We should not be surprised that most of television enters our people and our body politic, not as food for thought, but as an embalming fluid, a relaxing and displacing system of entertainment for those too exhausted, inert or numb to want more. But our place — your place, my place, the place of public television — is to offer an alternative to that, to serve the actual young and the forever young, the open and curious, those who still want to learn.

There’s a burden resting on the broad shoulders of this man who’s bopping his head to a funky beat, tongue out in a soulful pout, enjoying himself before launching into the next segue. Tavis Smiley is at a studio mike, grooving to bumper music between segments on a recent installment of his morning show, broadcast today from NPR’s Washington headquarters instead of his Los Angeles digs, because he’s in town for the Public Radio Conference. Smiley has polished off a double interview about U.S. policy on Cuba. Coming up, he’ll elicit a string of outrageous jokes from comedian Dick Gregory in a comedy feature that’s a regular part of his Friday shows.

NPR will reconsider its linking policy in the wake of its widespread blogger-led condemnation.

KPFX is a new, Web-only Pacifica radio station, cousin to KPFK in Los Angeles. (Via Walker, below.)

Jesse Walker, writing in Salon, updates us on nascent efforts within the Pacifica network to revitalize its five stations.

Have you linked to NPR’s website without permission? You’ll have to “live with the guilt forever,” NPR ombud Jeffrey Dvorkin tells Wired. (Update: The Poynter Institute’s Steve Outing joins the tide regarding the linking policy. His verdict: stupid.)

Bloggers galore are thumbing their noses at NPR and violating its anti-linking policy. (See entry below.) Here’s a list of who’s doing it. (Update: the spanking continues ad infinitum at Slashdot.) (Via randomWalks.)

Cory at the exemplary weblog Boing Boing has a beef or two with NPR’s linking policy.

Michael Apted, a British director whose excellent 7 Up series of documentaries has aired on PBS stateside, moves to A&E for his new project Married In America.

The layoffs keep coming. KERA-TV/FM in Dallas cut almost a quarter of its staff (36 employees) and cancelled a radio talk show Thursday, according to a DallasNews.com report.

NPR deserves credit for aggressively covering foreign news even as other news outlets scale back overseas, writes network ombud Jeffrey Dvorkin in his latest “Media Matters” column.

NPR’s Daniel Schorr will commemorate the 30th anniversary of Watergate by hosting a series of specials next week, according to the Buffalo News.

Life 360 takes its second shot at finding an audience in new episodes airing this summer, Elizabeth Jensen reports in the L.A. Times.

Public radio producer Nancy Updike writes up “National Corporate Radio,” a shrill spoof of NPR, in the LA Weekly. (Via MediaNews.)

Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT) June 11. Modeled on a proposal by Larry Grossman and Newton Minow, it would invest proceeds from spectrum auctions into an educational trust fund (bill text). Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) offered a similar bill last month (bill text).