Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Q Tips


NPR related comments are welcomed, as always.
Posted by Mytwords at 5:51 AM
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28 comments:

GRUMPY DEMO said...

This AM on Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep tells us that "everyone want to know how Kate compares to Princess Diana".

Actually no, not everyone.

What a small, sad, shallow world Steve must live in.

__________________________


Meanwhile at a real news organization real solid reporting like this:

U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases

"KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, as if they were corralling livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/16/38775/day-2-us-abuse-of-detainees-was.html#ixzz1KdJZFtVL

McClathy is doing an exceptional job on covering wikileaks.

4/26/11, 8:05 AM
Patrick Lynch said...

When Inskreep got to his phone sex bit with Tina Brown about Kate and Diana, I was turning off the radio.

The puff piece on Mitt Romney must have been written by his PR dept. I don't think he could have been more pleased with the gushing kid glove treatment NPR gave him this morning. I can only imagine that the "coverage" of the other Republican candidates will be much in the same vein. Disgusting but not surprising.

Yesterday both Firedoglake and Glenzilla slam NPR's coverage of the economy and Wikileaks. It looks like on Salon more people are finally starting to wake up about NPR. About time.

4/26/11, 8:12 AM
Anonymous said...

"It looks like on Salon more people are finally starting to wake up about NPR"

It might have something to do with how blatant NPR's cowtowing to corporate and government interests has become.

I mean, in just the past few weeks, they have
1) propagandized to keep Mubarak in power
2) downplayed the risks from the Japanese nuclear disaster
3) Not even reported on fracking blowout in Pennsylvania
4) offered PR advice to BP on the first anniversary of the oil disaster (rather than report on the damage to the Gulf)
5) Ignored the fact that a large number of innocent people have been caught up in the dragnet that is Guantanamo and instead focused on the "threat" or releasing people.

Anyone with an internet connect and 5 minutes can see that NPR is (at the very least) slanting things to fit their needs (or more precisely, the needs of their corporate and Congressional sponsors)

NPR relies on the fact that they have a captive audience (people listening in their car on their way to and from work) but all it takes is a few minutes on the internet to see how full of crap most of their "news" stories actually are.

4/26/11, 9:55 AM
informedveteran said...

Check out the comments section for

"Mark Memmott (Mark_Memmott) wrote:

Craig A: Welcome to The Two-Way. This is about the 10th time we've pointed to things said on Hannity and/or used some of its video in the past two years. As for citing Fox News, we do it pretty regularly. We survey all types of media."

The more they pander to the moonbats, the more the moonbats sense weakness and go on the attack. Why is this so hard for them to understand?

Dan

4/26/11, 9:58 AM
Anonymous said...

@GrumpyDemo,

The older brother of an Army buddy of mine is a civilian recruiter for the U.S. Army. He said that EVERYONE that he has put into the Army over the past SEVERAL years has needed a moral waiver to enlist. Garbage in, garbage out.

Don Q. Public

4/26/11, 4:30 PM
a.m. said...

I have to say that I have appreciated Jacki Lyden's recent series on prostitutes and women recovering from drug addiction in Nashville. Her reports shed some light on a gritty quadrant of reality--poverty, desperation, the insulted and the injured and the dispossessed--that has been virtually airbrushed out of the tidy, narcotized, bourgeois view of the world that NPR presents to its increasingly affluent listeners. Hearing the voices of these women made me feel as if NPR had established contact for a few brief moments with the actual life of this country. Then, of course, it was back to the usual newspeak and falsity and ersatz sentiment.

4/27/11, 7:39 AM
Anonymous said...

Here"s a "stlye" rant but I think it points to something deeper in NPR blatherers. On Saturday Liane Hansen was talking to members of Hot Tuna and she said that the new release was going to be vinyl. She wondered if that was a nod to "unrepentant hippies" like herself. I almost fell out of my stoned meanderings through the smoke rings of my mind etc etc WOW!

I "became" a hippie the day my hair reached my shirt collar in 1967 and people started to treat me very differently even in my hometown. I spent about 18 months travelling here and there "organizing" mostly student protests. Against the war for the most part. I thus had an opportunity to meet many kids that were away from home for the first time and had discovered the three Ps of the era; pot,protest, and procreation for the mostly white, middle class children of the suburbs.

I knew even then that most of them would "see the light" and take on the roles they were being prepared for which were (and mostly still are) as workers and consumers. And people like Liane Hansen were right there. Some of my friends called people like her "useful idiots" cause the only thing they were really good at was showing up. And numbers were important.

So here we are 43 years later and she claims to be an "unrepentent hippie". I look at the trajectory of my life and experiences and compare them to this self-described "unrepentent hippie" and see that she (along with other celebrity unrepentent hippies [Al Gore and Bill Clinton spring to mind lol]) has progressedfrom being a useful idiot into being just an idiot.

I am still trying to figure this out. And I wonder how many of them are still out there listening to NPR and voting for Tea Party cretins.

Sorry for the rant but I fell soooo much better now. lmao (which was the FB comment i left at her page).

edk

4/27/11, 8:07 AM
Anonymous said...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/New-York-Times-NPR-Collud-by-Kevin-Gosztola-110426-852.html

4/27/11, 8:53 AM
Anonymous said...

@ Anon,

Nice piece about The Gray Lady and her younger, uglier sister. Shocking.

Don Q. Public

4/27/11, 10:07 AM
Anonymous said...

From the manc twats at Planet Monkey: http://tinyurl.com/3u2tesw

Planet Monkey is so snarky and clever. This childishness barely masquerades their inability to think, report or enlighten. Incredible.

DQP

4/27/11, 12:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Just tuned in briefly to ME (4/27) with the due sense of dread -- this time part way through a discussion on nuclear risks (Chernobyl versus Fukushima) between Inscreep and a Matthew Bond from Harvard (??). OK -- I only got part of the discussion but what I got was truly awful. (BTW HOW do NPR locate / choose the interviewees for "in depth 'news'" pieces like these??? Must be a painstaking process to get the required slant).
First off, Inscreep seemed interested in conveying the clear impression that Fukushima is not on the same disaster-scale as Chernobyl. (Surely it's much too early to make a call like that!). The interviewee went on to explain how *much* *safer* nuclear plants are these days, and that what we can learn is that power-outage back up procedures need to be improved ( -- e.g. ability to get diesel-powered generators on the scene asap -- though in the face of massive Japanese tsunamis it's difficult to envisage this unless they are lowered in by helicopter or some other wonderful flawless technology is involved).
The interviewee mentioned in passing only better treatment of nuclear waste (by this I assume he means arrangements other than storing monumental amounts of highly radioactive materials suspended above the active nuclear core, requiring constant cooling lest it should explode in a hideous radioactive fireball -- good idea, admittedly. If ALONE arrangements like these aren't reason enough to abandon the idea of nuclear power, I don't know what would be).
In other words Inscreep and his well-chosen "authority" underscored and support Obama's continued unwavering commitment to nuclear power. For my money, a huge omission from reporting like this is the reaction of other nations following Fukushima. Did I dream this or did I read somewhere that in Germany they have decided actually to shut down their older reactors? Huge antinuclear demonstrations take place in France and Germany. In the US (another planet?) -- nothing -- neither demonstrations nor reports.
On Counterpunch recently, someone made the point that a) old nuclear plants can either be shut down or they will eventually melt down; b) with the NRC in the pocket of the nuclear industry (and 20 year commission extensions to rickety old plants routine), in the US, at least, the latter is more likely to happen than the former. So another area where NPR does the nation a disservice is to under-report the reactions of more rational, reality-based nations. Another routine disgrace for NPR.

4/27/11, 12:45 PM
gDog said...

Boom, less than 3 minutes into DN and I learn that a nuclear power plant in Alabama was forced to go on emergency power because of the tornados. Exactly what I was wondering while listening to ME...which reported no such thing.

4/28/11, 9:31 AM
gDog said...

For more in-depth analysis of the explosions at Fukushima, check out Fair Winds Associates.

4/28/11, 9:36 AM
Patrick Lynch said...

Did I miss something? I heard what felt like unending blathering from Inscreep and Nigella Lawson about the stupid wedding along with the PR guy who helps people out themselves but nothing about how much more militarised the CIA is about to get when Obama puts Petraeus in the top spot?

4/28/11, 11:06 AM
Boulder Dude said...

Alicia is at it again. Shorter Alicia Shepard: "Look we're biased to the left because 63% of liberals *don't* believe us!"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2011/04/28/135775694/views-of-nprs-credibility-tend-to-be-partisan-based

4/28/11, 1:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Poor Alicia Shepard.

Has to contort herself into a pretzel to "splain" NPR's bias and lack of journalistic integrity.

But it's undoubtedly all worth it.

She's made nearly half a million dollars in the 3 short years she's been with NPR.

Not bad, especially for a job whose only real requirement is defending NPR in times of need.

That's roughly 10,000 pledges of $50 for all you die hard NPR fans who still like to give (to Alicia's retirement fund).

4/29/11, 7:25 AM
Anonymous said...

Funding at WHYY and predictably they are using the threat of de-funding to raise money. Yesterday they claimed that there were discussions under way currently debating this issue. Just a flat out lie of course since the FY is in place and keeps CPB funding at levels previously attained (may have been 2% decrease but I can't find that). Today they have changed the "messaging" to debates about to begin anew as next FY budget is debated. Maybe a couple of their intelligent, involved, and informed members called them on it. Or maybe it was a non-member(s) response to this blatant fabrication or statement "not meant to be factual".

The royal wedding is perfect match for Stands 4 Nothing radio. Worship of the elite, the wealthy, and the celebrity culture. Good job NPR!

edk

4/29/11, 7:46 AM
Anonymous said...

An NPR reporter walks into bar, and standing there is a chicken hawk, a tea bagger, a birther, a debt/deficit hawk, a Millenialist, a climate skeptic, aRandian, and a Bircher.

Q: What does the NPR reporter do?
A: Interview the guy for "fairness and balance."

4/29/11, 8:45 AM
Anonymous said...

@Ed,

NPR is using the 2012 budget battle to gin current funding. This is the cloud they will continue to hang over listeners heads to beg during every drive for the next year. If it works, it will be their go-to message from this point forward.

Regards,

DQP

4/29/11, 9:09 AM
Anonymous said...

Church of Scientology buys NPR station!

"KCET, the nation’s largest independent public television station, announced today that it has sold its production facility to the Church of Scientology"

Did anyone see this story?

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/04/28/good-news-scientology-expands/

4/29/11, 11:35 AM
Anonymous said...

An NPR reporter walks into a university where he finds a large number of experts on everything from climate science, nuclear radiation, human rights and torture to economics and job creation.

Q: What does the NPR reporter ask the experts about?

A: The Royal Wedding.

4/29/11, 11:52 AM
Anonymous said...

@ Anon,

I love it: http://tinyurl.com/6jgx82n

I can't wait to hear NPR's resident religion snot, Barbara Bradley Haggerty, prattle about the aliens!

DQP

4/29/11, 11:59 AM
Anonymous said...

Yet another case of NPR using public funds to do book advertisements for one of its employees.

I'm pretty sure this violates journalistic ethics, but isn't there actually a law against this?

4/29/11, 3:58 PM
geoff said...

To balance the tea party madness, NPR followed up the GOP Candidates Seek to Out-Idiot One Another story with one about Log Cabin Reeps. What these oh-so-level-headed extremes of the party share is an overwhelming sense of austerity psychosis.

4/30/11, 12:36 PM
geoff said...

The US puppet Museveni in Uganda brutally attacks the opposition leader Dr. Kiiza Besigye causing riots in the streets of Kampala and it doesn't even register on ME. No, the top two stories on ME are An Artist Imagines The White House As It Once Was and Will The Royal Marriage Be A Fairy Tale, Too?. National Pathetic Regression.

4/30/11, 3:15 PM
Anonymous said...

NPR and neoliberal rhetoric:
http://www.truthout.org/i-consumer/1304184750

5/1/11, 12:21 AM
geoff said...

Medicare's Math Problem: Taxes - Benefits = Trouble
by NPR Staff

It was Guy Raz, not "NPR Staff" doing this hatchet job on the elderly and covering Paul Ryan's flank. It was Guy Raz saying Medicare is a pyramid scheme - though that part of the broadcast was scrubbed!? Disgusting.

Grief! It's the private, for profit health insurance business that's a pyramid scheme (Wendell Potter has said so...) and if Medicare is inflected by that, it's not Medicare's fault - it's the private, for-profit health insurance industry's fault. No mention of the role of the private, for-profit insurance and pharms in Raz's indictment of Medicare.

Andrew Macha's comment seemed apt:

How about this math: The Gross Domestic Product per capita in 1970 was $21K, GDP per capita in 2010 is $42K, i.e. it has doubled. Of people who started working in 1970, only 20% are 60 and older, i.e. only 1/5 made it to retirement age.

So resources have doubled since the baby boom started and there are only 1 in 5 baby boomers who are making it to retirement - there should be plenty of resources to care for our elderly.

The problem is not one of resources. The problem is that the rich want to become richer so they fund the right wing politicians and media to claim that the rich should have more of the GDP and that the non-rich just have to argue over who should get the scraps that are left over.

To which I would add that Guy Raz wants the rich to like him too, because he can help them to become even richer and then maybe they'll make him a little richer too.

5/1/11, 11:09 AM
Anonymous said...

With ObL's death, NPR really marches out the war machine today!

5/2/11, 8:02 AM

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