Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Open Thread - Wednesday

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 5:01 AM
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Today was the worst I've ever heard from All Things Considered.
Leading off with the Cheney trip to Iraq in a way clearly intended to make him sound far more more reasonable than he is. By Siegel and Tarabay.
Then a Guy Raz story that mostly made Sec of Defense Gates look very good (just one negative comment - that one statistic Gates gave "is true, even if it may be misleading" - Raz went on to cite statistics showing that Gates was being very misleading) (one other sorta-negative: a question from Republican Senator Specter) (but it ended well for Gates). This story was typical in the sense that it gave the Republican the first word and last word in the story in a way designed to inflate their alleged dignity.
The one story with some promise - re the Bush appointees' abusive treatment of Fish and Wildlife Service biologists - was significantly changed by repeatedly including a few "calm, rational" comments by the Bush appointee and a brief few words of outrage from a Democratic member of Congress. One can only imagine that this Bush appointee probably repeatedly refused to answer questions truthfully, and the legislator got understandably ticked off. In other words, NPR chose to diminish the bit about the Bush administration's rejection of science and highlight a moment of outrage by a lesser-known Democratic legislator.
Another outrageous aspect of today's ATC is that they gave so much positive spin on big-name Republicans (Cheney, Gates, 2008 Republican presidential candidates, etc.) but the only Democratic voice was a brief, seemingly out-of-control (but probably highly justified, in reality) lesser-known member of Congress.
Let's not forget the story re the kidnapping of the Iranian-American Scholar (intended to scare Americans about Iran).
And how about that very warm and fuzzy story about how Bush is comforting people in Kansas. Sounded like a Bush campaign ad ("he's so sincere"), not a news story. What about his extremely un-Christian and despicable mistreatment of the still-suffering victims of Hurricane Katrina?!?!
("at least for today he's popular")
(wrongly cites Bush's popularity at 30 or 35%, even though it's below 30%)
And then the one analyst you'd think you could count on for a decent commentary - Daniel Schorr? He instead recites a story in which he says "Republicans, be of good cheer" and argues that they have a very good chance of winning the 2008 presidential election!
Argh! What an awful day!
Tomlinson has clearly totally changed NPR - and in a very, very bad way.

5/9/07, 7:08 PM
Mytwords said...

No argument from me...

5/9/07, 10:20 PM

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