, including expansion of the Asian category to include all of Asia east of Pakistan, and what he called new jockeying for a Middle Eastern category. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)
Bernstein said that at the elite level in colleges, the idea that there is such a thing as Asian American is accepted without question, but that at the grassroots level, when people who come within the Asian American category are asked whether they consider themselves in any way Asian American, only 35% say yes — not even as a secondary identity. He said they think of themselves as Chinese American or just American or whatever. He then turned to NPR as an illustration: he said that listening to NPR during the election season — he said he listened in 2020 and has since stopped — he heard reports that would announce, “We’re going to talk about the Asian American vote today,” and then report from the Chinese American Democratic headquarters in Los Angeles, California, or from the Korean American lobby in North Carolina. Bernstein’s point was that even though NPR called it the Asian American vote, on the ground at the grassroots there are no Asian Americans in the sense of people who think of themselves that way; he called it a ridiculous concept. He said groups that want to enhance their own political power, both within the university bureaucracy and within government, want to homogenize vastly different cultures, ethnic groups, and religions into one flat category that is easier to manipulate and easier to get stuff for. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)
The excerpt does not name the specific NPR reports, their dates, or the reporters involved. It does not state NPR’s editorial position on the category, only Bernstein’s characterization of what he heard.
Across episodes
Two episodes touch on NPR, and the excerpts show no development between them: the 2018 episode with Mitch Jeserich mentions NPR only to distinguish Pacifica Radio’s KPFA from it, and the 2022 episode with David Bernstein mentions NPR only as an example of media use of the “Asian American” category. Neither episode treats NPR as a subject in its own right, and the two references are unrelated to each other.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe NPR’s founding, its funding model, its governance, its programming, its audience, or any controversy involving it as an institution. They do not state when NPR was founded, who created it, or how it relates to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or to local stations. They do not contain any statement from an NPR representative or any extended discussion of NPR’s journalism beyond Bernstein’s brief characterization of reports he heard in 2020. Any article on NPR drawing only on these excerpts would rest on two passing references in episodes about other subjects.