I've had some downtime and have had public radio on a fair amount in the background. I've been frustrated with the complete lack of SOPA/PIPA coverage; I've even written to my local station about it.

This morning the top of the hour news summary was on as I was preparing to head out, and I was surprised to hear a brief segment mentioning the pending Wikipedia blackout and its connection to SOPA/PIPA. The segment was horribly written, describing the bills as "attempts to control piracy" while only momentarily, vaguely mentioning the concerns with them at the very end. But it broke the silence.

I was behind it before, but if possible I'm even more behind the Wikipedia blackout, now. It is the ONLY thing that I've observed that has broken the mainstream media silence on the topic.

(Well, there was one listener call-in on a state-level public radio call-in show. However, both the show's host and the show's guest knew nothing about SOPA/PIPA and mistakenly, misleadingly discounted both the concern and the likelihood of any legislative action -- speaking generally rather than with any knowledge on this specific topic.)

--

NPR == National Public Radio, a national-level public radio organization in the U.S.

Public radio in the U.S. is a combination of limited government funding, listener contributions (donations), and corporate contributions and sponsorship. It has a reputation for being relatively unbiased and more informative than much of private broadcast media, although that has been changing in recent years.