Saturday, January 29, 2011

Start Your Timers

There's new marketing afoot for Mattel's plastic couple - Barbie and Ken. And with a come-on line like, "...we may be plastic but our love is real" how long will it be before NPR gives this critical news, say, one, two or even three feature stories. After all when all you have to do is repeat the talking points that the generals and government hacks feed you, even a Barbie can be a journalist. When you're listening, don't forget, they may be real, but their journalism is _______________.

Feel free to treat this post as an open thread...with any NPR related comments welcomed.

14 comments:

informedveteran said...

Biblical droughts followed by biblical floods in Australia and the resulting bad wheat harvest have harmed North Africa’s wheat imports. I wondered if NPR would make the connection between rising food prices, political unrest, and climate change, but then I remembered that less Americans believe climate change is real now than several years ago. How could that be with such a “free press”?

Searching All Things trivial Considered, I discovered that “climate change” gets squarely defeated by "sarah palin" PLUS Walmart.

The future of humankind vs Sarah Palin+Walmart. I dread the consequences of this sustained level of ignorance in a country of 300 Million.

geoff said...

Well, well, a Barbie mention from 1/27: A Young Public Radio Fan's Very NPR Christmas. They must be making this stuff up.

Anonymous said...

NPR tries to paint the popular uprising in Egypt as consisting mainly of members of the "Brotherhood", which NPR describes as an "outlaw group" wanting "to establish an Islamist state in Egypt"

("Uncertainty In Egypt's Streets Amid Protests")

"On Sunday evening, the presence of overtly pious Muslims in the square was conspicuous, suggesting a significant Brotherhood representation."


And of course, NPR throws in the "Looting card" to make sure people think the uprising is being carried out largely (if not primarily) by a bunch of criminals.

"Looting

Overnight, residents and shopkeepers in affluent neighborhoods boarded up their houses and stores against looters, who roamed the streets with knives and sticks, stealing what they could and destroying cars, windows and street signs. Gunfire rang out in some neighborhoods.

All around Cairo, groups of armed young men like Mark Rafat are out in force.

"We are trying to protect our neighborhood over here," he said. "Many assaults have been going on though the night. We've been able to capture many thieves."

Before dawn on Sunday, gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities.


//end NPR quotes

NPR did the same thing after New Orleans got flooded. Focused on the looting (to make all black people look bad?)

I tell you. I want NPR shut down entirely. It has become a disseminator of pure, unadulterated propaganda.

The folks at NPR are not journalists. They are simply disgusting mouthpieces for those in power (whomever they might happen to be)

informedveteran said...

I noticed that too. NPR is covering the fuck out of the "looting" while ignoring the fact that HIGH FOOD PRICES are a major cause of all this. Desperate people have been known to render desperate deeds.

Democracy Now has one of their main guys on the ground in Cairo(Sharif Abdel Kouddous). LIVE FROM THE EGYPTION REVOLUTION "Cairo, Egypt—I grew up in Egypt. I spent half my life here. But Saturday, when my plane from JFK airport touched down in Cairo, I arrived in a different country than the one I had known all my life. This is not Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt anymore and, regardless of what happens, it will never be again."

Patrick Lynch said...

Make me the third person who noticed the over emphasis on looting which from I've read elsewhere seems to have a lot of government involvement. There were reports of cars being pre doused with flammables ahead of the more intense protests so that it would look worse on television. People who are forming neighbourhood watches are finding government i.d.s on many of the "looters" they've caught.

Between this and the pathetic "coverage" of Wikileaks, NPR has reached lows I didn't even think possible even a few months ago.

Patrick Lynch said...

I meant also to mention that the ME propaganda about the "Brotherhood" got slightly derailed when the mouthpiece from the Brookings Institute failed to tow the exact party line and said that the Brotherhood did not represent a threat and that they were working positively with the various protest groups.

With that Inskreep's displeasure was palpable and he cut short the "interview".

However, sadly that propaganda about Muslim extremism is working quite well on some older people I know who only get their news from mainstream TV talking heads.

geoff said...

How do you suppose sarhadi whatsername felt about being teargassed with teargas Made in the USA by Combined Tactical Systems from Jamestown, Pennsylvania.?

Incidentally, my dentist's son, who graduated from Harvey Mudd with degree in engineering, couldn't find a job for a year. He finally settled for a job at Armtec, presumably making 155mm Modular Artillery Charge Systems (MACS) using "a three piece combustible case set for each of six modules." Wowwee. Or the
"felted fiber propellant containers [which] are the standard on all U.S. mortar ammunition" and whose "system benefits" include:

* Elimination of hangfires

That' great! Those hangfires can be such a hassle.

It's great that American can-do engineering is alive and well.

Porter Melmoth said...

Yes, the US media is desperate to 'connect some dots' (sick of that nursery school-level phrase!) in slapping a radical Islamist spin on the Egypt situation. That way they can readily 'explain' it for scared Americans, so as to fit nicely into the Eternal War reality that is our present and future fate.

Boring old Tunisia, so handily captured by second-rate Beardsley's stupid quackings, doesn't fit in with the agenda at all, so it must be minimized. Cairo in flames is much more sexy.

This morn Cokie-Cola made 'complete sense' of the situation in as few well-paid-for words as possible and blithely went on her way. What a deal - you can toss off a few sentences about a crisis and chuckle all the way to the Bank of America.

What we're talkin' about here is nothing short of a racket, which is itself too polite a word.

Porter Melmoth said...

MeeShill and Folkenflik did a little bratty analysis of Al Jazeera's coverage of Egypt, which she brands as 'wily'. It's all imperialist sour grapes, as if Al Jazeera has no right to muscle into NPR & MSM territory. There are qualifying statements such as 'Al Jazeera has been called ant-American' etc. (classic NPR sissyhawk speak), but the upshot is more banal: MeeShill's simply jealous, is all. Her dreary voice expresses surprise that Al Jazeera English is available on cable in - get this - Burlington, Vermont!

Conversely, Folkenflik actually sounds factual. Of course, how couldn't he be - the evidence is all out there on the Net.

Porter Melmoth said...

PS: Burlington VT is described as 'a little liberal enclave'!

Ah, the World According To NPR! If they look around, all they see is lower colon.

Anonymous said...

Between this and the pathetic "coverage" of Wikileaks, NPR has reached lows I didn't even think possible even a few months ago."

NPR doesn't even realize that the writing is on the wall.


NPR has clearly placed ALL their bets on the government's ability to "Nip wikileaks in the bud".

They seem to believe that the wikileaks "experiment" will soon be over and NPR can go back to being one of the main "bottlenecks" through which news must pass on its way to the public (the other being Fox).

But what NPR does not realize is that wikileaks is like the hydra: cut off their head (literally) and two grow back.

There is virtually NO way that the government can prevent organizations like wikileaks from releasing information -- short of shutting down the internet entirely, for all intents and purposes.

Wikileaks is the future of journalism.

Either NPR embraces what they have to offer or it becomes totally obsolete.

personally, I'm willing to bet that NPR will be gone before they ever realize what hit them.

The Republicans are going to shut them down -- and this is one staunch liberal who will support them all the way (their goal if not their rationale)

JayV said...

My comment on Norris and Folkenflick's 'analysis':

Sounds like National Public Radio (self-proclaimed arbiter of American exceptionalism) is just jealous of Al-Jazeera's thorough coverage of the Egyptian crisis, which would explain Folkenflik and Norris' flippant tone and delivery. Especially Folkenflik's catty remark about Burlington, Vermont, where I happen to reside.

As another comment on that story wrote (paraphrasing), BTV is a "vibrant" city inhabited people curious for international news.

JayV said...

I noticed the AJE story shows 10 comments, but only 8 are shown? What's up with that discrepancy?
Makes me wonder if that's the case with other comment threads on their reporting.

informedveteran said...

Sometimes if you switch from "most recommended" to "recent first" the number of comments changes. Not sure why.