NPR Check: Q Tips

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

46 comments:

Anonymous said...: All,

Not an NPR Q-tip, but...

Majority.FM (The Majority Report) has many of the same guests as Democracy Now. The host is Sam Seder, formerly of The Majority Report on Air America Radio.

Regards

Don Q. Public; 3/15/11, 10:51 AM
geoff said...: In contrast to All Things Unclear, All Things Nuclear reported yesterday that

By late Monday (U.S. time), the situation is getting much worse. Larger radiation releases have occurred. And the New York Times is reporting that the radiation levels around the plants have gotten so high that TEPCO may withdraw workers from the plants. If this stops efforts to cool the reactors, the result may be meltdowns of the fuel in all three reactors.; 3/15/11, 11:54 AM
informedveteran said...: Earlier today Poll Shows 64 Percent Of Americans Saying Afghan War 'Not Worth It'
was on NPR.org's front page.

It seemed strange for them to actually cite public opinion so I went back to read it again.

Now it is gone from the front page and Petraeus: Taliban's Military Momentum Stalled appears instead.

Now thats the NPR I know! They must have recieved a phone call.; 3/15/11, 11:55 AM
gDog said...: Dan, No doubt the General's staffers were right on that.

Meanwhile, in contrast to All Things Unclear, All Things Nuclear reported yesterday that

By late Monday (U.S. time), the situation is getting much worse. Larger radiation releases have occurred. And the New York Times is reporting that the radiation levels around the plants have gotten so high that TEPCO may withdraw workers from the plants. If this stops efforts to cool the reactors, the result may be meltdowns of the fuel in all three reactors.; 3/15/11, 12:18 PM
informedveteran said...: All Things Nuclear looks like a pretty good site.

I've been quite troubled by the whole notion of using seawater. Seawater is nasty stuff. In the evaporator units on the 'Prise it would produce a scale buildup like concrete that required large quantities of citric acid to remove. Even if it cools the fuel rods temporarily, I worry that it could build up an insulating layer of crap as it boils off.; 3/15/11, 1:48 PM
informedveteran said...: They put that story about public opinion back on the front page. I wonder if it had anything to do with the comment I posted there about it.; 3/15/11, 1:53 PM
GRUMPY DEMO said...: From the : "It's not torture unless some else does it" Department.

"Ramy Essam: The Singer Of The Egyptian Revolution" by Steve Inskeep

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134538629/ramy-esam-the-singer-of-the-egyptian-revolution

"Musician Ramy Essam, 23, says he was tortured while under the custody of the Egyptian military "

Horrible awful criminal treatment.

But, how come when Inskeep/NPR describes the same treatment of prisoners by American troops at Gitmo and Ab Gruib it's only "harsh interrogation"?

Guess I just don't like my morning coffee with big spoonful of hypocrisy.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.html

Ahem, who has been training the Egyptian military of the past decade?

US trained and US proud.; 3/15/11, 2:06 PM
Miranda said...: I'm sorry, was that someone on TOTN today, amid the spreading nuclear disaster in Japan, claiming that nuclear power is the SAFEST form of energy, and that we need more, more, more of it?

I thought so.

http://n.pr/h9funT; 3/15/11, 2:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) likes NPR.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/15/chambliss-npr-valuable-service/; 3/15/11, 4:28 PM
Anonymous said...: It seems to me that Chambliss doesn't even really understand how NPR is funded. Why am I not surprised?; 3/15/11, 5:40 PM
JayV said...: My comment on "GOP Calls To Overhaul Social Security Grow Louder":

"Another he said, she said story that is typical of NPR's pathetic news reporting. I learned absolutely nothing. Why didn't your well-paid reporters do their homework and further ask Sen Coburn to back up his rash statement about SS? (Let me tell you that your bias towards the Republicans in this report will not save NPR funding!)"; 3/15/11, 9:11 PM
JayV said...: Apologies for the double post/comment.

Dean Baker critiques the very same NPR report I cited in the above comment and slams the reporters and editors for 'making this up.'; 3/15/11, 9:19 PM
larry, dfh said...: Media Matters take S-4-0 to task for being the lazy, non-inquisitive cowards that they truly are.; 3/15/11, 11:20 PM
Anonymous said...: nader on the npr case:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/15-3; 3/16/11, 8:27 AM
Anonymous said...: There's that old story about the turtle and the scorpion. That's the relationship NPR and Tea Party have. NPR granted "legitimacy" to astro-turf outfits that launched the Tea Party and are trying to "sting" them.

And it is not only NPR that has fits trying to cover the Japanese situation. I listen to a lot of people many of whom seem to say, "We don't know what's going on but Japan is doing thr right thing".

Now I hear slight references to the use of Boron in this. From what I've been able to find out that's last ditch, hail Mary stuff. It's another reson I call this the Deep water Horizon Louisianna. I expect to hear them try a "junk shot" before this is all over.

edk; 3/16/11, 8:45 AM
Anonymous said...: http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/bill-oreilly-npr-must-have-liberal-bias-bec; 3/16/11, 9:45 AM
gDog said...: Exelon, er, I mean excellent analogy with the fable of the turtle and the scorpion. The Republican/Democrat enablers of the Big Heist carry the deadly cargo of the super rich whose narcissism and nihilism seem unbounded. They appear prepared to poison the planet to where only the cucaracha will scurry over its surface.

Obama epitomizes the worst of these...enablers, simply because he's so effective at it. As an organization, I think NPR trumps even Obama!

But it's scorpions on top of scorpions these days. Look at Doug Lamborn (yes, that's Dickensian) who is trying desperately to kill the NPR scorpion: House GOP Declares Emergency ... Over NPR Funding. If he succeeds in killing NPR, I can see Inskeep bubbling through his foam: "But we did everything you ever wanted! Why did you destroy your best tool of destruction?"

"It's just in our nature," will come the gurgling reply.

It's scorpions the whole way down.; 3/16/11, 9:49 AM
Anonymous said...: i hope this isn't too "off-topic" but . . .

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/some-experts-cast-doubt-official-vers

edk; 3/16/11, 10:14 AM
larry, dfh said...: One of the main points of Nader's article is that commercial stations license OUR airwaves for free. Ending that tradition could easily fund public broadcasting.; 3/16/11, 11:37 AM
informedveteran said...: It seems our news media including NPR is doing a little magic trick with the radiation exposure units. They started out talking about microsieverts/hr (the Navy uses millirem), and now they are talking about millisieverts/hr. 1000millirem equals 10millisieverts (10000microsieverts). I guess it looks too scary with all those zeros.

As far as a reference, I seem to remember my supervisor on the 'Prise being concerned one month because I had recieved 60millirem that month. I remember it because it was the highest in all of machinery division that month.

I only got that much exposure because I was laying on the bottom half of a feedwater pump casing for several hours scraping the gasket off the bottom of the top half that was suspended above me. The feedwater pump was 3 feet away from the reactor compartment too (on the secondary side).

But then again, the rumor was that our dosimeters were rejects from the submarine fleet so who knows what I got. Go Navy!

Dan; 3/16/11, 12:59 PM
a.m. said...: Seem to have lost the capacity to be surprised/astonished by NPR's endlessly accommodating approach to right-wing lunacy, but David Welna's piece on Social Security on Tuesday had my jaw on the floor: a textbook example of misleading and vacuous he-said-she-said reporting, with Republican talking points on S.S. transmitted in the raw with zero critical scrutiny.; 3/16/11, 6:31 PM
gDog said...: Ok, maybe it's not "scorpions the whole way down." Naked Capitalism has a picture here showing something less predatory is possible after all.; 3/16/11, 9:44 PM
gDog said...: Siegheil today had the most perfect example of what I've been calling the "take and give" operation, which I think might more betterly be described as the "pull and push" operation: you pull your audience in with little purr words that will make the listener think, "yeah, what about that?!" Then once you've pulled them in, you can eject them in any direction you like with the very last "take away" statement, often diametrically opposed to the direction from which you pulled them in.

Take today's ATC segment, How Do Markets Prepare for Risk. It's instructive, I think, to go backwards and start with the "push":

I suppose what that tells us is that in the long run, the benefits of taking this risk outweigh the down side.

Get it? While the risk may lead to the destruction of your life, your property, the very Earth we live on, the "benefits," whatever the fuck those might be for a very few people in the very short term, are worth it!

Now go back and look at the "pull." Oh, crap, you know what it is. Well, here's a sampling:

SIEGEL: You address this question: Once we decide that something is extremely improbable, whether it's a category 5 hurricane hitting in exactly that spot, or a huge earthquake, or all the financial institutions making the same mistake at the same time, once we declare that it's a Black Swan, to use one popular metaphor for improbable events, that influences our behavior.

Mr. PEARLSTEIN: Right. So take the example of all, as you say, on Wall Street, all the analysts said there has never been a national decline in residential real estate prices. In other words, the price of homes has never gone down everywhere in the United States at the same time. So everyone says: Well, then, if we put together these securities that take mortgages from all over the country, not just from one place, we can be sure that, yeah, at any one time, some places may go down, but not the whole thing won't go down, and so we can give these a triple-A rating. These are as safe as U.S. Treasury bonds.

So everyone went and did that. And by the sheer fact that everyone thought there could never be a national real estate crisis, in fact, they created the very thing that they assumed could never happen.; 3/16/11, 11:34 PM
Anonymous said...: It's hard to say which is spewing more radioactive garbage these days: the Japanese nuclear plants or NPR

Radiation A Concern For Plant Workers, Not Others (by Jon Hamilton)

Ya know, it's one thing to try to present accurate information so that people won't panic unnecessarily, but it's quite another to purposely lowball the risks of the current situation with the reactors in japan.

Whether "Chernobyl" can occur is largely irrelevant.

FACT 1: there is AT LEAST one reactor with a breach in the primary containment and at least partial fuel meltdown. If all the fuel melts to the bottom, what will happen is anyones guess, but there WILL be radiation escaping to the outside (to the atmosphere and water). No doubt. The only question is "how much". Further damage to the containment (eg, from hydrogen explosions) could potentially cause bigger "leaks" (perhaps even catastrophic release if it is propelled by hydrogen explosions, for example)

FACT 2: at least one pool holding spent fuel may have lost part or all of its water. These pools are NOT inside a reinforced containment structure like the reactors themselves. If the spent fuel starts burning (it's actually the cladding that can burn when it gets hot enough from decay heat) -- which may already be happening--, there could be large radiation releases.

Japan nuclear crisis: fire in fuel pools 'would raise radiation exposure'

The situation at the japanese plants is DIRE and the attendant risk is HUGE.

NPR should NOT be attempting to "reassure" people otherwise.

It is HIGHLY irresponsible-- given the possible repurcussions, actually CRIMINAL -- to do so.

Personally, I've grown tired of all the CRAP coming out of NPR from its team of nitwits.

The latest reporting on the nuclear crisis has convinced me beyond ALL doubt that Congress should pull the plug on ALL funding for so-called "Public" radio (including for member stations) because it is doing NO ONE any good (with the exception of the folks who work there and continue to suck down huge salaries and benefits at public expense); 3/17/11, 6:42 AM
Anonymous said...: Hold the presses people:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/16/134593981/man-charged-in-threats-against-npr-hosts#commentBlock

Seems the guy was just trying to "get your attention" when the FBI showed up.

edk; 3/17/11, 10:24 AM
Miranda said...: You beat me to the post, Anonymous.

http://bit.ly/hVlMIH

Missy and Guy!; 3/17/11, 1:14 PM
gDog said...: The Hill has a piece on the House vote to defund NPR. The comments are hillarious. The cave people actually think there's a liberal bias and that there's a liberal Democratic Party behind this bias. Of course the theatre of this suits the suits just fine.; 3/17/11, 6:45 PM
GRUMPY DEMO said...: My nom de plum at NPR.org as the artist formerly know as GrumpyDemo seems to have gotten Steve "Life Support For FOX Talking Points" Inskeep annoyed.

His story "Ramy Essam: The Singer Of The Egyptian Revolution" covered his torture at the hands of Egyptian Government. He called Essam's treatment torture, even thought it was similar to may cases at Gitmo and via Extraordinary Rendition.

I asked why when the US does it NPR calls it "enhanced interrogation" not torture?

"NPR STAFF:

Steve Inskeep (Inskeep) wrote:

Thanks to all for listening, and for your comments; I appreciate them. As for the "Modest Egotist" question about why we don't refer to torture by Americans as torture. Actually, we do, and I have. Not room enough for all the links here, but many examples are searchable at npr.org at any time. Thanks again, Steve"

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134538629/ramy-esam-the-singer-of-the-egyptian-revolution?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:9f94e5dc-8da9-4381-bc11-ec2b470181b8; 3/17/11, 9:31 PM
gDog said...: Does Inskeep skip cheerily over the connection between Egyptian torturers and the the CIA/MOSSAD? Tralala!

Meanwhile, I heard some reporter saying "Let's hope the winds are blowing to the east so that the fallout just scatters over the ocean."

Yeah, that would fix it.; 3/17/11, 11:32 PM
Mytwords said...: Nice work Grumpy. Inskeep is a slippery one with his response. I went ahead and posted a comment at the NPR story site and would recommend others do the same. The guy has no shame...; 3/18/11, 6:19 AM
informedveteran said...: This UN Security Council resolution for a no-fly zone in Libya sure is getting all kinds of NPR coverage. Not the case with the recent US veto of the resolution to declare Israeli settlements illegal. I could only find ONE 2 minute story on ATC about it (with a handful of comments indicating that it wasn't promoted online).

Nationalist Propaganda Radiation at its "best". If the US Government agrees with the resolution, it is allowed to be front page news. If not, few ever hear about it.

Dan; 3/18/11, 8:29 AM
Anonymous said...: Informed: Nice NPR "stand-in". And while you may be here can I ask you if you knew what you wre getting into when you were on the USS Enterprise?

MyTWords: I posted a question to Steve Inskeep about the torture and murder of Dilawar. I asked him to provide links to stories HE did concerning this young, innocent victim. I guess I passed the "monitors" at IUCU. It pays to "friend" them on FaceBook. lmao!

edk; 3/18/11, 8:54 AM
Anonymous said...: Norris is showing no signs of the threat on her life. In fact, I am beginning to think she has graduated from NPR's famous How To Laugh Like a Real NPR Manly Host. I founded this School of Journalism and have convinced Simon, Inskeep, and Siegal to come aboard. I am negotiating with that well known "journalism ethics" guru with her 30 years of experience to also come on staff. I have the hook: What are you all gonna do when you get laid off cause the nasty Tea Party scorpions deprived you of the oxygen you breathe. Or at least the money you make being bought and paid for. Which is basically the same thing.

edk; 3/18/11, 8:59 AM
Anonymous said...: my comment on Dilawar seems to have been "disappeared". Fair weather friends on Facebook!

edk; 3/18/11, 9:20 AM
Anonymous said...: couldn't get to post turtle/scorpion analogy at ombutt!

edk; 3/18/11, 9:22 AM
Anonymous said...: As for the "Modest Egotist" question about why we don't refer to torture by Americans as torture. Actually, we do, and I have. Not room enough for all the links here, but many examples are searchable at npr.org at any time. Thanks again, Steve"

Stevie prolly wants you to do a search in the NPR.org search box just so he can get your IP address and send it to his pals. :)

Technically, he might actually be correct, but as they say, half a truth is a whole lie.

The way NPR does this stuff is they couch it in the old "balance" (he said she said) routine.

In other words, they say something like "some [Un-American, terrorist supporting left-wingers] call what the US did torture..."

[but we, the intelectual elite know that it was no worse than listening to Steve Inskeep or Meeeeeeeeshell Norris on NPR ].; 3/18/11, 9:44 AM
informedveteran said...: edk

I would say I was as dumb as any 18 year old when I joined the Navy.

As much as I criticize the Navy's use of Nuclear power, Naval reactors are paragons of stability compared to civilian plants. NO Navy ship stores spent fuel onboard for one thing.

The USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1962. So even for being built in the 1970's there is really no excuse (other than cost) for these Mark 1 BWR's being designed the way they are in Japan. They had over 10 years to take a few pointers from the Navy and build them more safely.

I think even if the 'Prise was blown completely in half, as long as the halves were still mostly upright you would still be able to come up with power to cool the Reactors (at least when the ship was NEW and everything worked).

Dan; 3/18/11, 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: It's no surprise that people like Inskeep are getting testy.

He and the other folks at NPR have gone into panic mode.

What they figured was a sure thing (a cushy well paid job extending til retirement age) is starting to look more than a little uncertain and, like cornered animals they are lashing out at those they view as responsible for putting a kink in their career plans. (ie, anyone who challenges or criticizes them)

The Schiller Show was entertaining to be sure, but I suspect it was only the first Act of a multi-part tragicomedy (a tragedy for the folks at NPR and a comedy for the rest of us)

Pass the popcorn. This is starting to get good.; 3/18/11, 8:52 PM
Anonymous said...: Bill Moyers has now become an honorary "Shiller" for NPR

He is actually equating the folks at NPR with "artists". What a complete joke. Real artists (like real journalists) do not cow-tow to the wishes of corporate and government overlords.

Such propaganda is particularly sad (pathetic, really) coming from an excellent journalist like Moyers.

would also note that Moyers uses one of NPR's few REAL journalists (Zwerdling) as "just one example" of how great and indispensible NPR journalism is (ie, as if Zwerdling is the norm at NPR, which is about as FAR from the truth as one can get)

Finally, Moyers tries to effectively "brush off" the screwups of Ron Schiller with this: "on Thursday, following a number of missteps by NPR executives, including what has now been indisputably exposed as a disingenuous and dishonestly-edited video by a disreputable right-wing smear artist of the network’s chief fundraiser expressing some personal opinions..." (end of Moyers quote)

Unfortunately, Schiller said what he said and the editing did not change the gist of it. In addition, Schiller was actually speaking the TRUTH, something you simply won't hear from most of the folks at NPR.

And anyone who believes that Schiller was "only" expressing an opinion has no clue how the politics or large organizations works.

Schiller was OBVIOUSLY very unhappy with how some other folks at NPR were handling things (namely, attacks by right wingers) which is almost certainly why he was willing to express such "opinions" to total and complete strangers.

Why do you suppose Ron Schiller was leaving NPR to begin with?

That's a question no one seems to have asked.; 3/19/11, 8:34 AM
gDog said...: Moyers practically single handedly created NPR and CPB, so he can be forgiven a bit of a bias, I'd say. The same sort of blinders that made him acceptable as an aide to LBJ are likely still in place. Has he, as recipient of the Katzenbach Memo, ever come forward to opine on what happen in November of 1963? I think he gave a deposition on the assassination in 1963, but is it in the public record?

What does Moyers make of the 911 cover-ups? He doesn't say. A little too cagey sometimes, huh?; 3/19/11, 6:34 PM
gDog said...: ..er...I meant to say he gave a deposition in 1978.; 3/19/11, 6:35 PM
Miranda said...: Thanks for that, gDog. Moyers has a lot in common with Stands 4-0; widely perceived as "liberal" -- in fact a darling of the liberals -- when actually a well known shill for power.

Just ran across this interesting bit about Moyers' mottled history.

http://bit.ly/gyNnYT; 3/19/11, 6:58 PM
gDog said...: Yeah, well, ok, toss Moyers on the heap of sinners. Crap. I kinda liked him. He was ratting out "homosexuals" (they didn't have teh gays back then) to Hoover? What a joke!; 3/19/11, 8:28 PM
Anonymous said...: To be fair, Moyers has done a lot of good as well.

Eg: his interview of William Black about the financial meltdown.

It would be very hard (ridiculous, in fact) to categorize that as "shilling" for power.; 3/20/11, 8:54 AM
Miranda said...: Not disputing that Moyers has done great work. I do think a person's past acts as a government official -- particularly if they include such things as described in the links provided (persecuting MLK and homosexuals, et al.) -- are valid points for consideration, and their inclusion in a discussion of his career is not "ridiculous."; 3/20/11, 4:51 PM
Anonymous said...: I knew a guy once that was in and out of drug rehab and he got good enough at rehab-speak that he could recite the crap in his sleep. But he always came right out and hooked up cause he was only "playing" and since he had the dialogue . . .

Pretty much like NPR and the people that work there and for them. They learned the language of "liberal thought" and parrot it well enough to seem liberal but are just looking to hook up again.

Will not be surprised if many NPR presenters end up at conservative "think tanks" and foundations.

edk; 3/21/11, 9:43 AM

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