Bob Edwards was the voice of NPR’s Morning Edition for decades. He was an amazing journalist and just a great human being. As an affiliate station’s news director and local ME host, I couldn’t imagine the morning without his voice filling the studio. Meeting him was a favorite memory from that time.
What really sucks is that the public was given no explanation. They just replaced him.
Member stations, as I recall, were only warned through their fundraising contacts that there was about to be a shitstorm. Nothing more. I’d left by then, but it became known throughout the network over the next few months that Jeffrey Dvorkin, the “ombudsman” that NPR had hired from the CBC a few years earlier, had engineered Edwards’ dismissal.
They were right about the shitstorm. I’ve rarely listened to the network since, and I don’t think I’ve ever contributed. The station, indeed the entire network, seems still to struggle with fundraising to this day.
I am happy to listen and contribute to NPR now considering they’re as close as you can get in the U.S. to unbiased national journalism at this point. They aren’t perfect either, but they’re miles above most of the other options.
They are among the best if you’re restricted to the US, it’s true.