NPR, Facebook Compete for "Most Disheartening Organization of the Year"
Despite falling gas prices, Christmas cheer, and the burgeoning promises of the coming new year, both NPR and Facebook have made it their mission to ensure that you donât forget all of the horrible things that have happened over the last year.
Facebook, that vast repository of personal information from birth through death, marriages, divorces, not to mention that picture of you last Cinco De Mayo, the very social register of our evolving time, decided to compile posts and pictures in their âYear in Reviewâ function, using algorithms set to âExtra-Callousâ, and proceeded to remind many of days they would rather forget.
Facebook has already released a statement apologizing.
Had the past year been a more uplifting one, it is possible that this never would have even been discussed, but as someone who experienced more than one loss this year, there are definitely times of which I would rather not be reminded. I donât want to discuss death on a philosophical, religious, nor even a societal level, as there are cultures that celebrate death, but for me, and I think for many, itâs not the death itself that hurts but the loss, the fact that there are friends and family that we will never see again, and we will miss them, itâs as simple as that.
And in a close second as the year screeches to an end, NPR has released a whole series of reports in its âAll Things Consideredâ program, detailing lives of people who you may not have known about, who died this year. By its nature, reporting the news lends itself to demoralizing subjects: wars here, bombings there, assorted kidnappings, murders, and thefts everywhere, and it becomes easy to be bogged down in the negative. However, these reports were interesting, highly informative and to top it off, they interviewed Deborah Blum, the amazing author of âThe Poisonerâs Handbookâ, discussing the last of the âRadium Girlsâ, who died this year at the ripe old age of 107 years old. Even in spite of the positives, National Public Radio managed to dampen all of our spirits by its implementation. I often listen to NPR via the NPROne app, which brought up every installment of this series in rapid succession, starting with: âBefore turning the page on 2014, All Things Considered is paying tribute to some of the people who passed away this year whose stories you may not have heard.â A laudable goal, without a doubt, especially considering all of the famous who died this year. Many of them will receive the lengthy and heartfelt tributes we are all likely to hear as this year ends, but these people too deserve remembrance and respect. That being said, listing deaths, of any kind is saddening, and even while trying to celebrate the lives of these people, report after report beginning with, âand now in our series of people who died this yearâ, becomes highly oppressive after a time.
What NPR can learn from Facebookâs âA Year in Reviewâ: it was a rough year, you donât need to remind us.