Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 6:19 AM
Labels:

19 comments:

Jay Schiavone said...

Steve Inskeep was uncomfortable about Obama lining up on the same side of an issue as Hugo Chavez. The default NPR position, naturally, is to give equal time to the junta in Honduras. It's called balance, people.
Also, Nina T was surprised to hear Louis Freeh opine that Sonia Sotomayor holds views that are not outside of the mainstream.

7/8/09, 6:26 AM
JayV said...

So I heard on the car radio last night, WGBH/BBC co production, "The World," reporting about the "interim" government and "negotiations" being called for by Clinton (there was an interview with the former Costa Rican president, as the negotiator). No mention of a coup. And there have been those denials that the US is playing a role, when in fact it is.

Am I crazy or what?

7/8/09, 9:13 AM
geoff said...

JayV,

Don't adjust that dial. If interrupt the reprogramming in progress you may experience feelings of disorientation, angst, and anger leading to rage.

7/8/09, 10:58 AM
Unknown said...

Yesterday, I had to avoid NPR's coverage of the Michael Jackson funeral, replete with sound bytes from a couple of nutjobs, by tuning in to A HIP-HOP STATION!

Oh, the irony!

7/8/09, 11:12 AM
Maurerguy said...

Markeplace is a show whose whole premise -- that the ups and downs of the stock market matter to most people -- is absurd. We would be much better off having a show about employment conditions, or having LIving on the Earth on 7 days a week.

But they really went off the rails on Monday, with a story about Goldman Sachs' spending vast amounts on a secret system for computer trading. Never once did Marketplace question why such a system was necessary, what impact it had on the stock exchanges' herd behavior, or what impact it had to waste millions on this kind of system, which contributes zero to productivity or meeting human needs.

7/8/09, 11:41 AM
Anonymous said...

Markeplace is a show whose whole premise -- that the ups and downs of the stock market matter to most people"

They matter to most corporations and to most people in our government and that's NPR's client base.

BTW: That guy from Texas that they talk with on MarketPlace all the time gives me the creeps. I wouldn't trust him with a single dime of my money.

7/8/09, 12:22 PM
masbrow said...

Well, we're halfway through Talk of the Nation, and as of yet, NO MENTION of the fact that %60 of the public supports single-payer, and %70 supports a "public option".

7/8/09, 1:27 PM
Anonymous said...

Did anyone hear the "Men and Women navigate differently" bit of non-news they were playing? It was the most sexist piece of garbage I've heard on NPR in months. The premise is a tired one...using purely anecdotal, "As everyone knows..." non-evidence, they spent the segment talking with a guy who wrote a book about directions as they walked along the street. They got lost, and the only one of the three people who was paying attention was the female editor along with them. They then draw all kinds of conclusions from that.

The real clincher was when they said that men use the compass directions, but women only navigate visually with landmarks.

Firstly, I used landmarks exclusively for a long time until my dad strongly emphasized to me (I'm male) that I needed to learn the compass directions. You know how many times he did that to my sisters? 0.

It strikes me as another example of a self-fulfilling stereotype at best, or an untrue stereotype from anecdotal non-data at worst.

7/8/09, 2:23 PM
Anonymous said...

Glenn Greenwald has a follow-up to the torture fiasco. And people are still posting at the ombudsman's blog.

7/8/09, 2:25 PM
Anonymous said...

Anon:

BTW: That guy from Texas that they talk with on MarketPlace all the time gives me the creeps. I wouldn't trust him with a single dime of my money

That guy's last name is Johnson and one night he laid out the bare, naked truth about his gig. He said that if the Market goes up he gets paid and if it goes down he still gets paid because he just buys and sells. So in reality he . . . sold his soul for filthy lucre?

edk

7/8/09, 2:58 PM
JayV said...

masbrow:

'...we're halfway through Talk of the Nation, and as of yet, NO MENTION of the fact that %60 of the public supports single-payer, and %70 supports a "public option".'

Just you wait, if they do finally admit it, they'll just say something like "proponents say," rather than "the majority of citizens want...."

7/8/09, 3:30 PM
The Boss of You said...

Anonymous-- I didn't hear the compass points story, but heard something similar on Saturday:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106281310

It's about how people eat when they eat alone... and it breaks down along gender lines.

7/8/09, 3:39 PM
Anonymous said...

Not exactly NPR, but broadcast on my local public radio statio, the BBC reported last night on the Michael Jackson funeral. Sorry to bring it up, but its one of those things where, if you can't even get the fluff reporting right....
...the BBC reporter said that there were no references to the scandals that plagued Jackson's career of late. I'm taking it then that the BBC reporter didn't actually listen to the broadcast, because there was thunderous applause to Rep. Sheila Jackson's (D-TX) comments that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

An oblique reference, to be sure, but not exactly "no reference" as suggested by BBC.

I know. I'm the only person in the world bothered by this poor reporting. My apologies to everyone.

7/8/09, 4:10 PM
miranda said...

You're not the only one bothered by that sort of thing, Anonymous. The Congresswoman's statement was one of a few references ("questionable decisions," etc.) -- oblique, of course, because this was a man's memorial service, and a pretty dignified affair at that. The media can't let go of the salacious accusations, which in many minds equal guilt.

Lately I have noticed that the media and general public are cynical when they should be open-minded (the defendant was acquitted but he's guilty anyway!) and gullible when they should be cynical (the government never lies, has our best interests at heart, America stands for freedom, we are fighting for democracy in the Middle East!).

Many people think with their emotions, and they do cherish their myths.

7/8/09, 4:30 PM
larry, dfh said...

As mentioned by Anon, this is a cut and paste (with a couple of deletions) from Glennzilla, link added (hopefully):
... I was on an NPR station yesterday in Seattle to discuss NPR's ban on the use of the word "torture" to describe Bush administration interrogation tactics. I originally understood that I would be on with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, but alas, it turns out that she agreed only to be on the show before me, so as not to engage or otherwise interact with me, so I was forced to listen to her for 15 minutes and wait until she hung up before being able to speak. The segment can be heard here, beginning at the 14:00 mark (though the quality of the recording is poor in places).
The most noteworthy point was her explicit statement (at 17:50) that "the role of a news organization is to lay out the debate"...She also said -- when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) -- that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason: to obtain information about Terrorist attacks. That's really what she said: that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason. Leaving aside the factual falsity of her claim about American motives, Shepard actually thinks that "torture" is determined by the motive with which the suffering is inflicted...
She's really a shill and a flunky.

7/8/09, 5:02 PM
geoff said...

Gender talk is titillating. Plenty of fill to avoid talking about
(1) protests in Honduras
(2) banksters
(3) permanent war economy death spiral
(4) Single payer health care
(5) Teacher layoffs
(∞) {fill in relevant issue of consequence here)

7/8/09, 5:28 PM
The Boss of You said...

Sorry gopol sexism is a problem.

7/8/09, 10:04 PM
geoff said...

Boss, Sexism is. Yes. I regret suggesting that this was not the primary offense of that broadcast. It was. What I'm saying is that the CNIPAR (or is it the RAPNIC?) is doing psyops (I know, it seems like crediting them with overt diabolicism rather than creative jejune diabolicism avec esprit) willy nilly style to talk around the issues they don't want to talk about and the issues that matter more (at least to them). People will tune back in for more of that titillating talk because it challenges their social mores in a way that blows the fog of wtf? But the listeners will not learn squat. About squat.

7/8/09, 10:21 PM
geoff said...

oh..."RAP,INC" - s'what I meant. It's a secret encoding, don't you know.

7/8/09, 10:32 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)