It's nearly four years since I began my little adventure of monitoring NPR news, and it's been both enlightening and maddening. I must say that it blows my mind that so many people still give NPR positive marks for journalism (e.g. the comments in this recent piece, or the nonsense of this article, and the general praise of this piece) when its coverage - that I have painstakingly documented on this blog - is relentlessly center-right to far right in its perspective, and is unquestioning in its loyalty to US state power - economic, military and otherwise. I can not think of one example where NPR news has challenged the fundamental assumptions underlying the projection of US power at home or abroad - domestic surveillance, torture, military spending, government secrecy, aggressive war, so-called counterinsurgency, predatory corporatism, etc.
Over the course of the last year, the work on this blog has started to have a bit of the Groundhog Day feel to it: I've found myself essentially writing the same articles over and over. The situation changes but the fundamental pattern remains the same: NPR parrots Pentagon press releases; NPR ignores or minimizes the grossest violations of human rights and dignity when committed by the US or its allies; NPR refuses to mention international laws and treaties when they are broken by the US or its allies; NPR provides unchallenged airtime for government, military and corporate spokespersons; etc., etc.
I'm going to leave this blog up and post only very infrequently, if at all. God knows what the future holds with the economy, continuing US/Israeli aggression and genocidal policies toward Palestinians, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tea party extremists, and the possibility of war on Iran. For now I invite anyone to link, borrow or steal from this blog's archives in order to spread the word that NPR news is not liberal, not balanced, not factual, and not worth supporting in any way, shape or form.
Cheers,
Matthew Murrey
Mytwords
