The trite 12-step self-help mantra says, “Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.”

So here goes.

I’m addicted to NPR.

National Public Radio is slowly taking over my life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I find myself listening to ISU’s NPR affiliate, WOI-AM, any time I have a spare minute, including while I’m at work. As a journalist, I can justify tuning in via an online Real Audio stream on my Daily-provided iMac — hey, it’s my job to know what’s going on in the world.

But when WOI scheduled a routine station maintenance one recent evening and I couldn’t fall asleep as usual to the soothing sounds of the BBC World Service, I knew I had a problem.

As with most addictive behaviors, my public radio infatuation has been a gradual process. It began with a few minutes of “Morning Edition” here, a snippet of “Talk of the Nation” there. Soon, I found myself straining my ears at the top of each hour to hear the familiar “beep” declaring the official time.

NPR president and chief executive officer Kevin Klose visited campus in December and discussed public radio’s role in informing the American public. Since public radio is listener-supported and partially publicly funded, he said, NPR’s first responsibility is to the listener — which results in in-depth news coverage.

“There’s not extensive news coverage in commercial radio,” Klose said in a speech Dec. 4. “I think they’ve left the responsibility for doing radio news to National Public Radio.”

Never was this mission better demonstrated than during the recent conflict in Iraq.

During the first active days of the conflict and for days afterward, NPR was the ultimate lifeline for first-hand information from the front lines.

Forget Dan Rather’s mournful musings and Wolf Blitzer’s Kuwait reports via blurry, choppy videophone.

NPR’s coverage of Dubya’s crusade against Saddam Hussein was complete and comprehensive, focusing on the true effects on Iraqi civilians and giving a historical context to the war.

While Clear Channel radio gave top-of-the-hour “exclusive Operation Iraqi Freedom reports” complete with cloying patriotic music and Fox News featured conservative pundit after pundit appearing on a screen emblazoned with an American flag, NPR programs dedicated airtime to writer and humorist David Sedaris’ reports from France and former Iraqi citizens’ first-hand accounts of living under an oppressive regime.

NPR has proven flashy graphics and an ever-annoying infobar crawling across the bottom of the television screen aren’t necessary to deliver fair and accurate news coverage, and it goes way beyond the recent war.

NPR covers the stories that corporate media doesn’t like to examine from all sides. The bloated prophecies of media sweethearts like Bill O’Reilly pale in comparison to first-hand accounts of Palestinians living in squalid refugee camps defending their homeland.

But isn’t this the way news coverage should be? Why is the conservative glitz and overwrought infotainment of Fox News rewarded with high Nielsen ratings and millions of advertising dollars while NPR struggles for government funding and listenership?

I’d like to write it off with a bold declaration: The American public are sheep.

But it goes deeper than that. When news coverage is driven by advertising dollars and how much Botox Greta Van Susteren can pump into her face, the American public is going to receive a glossed-over, Bush-worshiping news product.

The American public needs a regime change in the way their broadcast news is delivered. And it starts with a donation to your local listener-sponsored NPR affiliate.