Saturday, July 18, 2009

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 8:22 AM
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24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unforunately had to hear daniel schorr spew nonsense through his fat rubbery lips about Iran which after hearing what he had to say he obviously knows nothing about and in fact was just repeating neocon / isreal first / amerikan military industrial complex bullsh*t / talking points. gawd what a wanker. shouldn't he retire pretty soon ???

7/18/09, 9:11 AM
RepubLiecan said...

Ah, but did they counter Daniel Snore's spin with some conservative talking head again?

7/18/09, 10:39 AM
Anonymous said...

I thought Simon was way off this morning with Williams when they were talking about Cronkite. I can not imagine any current newscaster/reader ever coming on in a half-hour presentation and declaring a lost war. In spite of "official" reassurances to the contrary. Imagine NPR's presenters/readers daring to go out into the field, away from the "5 o'clock follies" and see for themselves what is happening.

And LBJ was on the money when he said that if he "lost" Cronkite he's lost America.

Simon and Williams together couldn't carry Cronkite's notebook.

edk

7/18/09, 10:42 AM
Mytwords said...

Anon:

I'm as disgusted by Schorr's obsequious loyalty all things imperial - but please leave out attacks on someone's weight or age or general appearance. Sometimes an NPR personality's visual presentation is relevant to the smugness of his or her behavior as is often the case with Liasson and Williams when they are performing on the Fox circus circuit.

7/18/09, 12:37 PM
ibg!ipnk!ufzzy!ubnny! said...

^ Oh yeah, Myt - seein's believin' when it comes to that pair of capons.

7/18/09, 12:53 PM
Anonymous said...

"Simon and Williams together couldn't carry Cronkite's notebook."

The are not fit to carry Cronkite's microphone -- or even the electrons that course through it.

7/18/09, 1:40 PM
Anonymous said...

Denial Sure reporting for "No Problem Radio"

7/18/09, 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...

It is interesting to contrast Cronkite's 'style' with that of the vast majority of those at NPR.

for example, in his now famous report after returning from Vietnam, he said this

"Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we'd like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure.

The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw.

Cronkite was not afraid to personally collect evidence on the ground (at some risk to himself) and actually analyze the situation and even be "speculative, personal, subjective."

Contrast that with the folks at NPR (Shepard and NPR management like Vivian Schiller in particular) who think that news reporting is all about giving all sides and letting the listener figure out what it means.

Then again, perhaps NPR takes the latter tack simply because they are not smart enough to figure anything out for themselves.

In fact, he understood that there is no such thing as perfect objectivity.

Those who pretend that there is -- like Alicia Shepard and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and who have given us this vacuous "news is about giving ALL sides and letting the

7/18/09, 1:58 PM
geoff said...

The headline, "Obama's Big Plan For Little Colleges" struck me as curious. In what way are community colleges "little?" The California Community Colleges comprise the largest institute of higher education in the world, if one measures by full time equivalent students. I guess by "little" they mean, "commanding little respect." Or "operating with little funding."

As usual, there is little or no investigation exhibited in the story - just a rehashing of info easily available elsewhere and, of course, a reiteration of the tired saw "The Rodney Dangerfield of Higher Ed."

7/18/09, 3:06 PM
Anonymous said...

In what way are community colleges "little?"

Perhaps the people who go there are themselves little or have little brains, or have little money, or drive little cars, or live in little houses, or have little to live for

Short people got no reason...

gopol:

I think you are being far too analytical about this. Sometimes (usually?) when politicians say things that appear to be stupid, they just are.

7/18/09, 7:33 PM
Anonymous said...

Not really NPR related (except for the fact that, unlike Democracy Now's Amy Goodmanm, NPR would never interview the guy who writes this stuff -- Matt Taibbi).

The Scandal Continues: The Billions in Govt. Cash Behind Goldman's "Profits"

By Matt Taibbi, True/Slant. Posted July 17, 2009.

Unlike Taibbi, though, I fault Obama even more than Goldman Sachs for all this stuff.

Obama is certainly smart enough to see what is going on and that can mean just one thing: he actually approves of it.

I never thought I would despise anyone more than Bush.

7/18/09, 9:22 PM
geoff said...

The Big/Little headline was certainly more stupid than nefarious. I didn't want to go off on surfing dogs...

I read Taibbi's new article hoping for something like "GS is a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity with its blood funnel relentlessly probing for fresh sources of money." That's from memory, so it may not be quite right...

Yeah, maybe they're the smartest fellers in the room - but it's not at all unrelated to NPR, whose silent but deadly coverage of this really stinks.

7/18/09, 10:30 PM
geoff said...

Here's the early Sunday morning blurb headlining npr.org:

The White House is fighting accusations that the health care legislation moving through Congress would increase health care {s}spending{/s} rather than save money long-term. The Obama administration sent Congress a proposal to aid in the cost-cutting goal, but parts of the plan didn't sit well with {HMO lobbyists}. Above, hundreds of people march in Maine urging quick action in Congress.

1. Read it with the "spending" stricken out.
2. Originally, it read "lawmakers" where I've written "HMO lobbyists" but it makes more sense as is.
3. You might be led to believe the "hundreds" are pushing for HMOs to keep their hegemony over our health wealth.

7/19/09, 2:28 AM
krameroneill said...

In Maine? Huh. Didn't both Congresswomen from that state join a coalition with (among others) Joe Lieberman, to try and kill healthcare reform before it could start? I would love to know what's really going on there. ...With "centrists" like these, who needs Republicans?

[and yes, I know Snow and Collins are Republicans, but all indications seemed to be that they were smarter than this.]

7/19/09, 6:26 AM
Anonymous said...

"Yeah, maybe they're the smartest fellers in the room"

...that room being the Oval Office.

As Taibbi points out, Goldman Sachs perps are not so much smart as they are "informed" and "connected" to the source of money: the US treasury.

They have information that no one else possesses -- except those folks sitting in the White House pulling strings for them, of course.

It's hard NOT to make money under those circumstances.

Basically, they have rigged the system.

It would be pretty easy to fix, actually. Put a few laws like Glass Steagal back in place and pass a few new ones.

Before you could do that, you'd have to fire a lot of former Goldman execs in key positions within our government and at the fed.

The latter would also not be that hard -- at least not for the President.

Unfortunately, our current President is basically in Goldman's back pocket.

It's rather pathetic, actually for Obama to be taking orders from these people.

7/19/09, 7:00 AM
Anonymous said...

"hundreds of people march in Maine urging quick action in Congress."

Multiply that by about 10 (the usual government/media lowball factor).

I could never figure out if the media and government lowball these things purposely or simply because they can't count.

Or perhaps it is both.

7/19/09, 7:18 AM
Anonymous said...

Another dumb piece from NPR on the minimum wage.


"most analysts say that in an economy as large as this one, a minimum-wage hike won't have much impact. For a sense of scale, they point to the stimulus plan Congress approved earlier this year. That $787 billion package was more than 14 times larger than any increased consumer spending generated by the wage hike.'

The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that it is total BS.

As we have seen with the $700 billion bank bailout (actually much bigger, but we won't count the $2 trillion handed out by the Fed), it's NOT just the amount of money, but whom you give it to that counts when it comes to stimulating the economy and actually helping ordinary Americans (as opposed to padding the already heavily padded bank accounts of a few Goldman Sachs and bank of America execs).

The bank bailout did little to nothing to stimulate the economy. The much touted "increased lending" turned out to be a bust. Many of the largest banks actually cut lending by 20% or more. Since Obama rammed his stimulus through Congress with little or no debate allowed, unemployment has increased by 2 million. His economic geniuses (Summers and geithner) had claimed that with the Obama stimulus, unemployment would peak at 8% some time this summer. Well it's already at 9.5% and still rising.

The ONLY people who have benefited from the trillions given to bankers ARE the bankers and other wall street "insiders" (and I mean that in the quite literal sense of "inside the White House and the Halls of Congress").

If one were actually interested in helping ordinary Americans it would have been far better to give money to the people who most need it -- or at least to use the money to generate jobs that would help those people.

But of course, Obama and pals have no real interest in the latter. They got theirs. Screw everyone else.

7/19/09, 8:40 AM
geoff said...

I must have missed Ira Zipkin reporting on Sun Myung Moon reporting on Obama's September deadline for Iran to denukularize a week ago because, well, Iran is such an existential threat. Zipkin also missed reporting on Clinton's address to the CFR - but it did appear tangentially as a Daniel Schorr afterthought in his Scott (flushable wipe) Simon shmooze.

SS: Clinton gave a foreign policy address to the CFR before heading off to India. You were there. What did she say?

DS: She gave a pretty good what they say "tour d'horizon," a tour of the horizon of the whole foreign policy. Very careful, very well done. The only thing that struck me as rather interesting was the whole discussion of relations with Iran. Here's Iran whose government now may not be legitimate and yet she's holding the door open to conversations with them. She will never say, for example "we will not deal with [unintelligible] people who probably stole the election and we won't deal with them" -she - and I think that it's very important at this stage I think that Iran is getting into a very [perilous?] state. And Rafsanjani, former president, getting up and making a speech attacking the present regime. A sense that there were demonstrations going on that they seem unable to control. And it may well be that without our having done much about it, Iran may be in such great trouble itself, that it may be in the near future doing much less trouble for others.

This contrasts significantly with Politico's coverage of Clinton's address to the CFR.

Clinton: "And to these foes and would-be foes, let me say: You should know that our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal."

7/19/09, 1:49 PM
Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

It's rather pathetic, actually for Obama to be taking orders from these people.

Well, not really, since he's nothing more than a hired hand, and they are his--and our--bosses.

There is nothing in the USofA which is not affected, shaped, or changed in significant and mostly deleterious ways by the 'requirements' of King Kapital.

Did you REALLY think the "owners" would have put the power of change in the hands of anyone who would actually USE it to alter the highly and increasingly profitable status quo?

It is risible...

7/19/09, 3:31 PM
geoff said...

Anon - By the way, in case you missed it, "smart fellers" is a common spoonerism consistent with other adolescent gastrointestinal entendres in my comments.

7/19/09, 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...

Did you REALLY think the "owners" would have put the power of change in the hands of anyone who would actually USE it to alter the highly and increasingly profitable status quo?'

No, but that does not make it all any less pathetic.

7/19/09, 5:40 PM
Jay Schiavone said...

Very unexpected coverage of jailed Iraqi journalist this AM. Story was balanced in the right way, with emphasis given to facts and DoD nonsense-speak given the short shrift. They actually reported that Ibrahim Jassam was cleared by Iraqi authorities and is being held without charge by US military authorities. I thought I might be listening to Democracy Now! Let's encourage NPR to keep up this aberrant practice of actual journalism.

7/20/09, 7:33 AM
Anonymous said...

I thought I might be listening to Democracy Now! Let's encourage NPR to keep up this aberrant practice of actual journalism.

As a general rule, I don't think Democracy Now! nearly a year to report a story.

Ibrahim Jassam, a reuters Photographer, was arrested September 2, 2008 and cleared of all charges and ordered released because there was no evidence against him on November 30, 2008 by the Iraqi Central Criminal Court.

Photo District Newsreported that he was cleared on Dec 1, 2008, the very next day after he was cleared!!

Contrast that with NPR who are just now getting around to reporting on this.

Unfortunately, there is nothing aberrant about this for NPR. It is the norm. They do this ALL the time: report on important events after they are sure they will no longer have any effect on their bottom line (and that they will not offend the Pentagon, of cours). They did precisely the same thing with the Iraq WMD (NOT!!) story.

Timing is critical in journalism and NPR actually uses it in an insidious and despicable way.

7/20/09, 8:01 AM
Anonymous said...

RE: Reuters Photographer

I am going to make a prediction: the Pentagon plans to release Jassam in the near future.

Someone at NPR just got wind of this.

It is the only thing that makes any sense given that NPR waited almost a year to even report on his arrest.

If Jassam is released some time soon, of course NPR will take credit for the "influence" of their expose' on that decision.

7/20/09, 8:18 AM

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