NPR Check: Q Tips

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

37 comments:

JayV said...: This, from Green Mountain Daily:
Cokie Roberts Repeats the Republican Lie
http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/diary/4778/cokie-roberts-repeats-the-republican-lie; 8/18/09, 8:32 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: My Afghan friend was telling me about the recent (last Friday, here) car bombing in Kabul's most secure area. Was this story covered on NPR?

He says that everyone has to go through FIFTY security checks to get there - even US generals. The NATO HQ was obviously targeted. So how the hell would a car bomb pass inspection? WTF?? An inside job? My friend says that everyone in Kabul views this as an extremely bad sign. What would our cheerful Amb. Eikenberry say?

My friend laughs with irony quite a bit when he talks about his country. 'There IS NO LAW in Afghanistan', he says.; 8/18/09, 10:24 AM
GRUMPY DEMO said...: I wonder how may armed Winger Milita types have to show up a Presidential events before NPR will report the story.

Right now the count up to 14 armed men over a four day period.

"Twelve Carry Guns -- Including Assault Rifle -- Outside Obama Event"

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/town-halls/

Great Right Wing Memory hole NPR!; 8/18/09, 4:34 PM
GRUMPY DEMO said...: This is, without a doubt the most stupid thing ever published at NPR.org:

"Obama Town-Hall Gun Toters May Have An Upside"

The headline says it all. It's a good thing to have Wingers crazies armed at public events.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/obama_townhall_gun_toters_have.html; 8/19/09, 7:44 AM
Anonymous said...: This morning (Wednesday) the reporter from Afghanistan was saying that "the 2004 elections were more like...well, practice elections, since everyone knew the US had chosen Karzai to be the winner ahead of time." But not this time! This time people are excited to vote for all these different candidates!

No mention of Karzai's abuse of power to manipulate the election, like using government vehicles and government ministries to campaign, or harassing his political opponents with state security.

And no mention of WHY the US would choose a certain puppet to win the "election" (clearly just for good PR back home in the US for Bush).; 8/19/09, 8:13 AM
Anonymous said...: BTW I was just reading Chomsky's "Understanding Power" and he points out that in the Oath of Office, which new President's must swear to when being sworn in, if you look at the actual Constitution it DOES NOT HAVE the words "So help me God." Those were added by George HW Bush as a sop to the religious fundamentalists, thus he was never legally president, nor was any other president who said those unconstitutional words.

I just wanted to share that because it really caught me by surprise. Look it up yourself, find a text of the Constitution online.; 8/19/09, 8:23 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: After having edged out anyone of importance who had Russian training/orientation in the Afghan power structure, the US naturally backs Our Man in Kabul, Karzai. He is stylish, speaks impeccable English, and has a long history of Western involvement. Plus, his brother, as everybody knows, is probably one of the most powerful non-political entities in the country (e.g. Poppy Dealer to the Nation, etc.)

You think the US would back anybody else? Well, yes, if there was a more perfect candidate for their interests, but there isn't.; 8/19/09, 10:46 AM
geoff said...: From TPM:

The Logic Escapes Me

NPR: "Obama Town-Hall Gun Toters May Have An Upside"

To which Cindy Capell comments,

Frank James and his vapid, illogical article are symptomatic of what the Bushies have done to NPR. Kenneth Tomlinson certainly accomplished his mission of turning NPR to the right. All we hear from NPR anymore is corporatist and center-right wing viewpoints. Look at NPR's coverage of the Health Care debate-they have been shilling for the health care corporations that donate millions of dollars to NPR every year. I'm through with NPR and they won't get another dollar from me.

Go Cindy!; 8/19/09, 12:24 PM
geoff said...: oops...i done reredundancized.; 8/19/09, 12:31 PM
larry, dfh said...: I too heard the segment Wed. a.m. from the embed renee. What struck me as really bizarre (aside form the constantly bullshitty optimistic squeal in her voice) was one description which she gave of a woman who asked "where does it go?" after she slid her ballot into the ballot box during a previous election. Renee acted like she interpreted this as the woman's not having the spacial understanding of an invertebrate; she couldn't see inside the box, so she didn't understand where the ballot had gone. I was struck by how incredibnly condescending and superficial was renee's understanding of this woman's question. I'm so glad we've had such a positive impact on the Afghanis, teaching them about spacial relations, and prepositions, and all that other shit that separated us from them before we brought them freedom.; 8/19/09, 1:15 PM
Porter Melmoth said...: A mundane fact for Renee Mundane: every imperialistic enterprise must have its publicist. You're workin' for The Imperium, Renee, whether ya know it or not.; 8/19/09, 1:19 PM
Porter Melmoth said...: I notice that Miss Mundane ditched A-stan just before the election, leaving the coverage of the actual hell-breaking to her tougher embed-mate, Jackie Nothing.; 8/19/09, 2:35 PM
geoff said...: Here's some news you won't hear on NPR.

"Iceland Recovering From Neoliberal Disaster" with Dr. Michael Hudson on Iceland's banking crisis and foreign debt; it's decision to push back against IMF and World Bank austerity; Gordon Brown's role in the Icesave scandal; the capacity to pay principle; similarities with Germany's foreign debt reparations from the 1920s; European Union disarray; media omissions."

Planet Money's Icelandic take must be on Barney Frank's alternate planet.

It would be nice if somebody over at NPR would use this wikileaks thing.; 8/19/09, 6:24 PM
bg!pnk!fzzy!bnny!(iiuu) said...: Heh, let 'em keep trying to play servile kid brudder to Fox, I say - just give 'im a nickel out of your lunch money every day and he'll promise to stop knocking your books out of your arm. He'll even let some of your toadies (Mara "Look!" Mabuse & Whinin' Juan) climb up into their treehouse.

They're only fooling - and hurting - themselves with the slop they serve up.; 8/19/09, 6:53 PM
Dr Jay said...: For what it's worth, on Monday "Here and Now" presented a 20-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater.; 8/19/09, 9:04 PM
Porter Melmoth said...: (Non-NPR) stories are coming in about the election day in Afghanistan.

What are the cheer team of Renaaay, Eikenberry and Jackie gonna say about the less than pleasant experiments in democracy therein.

I heard Rory Stewart on On Point doing some pretty good tell-it-like-it-is talk on Afghanistan (can't say i agree with him on many other matters though - but so what). He says we should radically reduce our footprint and not try to change the universe there. Like, duh...; 8/20/09, 10:37 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: Here's a link to Charles B. Pierce's examination of current trends in America:'Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767926145/crooksandliar-20/ref=nosim

I wonder if there's a chapter on NPR...; 8/20/09, 10:42 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: A quote from an interview with Pierce (with a tie-in to NPR in theory...)

"Question: Is there a specific turning point where, as a country, we moved away from prizing experience to trusting the gut over intellect?

Charles P. Pierce: I don't know if there's one point that you can point to and say, “This is when it happened.” The conflict between intellectual expertise and reflexive emotion—often characterized as “good old common sense,” when it is neither common nor sense—has been endemic to American culture and politics since the beginning. I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.” No. Perception is perception and reality is reality, and if the former doesn't conform to the latter, then it’s the journalist's job to hammer and hammer the reality until the perception conforms to it. That's how “intelligent design” gets treated as “science” simply because a lot of people believe in it."; 8/20/09, 10:54 AM
geoff said...: Pepe Escobar writes the most sensible accounts of AfPak in Asia Times. "Melgaero Mellatuna-Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!"

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KH20Df01.html; 8/20/09, 11:14 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: That's a grand analysis of the AfPak Circus by Pepe, Gope. Glad someone's got the guts to burlesque it, which is what's necessary when the Absurd Meter redlines.

With Osama in the Hindu Kush, I can just imagine a beautiful moment of irony in the future: Osama & Co. will come to the rescue of a Western climbing party who run into trouble while trying to scale Anapurna.; 8/20/09, 11:44 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: Sorry, I meant K2. (Unless, of course, Osama has reached Nepal by then...)

Anapurna's more spectacular.; 8/20/09, 12:13 PM
geoff said...: I think that would have to be the ghost of Osama - perhaps galloping up on a magic cloud.; 8/20/09, 1:52 PM
larry, dfh said...: Dr. Jay, Is this the story? Note thatDemocracyNow! ran it on Aug 5.; 8/20/09, 2:23 PM
geoff said...: Add mercury in high fructose corn syrup to the list of things NPR knows nothing about. With Colonel Klink like obeisance, NPR was last heard opining on HFCS last December when the gooey brewed extract exacted NPR's praise as "no worse than sugar." But the extract's extra ingredient (mercury) has stirred no notice.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/07/corn-syrups-mercury-surprise

Not that Americans consume much of this stuff. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/537; 8/20/09, 2:38 PM
Anonymous said...: I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.”

Personally, I think journalism went off the tracks when it accepted the notion that "it's not our job to determine what reality is."

While related, the two are not the same.

On can actually admit to an objective reality and still maintain the latter. In practice, what it means is that you give equal time to all viewpoints no matter how dumb they are.

That's NPR in a nutshell, as far as I can see -- and Alicia Shepard and her boss NPR CEO Vivian Schiller are apologists extraordinaire for that approach to journalism.

The "it's not our job to determine reality" mentality is bad enough, but if there are actually "journalists" out there who believe that "perception is reality", the profession is even more f...ed up than i had imagined.; 8/20/09, 5:39 PM
Anonymous said...: Suppose that old Bush parrot Don (be)Goneaway will ever report on this:

"Tom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win"

no, I don't suppose he would.

Bush was Gonyea's hero and the rest of us had to listen to his groveling crap for 8 years.

Gonyea exemplifies the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to journalism today. The guy is so biased it is not even funny.

He's a disgrace to the profession.; 8/20/09, 8:43 PM
Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...: The reason Don Gonyea (probably, once, the french "Gagne")is so in love with the Chimp is that Gonyea got pulled off the 'dead-end' (at NPR, anyway) "Labor" beat in Detroit and won tyhe place as Bush apologist on the network.

You'll have noticed he didn't go back to Detroit...; 8/21/09, 9:47 AM
Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...: I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.”

America's first real sociologist, W.I. Thomas said:

"That is real which is real in its consequences."

What "the Press" neglected to do, overall, was to be CRITICAL of the weaknesses of "perception."; 8/21/09, 9:50 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: Nail on the head, Woody. About The Don. Also, I think that even when he was in Motown, some lovey-dovey higher-up at NPR gave The Gnome-Like Don plenty of airtime, as his vaguely anti-labor reports seemed to pop up much more often than, say, non-wildfire stories from California.

(Indeed, NPR is preferential to DC, Florida, etc., while the rest of the nation is considered a dismal backwater, worthy of anecdote and amusement - I'm thinking of that awful-but-beloved fable about John Yiddstee's magical basketball party in Northakota, one of NPR's prize jewels of puke-making Americana.); 8/21/09, 10:22 AM
Unknown said...: Meanwhile, NPR seemed to have adopted a "Cash For Clunkers Huring Dealers" meme. They started out yesterday by interviewing one disgruntled dealer who's only had 4 CfC claims paid by the Feds... And this morning they characterized the CfC was being highly popular for the public but a problem for the dealers... Something they inserted into the standard story...

If Obama do it - it BAD!; 8/21/09, 10:29 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: OK, I dared to tune into ME this morn to get some spin on the Afghan election.

Corvair Coleman said a coupla lines about it well after the big, bold Cash for Clunkers news, and after Prof. Jamie Tarrabay (PhD, Green Zone Univ.) gave us a 101 nutshell about Ramadan (NPR listeners, just go to Wikipedia for your Ramadan needs, OK?), I had to wade through ESPN-wannabe Inskreep's bilious rhythms before Jackie Nothing gave a carefully cleaned and austere rundown that lasted, it seemed, about a minute. Voter turnout was 'low'. Well, we all know why, don't we?

Repeat thought: what a bunch of crappy personalities that were paraded past me, in my sincere attempt to get some current event information!; 8/21/09, 10:30 AM
Anonymous said...: Let me see if I got this right:

A country under occupation holds an "election" (which US and West called a "qualified success) and the two leading candidates both won 51% plus of the vote?

And NPR insists that Iranian election was a farce, a charade or a cruel joke.

That's journalism in America in the 21st century

edk; 8/21/09, 11:00 AM
geoff said...: Oh me oh my oh. In addition to all the schlock duly noted above, I managed to stomach (vacation was way too short) planet monkey puppets telling me my doctor is a cross between my mom and my mechanic (I've had my patronage in the rear, it seems) who have to ask the Wellpoint lady about the lobbyists so that...wait for it...April Foolin' (PhD in bed linens) can tell me all about the "scary" 46 million uninsured bogeyman who's really just a bunch of ignorant S-Chippers who don't know how to fill out their paper work...and illegals to boot. I'm about ready to sign up with Arlo's army psychiatrist.; 8/21/09, 11:43 AM
geoff said...: Countdown to MtW's photoshop of mom/mechanic wrenching a crowbar where the sun don't shine.; 8/21/09, 11:45 AM
Porter Melmoth said...: Boy, I plumb fergot about April's segment, Gope. Indeed what a pathetic approach. Plus, her narcissistic admission that she's a Gen X-er, and a giggling one, no less, utterly destroyed what credibility she had even attempted. (Notice that there are newer, less known NPR-niks out there, plainly younger, even after the big layoffs earlier this year. Plain corporate strategy: dump a bunch of over-priced lifers and replace 'em with cheapie novices - who giggle.)

Also giggly: sibilant Barbarabradleyhaggerty giggled her way through a story about nuns. She obviously never had a fantasy about being a nun when she was a little girl.; 8/21/09, 11:55 AM
geoff said...: Port - Yea, get thee to a nunnery, NPR. And then get Penn and Teller on air to tell it like it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=8RV46fsmx6E

Gope.
Ha, ha! are you honest?
NPR.
My listener?
Gope.
Are you fair and balanced?
NPR.
What means your listenership?
Gope.
That if you be honest, fair and balanced, your honesty should admit no discourse to your bounty.
NPR.
Could bounty, my listener, have better commerce than with honesty?
Gope.
Ay, truly; for the power of the CIA will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate the CIA into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
NPR.
Indeed, my listener, you sent my money.
Gope.
You should not have taken it; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I knew you not.
NPR.
I was the more deceiving.
Gope.
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?; 8/21/09, 12:28 PM
Porter Melmoth said...: Bravo!

Great quote, Gope, from the Bard's new hit satire, 'Hamlet's NPR Gambit', which is getting rave reviews at Stratford...; 8/21/09, 12:36 PM