NPR Check

Q Tips

2012-01-15T11:23:00.000-06:00

NPR related comments, critiques and observations are welcomed and encouraged.

Assassinating English: Belligerent Signals

2012-01-13T06:16:00.000-06:00

A Belligerent Signal - from The Mirror (UK)

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post on the distorted coverage by the US mainstream media [including NPR] regarding the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. In spite of official US denial and condemnation of the murder - most experts agree that Israel - and possibly - the US were responsible for the killing (although at this time there is no conclusive proof).

However, as Glenn Greenwald points out, the murder allows us to see how the term "terrorism" is worthless as a factual term, but - in the US mainstream press - is a politically loaded term of propaganda applied ONLY to states and individuals deemed hostile to the US government/corporate interests. By comparing the coverage of this actual terrorist attack against a civilian scientist to the coverage of the ludicrous US claims regarding Iran's supposed plot to kill a Saudi ambassador, one can see how the term "terrorism" is distorted and misused in most major news organizations in the US. And NPR is no exception.

If you have any doubts that NPR is somehow distinct from other corporate news organizations, this latest story offers firm evidence to the contrary. A simple search on NPR's site will reveal the way the NPR aligns its coverage:

Search "Iran terror assassination" on NPR's site and limit it to "Heard on Air" and you get FIVE stories (3-Morning Edition and 2-All Things Considered) on the flimsy, alleged Iranian assassination plot from October 2011, but NONE on this actual terrorist act against Iran. Among the stories from October is this chestnut featuring State Department "intellectual" Ray Takeyh throwing around various forms of the word "terror" (in relation to Iran) 13 times!

To find anything aired on NPR regarding the actual political murder of a civilian in Iran you have to drop "terror" from your search and simply query NPR with "Iran assassination" and limit it to "Heard on Air". Doing this gives you ONE story on All Things Considered. Not only does this January 11, 2012 story not mention terror or terrorism, it features Peter Kenyon normalizing this assassination as a legitimate tool of statecraft. Paraphrasing nuclear analyst David Albright, Kenyon says, "Tehran must be feeling the pressure." Albright then speaks,

"It knows that some of its scientists are under threat by assassination. There's been cyberattacks. There's efforts to get Iranians to defect. And we've called it kind of a third way. All those things are continuing, and that's added to the pressure."

If there is any doubt that Kenyon and NPR share this criminal attitude, Kenyon adds,

"This is the latest in a series of increasingly belligerent signals between Tehran and Western capitals."

That's interesting because I don't recall the "plot" to kill the Saudi ambassador described as a "belligerent signal," and I would wager a Romney-sized $10,000 that the assassination of a US or Israeli scientist by Iranian-backed killers would never be called a "belligerent signal" on NPR.

One can not help but listen to this rubbish from NPR and recall the previous Ombudsman's defense of NPR's refusal to call torture "torture" when the US committed it. NPR could not call waterboarding torture because, as she put it, "the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons." And of course, the exact same twisted reasoning must be motivating NPR to avoid using any form of the word terror to describe actions that serve US government interests - no matter how clearly they fit any basic understanding of the term.

Q Tips

2011-12-14T04:59:00.003-06:00

NPR related comments, critiques and observations are welcomed and encouraged.

A Largely Peaceful Police State

2011-12-11T16:53:00.000-06:00

On November 30th the LAPD cleared out the LA Occupy encampment with a massive police action that was hailed in most mainstream media outlets as being peaceful and well-conducted. Being a defiantly mainstream media organization - NPR jumped on the bandwagon of LAPD-love with two features on its November 30 Morning Edition.

One involved Renee Montagne interviewing Frank Stoltze a reporter at NPR affiliate KPCC. Stoltze described "a massive police operation" that was "a largely peaceful operation" and commented that the protestors were "quite well-disciplined." Stoltze also claimed that the police action was due to "concerns about public safety' and because "there was some drug use going on." At that point Montagne interrupted him to say "And drug dealing, I mean there were some stories of you know, you know homeless encampments that had encroached on the encampment." [Of course "some stories" is all the evidence Montagne produces to substantiate such a provocative claim].

The second story featured Inskeep interviewing Frank Stotlze who explained that "in the end there was very little force used...in part because this is a new LAPD." The interview covered much of the same material as the Renee Montagne piece.

BUT there were a few little problems with this Police State Theater propaganda from LA:

First, the coverage of the raid was restricted to 12 members of a media ~~septic tank~~ pool. Like the restrictive media pools of the US military these "pools" are meant to tightly control access to what is actually happening and to favorably tilt coverage toward those who set up the pool and grant/deny access to this "pool" - in this case the LAPD. You would think, just the very concept of the police media pool would raise journalistic concerns - unless your news organization is tiltled toward spinning press coverage in favor of police actions against dissidents.

Second, and most important, a lot of rough and very ugly police behavior occurred outside the coverage perimeter that the media pool had access to, and to those who were arrested once they were out of the range of media pool coverage. Ruth Folwer of Occupy LA reported on police "kettling," rough tactics, and arbitrary arrests that occurred on side streets around the main occupy crackdown. Lisa Derrick documented police use of "non lethal" weapons on non-violent, non-resistant LA protesters. The LA Weekly blog noted the brutal police attack on photojournalist, Tyson Heder. Patrick Meighan, one of the writers for the popular FOX cartoon, Family Guy, has posted a very detailed description of his first hand experience of the rough treatment meted out to those arrested at Occupy LA. A very similar picture emerged from Exiled editor, Yasha Levine's description of his treatment by the LAPD. The Brad Blog gathered evidence of both the deplorable conditions endured by arrestees and the use of police violence against protesters during that "largely peaceful operation" by the "new LAPD" that NPR's Frank Stoltze was so impressed with.

Any organization that claims to be doing journalism would recognize that it has a duty and responsibility to revisit a story/s which future events and facts have shown was so distorted, truncated, and false. It's bad enough that NPR considers it acceptable to adopt the servile role of reporting from a police-picked/ police approved "pool" - but even more disturbing is its utter lack of follow-up in correcting the misinformation conveyed in that report. Given that we are talking about NPR (which has a fondness for jack-booted police tactics and for the expanded powers of the surveillance state) it really is no surprise at all that NPR has purposely ignored the evidence that their two main feature stories on the police action against Occupy LA were nothing but pro-police propaganda filled with inaccuracies and spin.

If you want to get a sense of the "objective" and "unbiased" attitudes of the so-called journalists who work for NPR and its affiliates listen first to the Steve Inskeep interview story I mentioned above and hear the derision in Inskeep voice as he sneers "OK, so the tree fort is on its way out." [this link has great images and descriptions of that "peaceful" action.] Even more disturbing is KPCC's John Rabe's editorializing as he interviews pool reporter and colleague Frank Stolze and says [at about the halfway point of the interview]:

"There were a lot of protesters who were saying [Rabe imitates them with snarky intonation] 'This is what a police state looks like.' And it's not what a police state looks like. They may not like the lines of cops, but nobody was shot down like in say Syria, Egypt, Libya - these are police states; I don't think that helps the Occupy LA's cause by having people shouting dumb stuff like that."

Q Tips

2011-11-15T17:54:00.001-06:00

NPR related comments and critiques welcomed and encouraged.

Suck It Up! from the NPR Suck-ups

2011-11-13T19:00:00.000-06:00

The few times I've listened to NPR lately, I've noticed something interesting. Instead of examining how deliberate US policies and practices of the last 40 years (and most dramatically of the past 10-15 years) have created stunning rates of poverty and extreme income inequality in the US (40th from the bottom out of 140 countries according to the CIA!), NPR is featuring stories that assert that people suffering from the effects of policies redistributing wealth upwards were "spoiled" by having better incomes in the past and need to accept the reality of working harder for less so that the rich can continue to enrich themselves.

Two recent features caught my attention:

One was on Friday's ATC and reported on the suck-wages ($11 an hour) for mill work in Maine (BTW, $11/hr for a 40 hour week comes out to $22880 a year) which is frankly squat (and the six-figure script readers at NPR know that very well).
The second story was on Saturday's ATC and looked at unemployment and debt among recent college grads.

The Maine mill work feature had a few comments from residents about how low current wages are and how difficult it is to support a family on them, but the report was dominated by locals with such comments as:

"They're spoiled. They're spoiled. They got so used to the bigger paychecks. They don't know how to live without.....it's better than nothing, she says, which is what she had as a kid...Folks today, she says, need to learn how to make do with less."

and

"This might be a good thing for this town. They've had things easy for a long time. They've got all of these toys. They have the snowmobiles, they own a camp. You know, it's - people, I think, should pare back anyway in what they do. You know, a little attitude adjustment, you know?"

The NPR reporter on this story, Tovia Smith, offers her editorial approval of these attitudes, commenting that "It's a kind of bravado that's not uncommon up here in this cold, northern corner of New England, where folks are as hardy as they are frugal, and making do is a kind of badge of honor."

The Saturday story on college grads scoffs at students who study "softer and more qualitative majors" such as literature, psychology, etc., and simply accepts that the university experience should be a kind of trade school experience aimed at landing a well-paying job. Not a word about the importance of a free (or even affordable), liberal higher education to the health of any democratic society. Instead of spending any time investigating why student debt has skyrocketed and who is benefiting from this scam, NPR's Jackie Leyden ends her report with this condescending bit of wisdom:

"So maybe it comes down to changing your expectations about what life is really all about..."

Indeed!

What This Country Does Best

2011-11-13T18:35:00.001-06:00

So the bloated, murderous US military juggernaut celebrates war-making with a college basketball game on board the aircraft carrier, USS Vinson. Does NPR offer any counter-narrative to this worship of militarism? Not at all, on Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR's Tom Goldman explains that

"Oh yeah. The college basketball season - last night in Coronado, California, it was a great grand confluence of sports and patriotism, what this country does best. North Carolina played Michigan State on Veteran's Day on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, the ship from which Osama bin Laden was buried at sea. President Obama sat courtside. The players had USA on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names. It was indeed a spectacle."

Ooh rah!

[correction] I initially mistook "indeed a spectacle" Tom Goldman for NPR drone Tom Bowman.

Q Tips

2011-10-23T15:32:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments, notes and critiques welcomed. For new readers, I have been posting far less frequently in the last year, but - through the efforts of contributors - Q Tips continues to be an informative and vital part of keeping tabs on NPR's role as the loyal mouthpiece of institutions of power in the US.

Show Your Support for Your Enemies

2011-10-20T06:21:00.003-05:00

Irony is Dead

(Update below)

The latest spam in my inbox from my misguided friends at Free Press wants me to get a sticker (see graphic on the left) so I can show people how devoted I am to the hippy-bashing, Fox loving, war worshiping stooges working for NPR. Well, looks like Free Press isn't the only organization that knows how to "take action." David Swanson at War is a Crime has an excellent piece up on how NPR rushes to harshly punish a non-employee who dares to exercise her 1st Amendment rights in a way that presents no conflict of interest - unlike NPR's highly paid rogues gallery of Mara Liasson, Cokie Roberts, Scott Simon, etc.

I keep wondering when and if those progressives who keep coming to the defense of NPR will ever wake up and realize NPR just aint that into you...

Update, 10-21-11 8pm EDT - Looks like ~~Fox Radio~~ NPR (S40) is showing what a big, brave suck up to the right wing it really is... Here's the news from WDAV and Poynter. Readers of this blog have long known which percent NPR stands for (hint: it's not the 99). It's pledge time for most NPR stations and you can let them know that you'll give elsewhere until they stop sending your dollars to NPR news (remind them that there is Pacifica, Free Speech Radio News, and DemocracyNow!)

Q Tips and Puppets

2011-10-04T05:31:00.001-05:00

NPR has hired a new CEO. His name is Gary Knell and he has been the CEO of Sesame Street Workshop. He starts his new gig at NPR on Dec. 1 Sometimes it's just best to let reality speak for itself:

[Knell] "Despite the fact that it may appear that I'm a guy who's doing puppet shows, that's not really true."

I guess he can truthfully make that claim until December 1st rolls around...

I'll leave this post up as a Q Tips post where other NPR related notes and comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Natural Born Killers

2011-10-01T16:46:00.000-05:00

NPR gives the tiniest blip of airtime to dissenting views of the blatantly anti-Constitutional and illegal assassination of US citizen, and terrorist suspect, Anwar al-Awlaki. Most of NPR's coverage is decidedly favorable US security establishment - such as Friday afternoon's summary by CIA spokesperson Dina Temple-Raston and Pentagon Sock Monkey, Rachel Martin's Saturday defense of the murders of al-Awalki and Samir Khan.

Friday afternoon and evening's 5-minute news summary featured Abu Ghraib ~~criminal~~ interrogator/and trainer for the Iraqi ~~Torture~~ Interior Ministry - Professor Matthew Degn - plugging the glorious successes of the endless War on Terror:

[Jack Spear] "In what US officials are deeming a significant blow to al-Qaeda's most active affiliate...the man believed to directed the attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas day among other plots was killed in a missile strike in Yemen today. Matthew Degn is Director of Intelligence Studies at American University he says the attack is significant in the ongoing war with al-Qaeda. [Degn] 'You win a war by defeating its leaders. You win a war by defeating the organization, and to do that you have to eliminate its leaders - capture or kill the leaders and that's what we're doing right now in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world.'" [Now you know WTF we are doing in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere!]

The little squeak of dissent permitted occurred during Friday's ATC promisingly titled piece "Debate Erupts Over Legality of Awlaki's Killing." Carrie Johnson ran the briefest little clip of Hina Shamsi from the ACLU:

[Shamsi] "The government should not have the unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere whom the American president deems to be a threat to the nation."

That was it for the dissenting viewpoint on Johnson's report. The rest of the time was given to apologists for the assassination. First was the Justice Department who Johnson tells us "responded that Awlaki wasn't just any American....[but] an operational leader who helped equip terrorist plotters with bombs." Next was Bushist lawyer, John Bellinger, who weighed in with this brilliant analysis: "The requirements of the Constitution with respect to due process for killing an American are not clear." [I swear I'm not making this crap up.] To deliver a coup de grace to the concept of due process, Johnson found Ken Anderson, a professor who, according to Johnson, "says the analysis starts with whether Awlaki amounted to a lawful target, U.S. citizen or not."

Probably the most grotesque defense of the assassination came from Rachel Martin on Saturday morning with Scott Simon. Scott opens the discussion with an evidence free conviction of al-Awalki: "he was a key operative for al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen," and it's downhill from there. Here are quotes from Martin - essentially her talking points - and they are indistinguishable from those of the Obama administration, the CIA, and the Pentagon:

"...this was a man directly linked to several high profile terrorist attacks over the last couple of years."
"...part of why he was so important - because he INSPIRED others to violent action with his message."
"...he was the architect of that plot [Xmas day underwear bomber] against the United States. This is what al-Awalki was all about...
"one one side there is an argument that he is a US citizen, he has legal rights...but the US government is clear here Scott, they say this was legal..."
"the US government argues that when someone, even an American citizen, joins the enemy in an ongoing war against the US that person becomes a legitimate target."

As our Constitution withers in the face the assaults of US corporate/security state with its promotion of endless war, NPR has made it clear which it is on. To anyone still supporting NPR with donations, you do so at your own peril...

Q Tips

2011-09-29T05:11:00.002-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

Police Brutality Shielded by NPR

2011-09-27T06:15:00.000-05:00

Anthony Bologna - NYPD thug

(Update below)
As readers have commented in the Q-Tips section below, NPR is following the rest of the police state media in offering ZERO on-air coverage of the Occupy Wall Street actions in NYC that were launched on September 17, 2011. This is especially galling now that the police have resorted to basic thuggery against peaceful protesters and have targeted the relatively small and spirited demonstrators with dozens of frivolous arrests.

Activists have identified one of the chief perpetrators of police violence - Anthony Bologna (see graphic above) - and since the NYPD website gives the places where citizens can demand that action be taken against this criminal in uniform, I thought I'd post it here for anyone wanting to email, mail or call:

"The IAB Command Center office is open for complaint, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A complaint may also be called in by phone to (212) 741-8401, by E-Mail to IAB@NYPD.org, or By postal mail to Occupant, P.O. Box 1001, New York 10014; to the Internal Affairs Bureau, located at 315 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013 or in person at any Police Department facility."

FAIR asks the obvious question of how the media would cover Tea Party extremists in a similar scenario, but - regarding NPR - one doesn't have to wonder: just take a look at some of the enhanced promotions that NPR has given to them.

Given the assault on many of our constitutional liberties and the rise of paramilitary tactics by police forces around the country when confronting dissent, one would think that liberals and progressives would be calling for a boycott of NPR for its near complete lack of investigative work on any abuses of power by US police, military, or corporate forces. Unfortunately, as in the past, the opposite seems to be the case with individuals and organizations like Free Press reacting to proposed funding cuts to NPR with this kind of misinformation that I recently received in an email:

"Taking down NPR and PBS has been a decades-long goal of political extremists in Washington who are threatened by public media’s brand of facts-based investigative reporting." [my emphasis added]

Josh Stearns
Associate Program Director
Free Press Action Fund

If one wants to make the case for preventing government spending cuts to NPR because it represents a victory for the take-no-prisoners brown shirts of the right that is one thing, but to claim that NPR offers anything resembling "facts-based reporting" is such delusional thinking that it would be funny if the reality weren't so downright depressing.

Update, September 28 - NPR's newest ~~tool~~ Ombudsman weighs in on NPR's censorship. He decides it's not a problem...surprise!

"As ombudsman, I don't weigh in on daily news judgment unless its totally egregious or part of a long term trend, and this one is neither. But the complaints have validity, too."

Q Tips

2011-09-08T20:57:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

NPR Covers(up) Torture...Again

2011-09-07T00:55:00.005-05:00

When hard evidence of the criminality of US officials in torturing, disappearing, and torturing to death human beings falls into the hands of the so-called journalists at NPR, you can be certain that every effort will be made to obscure (or completely ignore) the laws that were broken, the horrors that were committed, and the guilt of US officials.

Two recent stories highlight NPR's longstanding commitment to the enabling of US torture policy. In the first, a civil lawsuit in New York State exposes details of the CIA's longstanding rendition/torture program. The second story - which is creating headlines and investigations in the UK - involves the discovery of documents in Libya's Intelligence and Foreign Ministry offices which clearly show that the CIA was sending kidnapped suspects to Libya to be tortured.

The first story is dispensed with on ATC on September 1, and features NPR's intellectual heavyweight, Robert Siegel interviewing WaPo reporter, Peter Finn about the "details." There is a lot of discussion about the millions spent on the CIA's rendition (kidnapping) flights and the focus of the story is Siegel's amazement that the US government even allowed this case to come to light:

(Siegel) "Now, the mystery in all this is the absence of mystery. You quote the lawyer...as saying that he kept on waiting for the government to step into this case. Don't they usually do that, and why didn't they do it in this case?"

What is completely absent is any indication that kidnapping people and flying them around the world to be tortured and disappeared is completely illegal (and morally reprehensible).

The second, more recent story - coming out of Libya - reveals documented evidence that the CIA flagrantly violated the US Convention Against Torture. On Weekend Edition Sunday, September 4, NPR runs cover for the US/CIA. There is no gray area in the law - unless one supports the the US being able to torture suspects:

"It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States."

NPR is well aware of Libya's systemic use of torture:

(Melissa Block on September 1) "Under Moammar Gadhafi's rule, tens of thousands of people disappeared into prisons. According to human rights groups, the Libyan state security apparatus tortured detainees and held them without due process."

If it's common knowledge that Libya, under Gadhafi, tortured prisoners, that means there are "substantial grounds" for believing anyone handed over to Libya then would be tortured, and therefore makes the US and CIA officials guilty of violating both US and international law, right? Not on NPR. It's worth reprinting Sunday's interchange between Cornish and coup-cozy Beaubien:

Cornish: "And, of course, we're seeing reports about files uncovered in the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry."

Beaubien: "Yes, that's right. And actually Human Rights Watch got a hold of an entire batch of documents....And these documents show that clearly, you know, from what was in these documents, apparently the CIA was using Libya as a place of rendition; to move the suspects in, have them interrogated in Libya."

Cornish: "And, of course, at this point these documents have not been authenticated. But the idea that the - that even the idea that the U.S. might be having suspects moved to this country with the traditional - with a tradition of brutal questioning is something that's raising a lot of eyebrows.

Beaubien: "Yeah. And I should add that in these documents it does explicitly say - these communications between the CIA and the Gadhafi regime, it does say that Libya, you must respect the human rights of these people. So I should add that. But it certainly does raise questions about who the U.S. and the British intelligence services were using to interrogate terror suspects in (t)his global war on terror."

How's that for hedging, qualifying, minimizing, and excusing? If torture weren't such a perverted, disgusting, pornographic, and pathological practice, then Beaubien's straight-faced assertions that the CIA-linked document "does explicitly say...it does say...'you must respect the human rights of these people'" would be laughable naivete, instead of what it is: an intentional and ethically bankrupt attempt to obscure the fact that the US and CIA willingly participate in the torture of human beings.

Q Tips - Heavy Lifting

2011-08-21T16:28:00.003-05:00

Hello readers. I'm putting up a new open thread as the previous one reached the 130 mark! Commenters are doing an incredible job of documenting NPR awfulness. I'm finding that NPR disgusts me so much that I'm listening to very little of it these days, and am often not up for dissecting its lazy, inaccurate and subservient to power broadcasts. Thank you to all who continue to listening and analyzing...

Q Tips - Midsummer

2011-07-09T08:40:00.002-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

NPR Loves it Some Dumbness

2011-07-06T11:52:00.006-05:00

I made the mistake of listening to NPR for about 15 minutes this morning and got to hear Andrea Seabrook present a Bart Simpsonesque explanation of debt economics. Here's Andrea:

"...so it's useful to take a moment and just remind ourselves of the big picture here. The financial world is already kind of skittish; the markets haven't tanked, but investors are on alert. They're still recovering their confidence from some pretty hard shakes in 2007 and 2008. Now they're watching other countries - especially Greece - deal with the effects of too much government debt built up over years of spending. And then they look at the US...and the benefits the government has promised to people who are retiring cost way more than it can afford... Investors see serious work that needs to be done..."

Just a few notes on Andrea's brilliant analysis:

The Big Picture: You might be thinking that she would mention the collapse of that little old $8 trillion housing bubble [one of those "hard shakes"], or wage stagnation that drives down consumer demand, or the whole ponzification of the US and global financial markets, or....
Greek Debt Crisis as caused by "years of spending": It's hard to imagine a more stupid summary of the complex Greek situation involving complicated Eurozone history & politics, investor predatory practices, and fallout from the US economic crisis - unless the purpose of the analysis is to promote the FOX/Republican (and now Democratic leadership) line that government spending is a bad thing.
Retirement benefits are more than government can afford: well what can you say to this pure propaganda about Social security - except to note that it fits with NPR's regular assaults on this successful government program.

Dean Baker's Beat the Press Smackdown

2011-07-06T11:46:00.004-05:00

If you missed it, Dean Baker takes NPR to the woodshed yet again. Readers of this blog will notice the familiar NPR pattern of "he said - she said" reporting, a complete disdain for facts, and a typically pro-rich, pro conservative attack on government spending. Enjoy:

NPR Does the He Said/She Said on Minnesota Shutdown

Tuesday, 05 July 2011 04:31

It is not balanced reporting to present a Republican legislator from Minnesota talking about spiraling state spending and then present someone else talking about state services. Most NPR listeners will not have the time to look up the data on state spending in Minnesota. NPR's reporter should.

If NPR had done its job, it would have pointed out that there has been no upward trend in state spending. Therefore when the Republicans complain about out of control or spiraling spending, they are not being honest.

Q Tips & Summer Break

2011-05-25T05:09:00.003-05:00

NPR related notes and comments welcomed.

I've currently been posting about once a week, and I anticipate posting far less over the summer months. I'll open a new Q Tips/open-thread post anytime comments reach the 100 mark.

Tough Minded Hope and Faith from Rev. Ron Elving

2011-05-22T17:38:00.008-05:00

If you've ever wondered why - when it comes to economic issues - NPR's content almost always echoes the Washington Consensus favoring the wealthy and privileged, you need look no further than Ron Elving, "the senior Washington editor for NPR News, where he directs coverage of the capitol and of national politics."

On Weekend Edition Sunday I was listening to Liane Hansen discuss what she called "twin burdens of the federal deficit and debt" with Ron Elving when I heard him make a remarkable statement. Hansen has just asked him, "And what about the other group, the senators who had a bipartisan group looking into what, a long term global deal on the deficit...?" To which Elving replied:

"Yes and a lot of us were holding out a good deal of hope and faith in that group, but this week the so-called "Gang of Six"...suffered a major blow, a perhaps crippling blow. They lost one of their members, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma."

It is truly a remarkable statement. Notice that Elving didn't say "a lot of people" or "many politicians" etc., but included himself in the congregation of those who held out "hope and faith" in this senatorial "Gang of Six."

Well, that got me wondering just what is the take on "this small group of senators [that] has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings" on budget issues. No surprise: the group is not progressive and not interested in representing the poor or lower middle classes; its range of "acceptable" options for the budget lies somewhere between Paul Ryan's extreme-right gutting entitlements and Obama's center-right hopey-changey death by a thousand cuts for entitlements.

Amazingly, Reverend Hope and Faith Elving isn't done preaching his articles of faith. Speaking of Paul Ryan's intellectually vacuous rip-off-for-the-rich budget plan (which NPR blessed as inspired long before it landed fresh and steaming on the House floor), Ron Elving says "what Paul Ryan has done,...come forward with something tough-minded, something politically unpopular..."

Lastly, when Liane Hansen asks Elving if he sees any hope on the horizon for the budget, he shows where his treasure lies:

"This week on Wednesday, there is a public event in town sponsored by the Peter Peterson Foundation - this is an anti-deficit outfit, private informal group. And it is billed as the Fiscal Summit 2011. It will bring together the remaining Gang of Five from the Senate, and also Paul Ryan - the man from the House - and also former President, Bill Clinton..."

There you have NPR's senior editor giving his endorsement to a conference organized by the Slash-Entitlements-for-the-Benefit-of-Billionaires Institute (aka Peter Peterson Institute - whose success shaping NPR (and mainstream media) coverage of the deficit "crisis" I've posted on before.

Of course listening to NPR, you would NEVER know about the People's Budget from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Something that actually represents the polled opinions of the people Congress is supposed to represent, is workable, and threatens the the most wealthy and privileged in Rev. Elving's congregation is simply heresy for NPR. Don't believe it? Check out NPR for the proof. Search NPR's on-air content for the following and see what you get:

People's Budget Progressive Caucus (0) [BTW, that's a zero - zilch, nada...]
Ryan Plan (35)
Peterson Institute (79)

Amen! Church dismissed...

It Was the Dirty Hippies Again

2011-05-18T05:59:00.007-05:00

Thanks NPR for this Wednesday morning gem of a statement regarding the arrogant, patriarchal, sexually stunted and twisted, and rabidly misogynist leadership of the child-raping Roman Catholic Church:

"A five year study of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Church in the US concludes that neither celibacy nor homosexuality was the prime cause. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports the study focuses blame instead on poorly trained priests swayed by the sexual freedom of the 60s and 70s."

Craig Windham read this tripe during the top of the hour news bulletins this morning.

Q Tips

2011-05-08T18:46:00.002-05:00

NPR Check critics - doing the heavy lifting since 2006. Light or heavy - NPR related comments are always welcomed.

The Holy Grail, The Best of the Best, and an Epic

2011-05-07T13:56:00.005-05:00

This week, Rachel Martin and Tom Bowman could barely contain their almost erotic excitement over the US JSOC operation that resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

On Monday afternoon, May 2, Martin was positively ecstatic:

"Intelligence officials tracked the courier for years. They knew his operational nickname. They watched his comings and goings and communication patterns, never knowing if he was really leading them to the Holy Grail or a dead end."

Then on Wednesday morning, May 4, Tom Bowman joins in with what FAIR has pointed out is "Superhuman" worship of the Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden (a worship that ignores any controversy of these commando units).

"There's a unit called Navy SEALS and then there's SEAL Team Six. They're not the same....the commandoes who slipped into bin Laden's compound this week are a cut above."

"The best of the best, he says, is SEAL Team Six."

Finally, today on Weekend Edition Saturday, sock-puppet / JSOC-puppet Martin is back on the put a little Homerian gloss on the glorious victory of killing Bin Laden. CIA Hayden (see post below) is up off his cot in the NPR offices to bring his serious expertise to bear, telling us, "But what happened Sunday and what happened in Khost are part of the same epic." Just in case you didn't get the fact that the killing of Bin Laden is one of the greatest military/intelligence feats in the history of the world, Rachel Martin echoes Hayden:

"The final chapter of that epic has now been written. The agency that took the risk at Khost that cost seven lives, took another chance last week — only this time, it paid off."

Zone of Cooperation

2011-05-07T12:47:00.002-05:00

On Thursday's ME, finishing up a series (see Tues. ATC & Wed. ATC) of cooperative reports on "enhanced" and "harsh" interrogations (known under US domestic and international law as torture) - Tom Gjelten was on with his handler, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, to set the record straight on the "debate" about "enhanced interrogations."

In the Thursday piece, Gjelten is explaining how some of the first leads in tracking down Osama Bin Laden's courier came "from detainees who were interrogated while in CIA custody." Gjelten tells us that "about a third of the CIA detainees were subjected to what the agency euphemistically called enhanced interrogation techniques." So far, so good. It's helpful that he describes CIA spin as euphemism. A listener might expect that the next step would be to have someone from the ACLU or Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch come on to detail just what these now-admitted techniques (and unadmitted ones) were and how many detainees didn't make it through the enhanced care of the CIA.

The CIA and US military need not fear that Tom Gjelten or NPR would dare shed any light on the gruesome details of US torture. For an unbiased description of the techniques, Gjelten turns to - guess who? - former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, who gently explains,

"They range from something as innocuous as something called the attention grasp or the facial grasp. You know, grabbing somebody by the lapels or grabbing them by the chin, to a variety of things that had to do with sleep and diet or stress positions."

God, and to think I used to think that US POWS in Vietnam were tortured...silly me, now I know they were just subjected to "a variety of things" like "stress positions."

Just to be sure that you can't accuse NPR of not being "fair and balanced," Gjelten tosses out that old NPR sop of some say: "Critics of enhanced interrogation techniques say they're tantamount to torture." See, it has nothing to do with law, treaties, or actual facts - it's just some anonymous "critics" who allege that its kind of like torture. In case these unnamed "critics" might undermine the very serious and important Michael Hayden, Gjelten notes that critics have also pointed out that real information came from detainees "after the harsh interrogations stopped. And General Hayden says he wouldn't be surprised by that."

And here's where Gjelten really enters his zone of cooperation, handing the microphone to the good General Hayden himself: "

I'm willing to concede the point that no one gave us valuable or actionable intelligence while they were, for example, being waterboarded. The purpose of the enhanced interrogation techniques was to take someone who was refusing to cooperate with us and to accelerate the process by which we would move from a zone of defiance to a zone of cooperation."

Well, I hope NPR will now do a piece (or two or three) debating the positive and negative effects of the enhanced interrogation sessions that the North Vietnamese applied to US POWs. Given that the civilian slaughter waged against Vietnam by the US military makes the events of 9/11 look like nothing more than a disturbing footnote in the history of atrocities, and given that the North was successful, then maybe all that enhanced treatment to move US prisoners from "a zone of defiance" to "a zone of cooperation" helped them win the war and was justifiable after all.

Q Tips

2011-05-02T18:03:00.002-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

A Tale of Two Cities - NPR and US Exceptionalism

2011-05-01T17:00:00.001-05:00

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, I heard the following:

"...but the fact is...this is all unconfirmed. We know the government...has lied on several occasions about civilian casualties and strikes and damage, and frankly, we only have their word so far for what happened."

Isn't that the standard that ought to apply to all reporting? It seems reasonable that when a government has been proven to have lied about civilian casualties (e.g. here and here), lied about its reasons for going to war, and lied about the torture and murder of detainees then shouldn't all unconfirmed claims by that government be treated with skepticism and always be prefaced with the qualifiers included in the quote above. The answer is a rather obvious, "Yes." But on NPR there is one standard for countries and forces that the US government opposes and a completely different standard for the US government and its closest allies. Despite a long record of systematic lying about war, civilian deaths, and the abuse of detainees - I have - over the past five years - documented how NPR consistently grants official US statements the weight of confirmed evidence (or simply ignores stories where the evidence points to systematic lying and wrongdoing).

The quote above, from Sunday's Weekend Edition, is about the war in Libya and the lying government in question is the government of Libya's Gadhafi. The war in Libya - and especially the siege of Misrata - offers a unique opportunity to highlight NPR's embrace of American exceptionalism.

The forces of the Libyan government have attempted to destroy the rebel forces in Misrata in operations that are chillingly similar to the US military's destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. Misrata and Fallujah have about the same population size, about half-a-million for each. In April 2004 in Fallujah, as documented by the intrepid Dahr Jamail, the US used cluster bombs, indiscriminate sniping of civilians, and attacks on medical facilities. George Monbiot documented further war crimes of the US November 2005 assault on Fallujah - including the use of white phosphorous, thermobaric weapons, and the refusal to allow males of "fighting age" to flee the city. As in Misrata, US forces illegally focused their operations on hospitals and medical facilities. In spite of these illegal and barbaric tactics, you can search NPR in vain for stories on these crimes (cluster bombs- nothing, white phosphorous - mentioned after Pentagon admitted it, sniping civilians - nothing, attacking the hospital - nothing). Not only has NPR never reported the US war crimes against Fallujah, it has actually celebrated the assault.

Consider that NPR's censorship of the US horror show in Fallujah is now into it's eighth year, but in the less than two months of Libya coverage we have been given extensive coverage of every crime that the Gadhafi forces have perpetrated on Misrata. For example, in just this one Morning Edition report from April 13th, we hear the following from refugees:

"We heard the Gadhafi troops were kidnapping people."
"The Gadhafi forces aren't differentiating among their targets. They're attacking the young, the old, women, dragging people from their houses."
"In the streets of Misrata I've seen bodies, I've seen them burned. The snipers are shooting people at random."

And a few days later on April 17th Lourdes Garcia Navarro reports on Misrata,

"From rebels that I've spoken to, Gadhafi's forces are shelling civilian areas - we are talking grad missiles, mortar fire, tank fire. A few days ago came the first reports of cluster bombs, which are banned by international law for use in civilian areas."

It's too bad that it is really impossible to imagine NPR ever providing such immediate reporting on US military actions and their impact on civilian populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc... or to imagine that they would ever give such well deserved qualifications of the lack of credibility that should always be given to any official statements issues by the White House, the US military, the State Department, NATO, etc.

Medicare 'Math' - NPR Style

2011-05-01T16:53:00.007-05:00

After hearing Saturday's All Things Considered slam on Medicare hosted by Guy Raz, I contacted Dean Baker who writes the Beat the Press blog on economic misinformation in the media at the (Center for Economic and Policy Research) CEPR Website. With his permission I've cross-posted his take-down of NPR's sloppy anti-Medicare report.

[originally posted at Beat the Press]

Is NPR Unable to Get Access to Data on Health Care Costs

It seems that NPR is unable to get access to data from the OECD or even the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. If it were, it would not have so badly misinformed listeners about Medicare costs yesterday.

NPR told listeners that Medicare's costs are unsustainable and that the reason is that patients do not see the cost of their treatment. Actually, private sector health care costs have risen as rapidly on an age-adjusted basis as Medicare. Furthermore, health care costs in the United States average more than twice as much per person as costs in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands where patients see a much smaller share of their costs than they do under the Medicare system. If the United States paid the same amount per person for health care as these or any other wealthy country it would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.

The article also mentioned Representative Ryan's plan without pointing out that the Congressional Budget Office's projections show that it would hugely raise the cost of providing care to retirees. The CBO projections imply that the Ryan plan, which was passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last month, would raise the cost of buying Medicare equivalent insurance policies by $34 trillion over Medicare's 75-year planning period. This is almost 7 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall.

In this context it is probably worth mentioning that the Republicans in Congress have targeted NPR for budget cuts.

Q Tips

2011-04-26T05:51:00.004-05:00

NPR related comments are welcomed, as always.

NPR's PR for BP

2011-04-24T13:50:00.007-05:00

As commenters note in the Q Tips section below, on Thursday morning NPR ran a piece about BP and the oil spill which asserted that the only real problem for BP - related to last year's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico - was how it handled its public relations.

Elizabeth Shogren (featured in the graphic above) delivers NPR's public service commercial for BP. Her entire story is anchored on Glenn DaGian who is portrayed as a local Louisianan, whose roots and dedication are to the land and people of Louisiana. Shogren tells us that when meeting with people of southern Louisiana, "His accent told them he shared their roots." Late in the piece Shogren explains that though "BP's image is still in tatters, [r]etiree Glenn DaGian wants to help BP rescue it by pushing the company to do more to restore the Gulf Coast." She ends the report with this laugher: "DaGian says BP will start doing the right thing, or he'll become the company's biggest critic." That would be a change; what NPR and Shogren fail to mention is that DaGian's first loyalty is as a longtime paid ~~liar~~ lobbyist for BP - and it's unclear if he is still employed in that capacity or not.

Shogren's piece is chocked full of statements about how presentation, not substance was the greatest problem for BP:

[Shogren]"But DaGian's efforts were eclipsed by the company's PR missteps."
[DaGian] "It seemed like every day he [Hayward] was making a new gaff. He didn't understand the animal that is the media. He didn't understand the public's perception of a foreigner in south Louisiana."
[Shogren] "people familiar with BP's crisis control effort and outside experts say, early on, BP didn't have a PR strategy."
[Shogren] "And BP insiders say the company's social media ramp-up helped counteract earlier PR failures."

It's interesting that given the ongoing tragedy of the BP oil disaster, NPR chooses to hone in on PR. Actual news organizations like Al Jazeera and even ABC have decided that getting horribly ill and dying from BP's reckless greed are important current stories. Not NPR. In fact, you can search NPR for any recent on-air stories about sickness in the Gulf and find nothing.

Equally disgraceful is the fact that NPR does nothing in this PR puff piece to put BP's criminal and deadly safety record in perspective. It's no surprise, just days after the BP blowout occurred, DemocracyNow! was reporting on BP's horrible safety record, while the NYT soon followed suit, and shortly thereafter ABC presented a major feature on the subject. NPR never presented a significant report on BP's record, but did mention it in a July 2010 story that contrasted Exxon's far better record with BP's. BP's record was so disgusting that a magazine like Fast Company felt motivated to put it in a nifty little graphic for perspective. Amazingly, if you look at that search of NPR, you will see a piece from June 2010 noting that Tony Hayward was doing great things for safety at BP when that pesky Gulf disaster thwarted his progress:

[NPR's Jim Zarroli] "Hayward also tried to address BP's poor safety record. The company had pleaded guilty to clean-air violations following an explosion and fire that killed 15 workers in Texas. But Armstrong says the company actually got through 2009 with no major safety violations."
[Iain Armstrong] "I know this might sound crazy, but there actually is a much stronger culture towards safety. When you consider the track record in 2005 to 2008, it was a phenomenal change."

In that puff piece, all NPR reveals about Iain Armstrong is that he "is an analyst at Brewin Dolphin, an investment management firm in London." What they don't mention is that, according to this January 2010 Reuters article, "

Brewin Dolphin's top three energy holdings are Shell, which accounts for about 3 percent of its total investments, BP, which represents around 2.5 percent, and BG Group which is still only around 1 percent of its investments but growing."

The Reuters article also notes that back in Jan. 2010, Mr. Armstrong "also likes BG Group (BG.L) due to its fast upstream growth and BP (BP.L) after its recent cost-cutting programme."

If you want any truth about the energy corporations and their role in ruining the environment or pushing for war, then you'll have to look somewhere else besides NPR where war for oil is dismissed out of hand, and "Fracking" is advertised as a clean source for future energy needs. To regular readers of this blog, that will come as no surprise, but to some woefully informed liberals it might come as a bit of a shock.

Q Tips

2011-04-19T06:10:00.002-05:00

NPR related notes, comments, and observations welcomed, as always. Let's get cooking!

Tea & Sympathy: NPR Newsbaggers

2011-04-17T14:21:00.005-05:00

The post below shows the disproportionate and favorable coverage that a puny rally of 100-200 Tea Party rightwingers generates on NPR. So what happened when, this past March, hundreds of anti-war protesters showed up at the White House and over 100 were arrested - including Daniel Ellsberg? On NPR, the public news outlet for the Ministry of Truth, it never happened. And what about when 27 anti-SOA protesters are arrested after a march of 100-200. Want to guess where that one goes on NPR? Memory hole again. All right, so maybe hundreds just doesn't show up on the radar when you're busy bootlicking the far right; how about thousands marching against war? Are you ready? Yep, NPR goes 0 for 3 when it comes to antiwar activism, even when it includes very large numbers, committed civil disobedience and large arrests.

FAIR has just done a great job pointing this out and suggests that you sign their petition. I have to add that NPR takes the general media's blackout of antiwar activism to a truly perverse level - not only do they newsbag the important stories of antiwar activism - they have the gall to take their own erased-news as evidence of a dead antiwar movement and pass it off as journalism.

Q Tips

2011-04-06T06:07:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

All Tea All the Time

2011-04-04T19:57:00.004-05:00

(That's hapless Tea Reporter Don Gonyea)

It's no secret that like Fox News, NPR is Tea Party friendly turf - even fairly unbalanced Tea Partiers like Lori Medina of Dallas find NPR fair - well, duh. Given that a recent poll shows the Tea Party suck factor growing (almost as high as for Democrats and Republicans-see the poll here), and given that a recent Tea Party rally in Washington, DC drew a minuscule 100-200 participants (Politico and Slate have a couple of photos - you decide) - no wonder NPR felt obliged to provide amplified and robust coverage to this far right army of Dick. So what does a dinky little DC rally of hardcore rightwingers get on NPR?

A Thursday ATC story featuring highlights of your speakers and a description of the Sen. Rand "Civil Rights" Paul and the unhinged Michele Bachmann as bringing "some star power."
More Thursday amplification of Tea Party talking points from NPR's Frank James on the "It's All Politics" blog.
An April Fool's Morning Edition feature with Tea Party fool, Audie Cornish, who explains that "It wasn't a big group less than 250 people. But they had a big voice."
A Weekend Edition Sunday feature where some of those several hundred attendees get to weigh in on US foreign policy in Libya - "...when it boils down to it, we are the country that's done the great things in the world; we are the leaders, and that's a role we still have to have."

So what gives? Even if one concedes that the Tea Party represents a force in American politics, one can easily argue that a group like MoveOn represents an equally powerful force in electoral politics. So take a look at how on-air Tea Party coverage compares to on-air MoveOn coverage on NPR. That's 789 for the Tea Party compared to 106 for MoveOn - very fair, very balanced.

Q Tips

2011-03-29T05:20:00.002-05:00

NPR related comments are always welcomed...play ball!

Bad Fears, Good Fears, and Radio Activities at NPR

2011-03-28T05:31:00.004-05:00

I promise to keep this short, but I just had to post on NPR's interesting take on fear. Given that the energy industries have a history that...well...let's just say puts profits before people, and given that the worst nuclear accident on record killed at least tens of thousands (if not a million people)... a rational person might consider the public's fear of nuclear energy - especially in light of the ongoing disaster in Japan - as reasonable. On the other hand, given that the likelihood of being a victim of terrorism is extremely small - along with the ridiculously low number of estimated al-Qaida fighters - a rational person might consider the US obsession with fears of al-Qaida to be bizarre at best and, at worst, a sham used to shred Constitutional guarantees, expand the US Security state, and benefit war profiteers. Want to guess what NPR's take on these two fears is relative to the Japanese nuclear disaster and the uprisings in the Middle East?

On the nuclear radiation fears, NPR is generally dismissive:

(from the National Archives - view b&w version here)

On March 22nd ME, NPR highlighted psychiatrist, Dr. Robert DuPont who, as Steve Inskeep explained, "told our own Renee Montagne that the American response to the nuclear threats has been way out of proportion."
On March 26 Weekend Edition Saturday, Josh Hamilton opened his report with: "Well, I'll start with the good news, which is that there hasn't been any major release of radiation in actually quite a few days now. The bad news is that there are still a lot of problems at the plant." Later in the show, Scott Simon's main question was, "Do you contain the fear of radiation or does that spread all over the country?"

On the uprisings in the Middle East - fear is in the air:

On February 26 Weekend Edition Saturday, Temple-Raston blows the al-Qaida fear trumpet regarding the uprising in Libya.
On March 19 Weekend Edition Saturday, Temple-Raston is back to warn us that, "The general turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa has provided political vacuums al-Qaida can exploit."
On March 24 ME NPR warns about al-Qaida opportunities in Yemen. Discussing a defecting general gives us this interchange between Linda Wertheimer and her guest Robert Powell:

Wertheimer: "How seriously do we take the reports that he is a very conservative person, that he is an Islamist,...?

Powell: "Well, you can bet that the U.S. State Department's alarmed...He has a history that goes back to the 1980s. He used to recruit Islamist fighters to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the mujahideen, and most vividly to fight with Osama bin Laden. And more recently there has been accusations that he has been recruiting al-Qaida to fight against the Shia in the north of the country."

Halter on Siegel

2011-03-27T11:00:00.003-05:00

Zounds, on Thursday evening's ATC, Mr. Heft and Humanity himself, Robert Siegel, was even more jazzed for the dazzling "accuracy" of our air-war toys than his guest, General Halter. And who is this Halter fellow? I'll let Siegel describe him: "Irv Halter. That's retired U.S. Air Force Major General Irving Halter Jr., who is now with the applied technology group of the defense contractor, CSC. " CSC? Oh them...ka-ching!

Here are some of Siegel's laser-guided questions for the Halter:

"Does a pilot who is flying over Libya today have a very different and clearer sense of what his targets are than a pilot who was flying over, say, the Balkans back in the early '90s?"

-or-

"Is the result of all this that when a plane goes out and it's hoping to hit a tank on a highway, that the odds of hitting the gas station alongside the highway are far, far, far less than they might have been, say, 15 or 20 years ago."

To which Halter gleefully answers:

"Absolutely. We had pretty good precision 20 years, 15 years ago. We have much better precision now. But at the end of the day, something can occur, for instance, you know, during the Serbian fight there was a situation where an individual was getting ready to drop a bomb on a bridge and he noticed that there was a train coming for that bridge. And so, he had to steer the weapon away at the last minute. That was a decision that the pilots made. If he hadn't have seen that, then something bad could have happened."

Let's just say that "pretty good precision" depended on whether you were on the delivering or receiving end of NATO's humanitarian operation, and that BS about not hitting the train is pure Reaganesque making-crap-up - but since NPR seems to do so little research for these pieces, there is no attempt at correcting the record. Then again NPR never lets facts get in the way of selling the idea that US airpower is the most compassionate in the world.

NPR Drones and Disappearing Civilian Casualties

2011-03-26T09:08:00.010-05:00

It took awhile, but on Tuesday morning (3-22-11) NPR finally got around to covering (covering up) the March 17th drone-slaughter of civilians in AfPak. On the positive side, the report did feature the dire mental health effects that drone strikes have on residents of the area, and Julie McCarthy did contact a shopkeeper who ends the report by explaining:

"If anyone thinks that people here are happy over the drone strikes, they are foolish....In fact, the drones are fomenting hatred against the government and turning the people against America. We are killed by drones and then labeled as terrorists."

However, the story is undermined from the start. Steve Inskeep kicks things off this way,

"An attack last week reportedly killed at least 40 people. Some WERE militants but most are DESCRIBED as tribal elders." [No mention of where the confirmation of "militants" came from or why those other dozens are only "described" as elders.]

From this modest beginning, Julie McCarthy goes full-in:

"The U.S. has been conducting a covert program using unmanned drones to target militants in Pakistan since 2004. According to the Long War Journal, an authoritative website, the large majority of the 2,000 killed since 2006 were from the Taliban, al-Qaida and affiliated groups."

This statement tells you a lot about the rigor of NPR's standards. If thoroughly enmeshed with US state security/military institutions means authoritative - then the Long War Journal (LWJ) is very authoritative. Take a look at its website where you'll find out that its managing editor Bill Roggio has close ties to the conservative Hoover Institute and The Weekly Standard, frequently embeds with the US and allied militaries, and "presents regularly at the US Air Force's Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School on the media and embedded reporting" (oh, and he also "served as a signalman and infantryman in the US Army and the New Jersey National Guard from 1991 to 1997.") As the LWJ masthead indicates, it is a project of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies - which a glance at its "Who We Are" section (rogues gallery) reveals what kind of "authoritative" viewpoint one can expect from the LWJ:

"Our Leadership Council of Distinguished Advisors includes former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former State Department Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes, former National Security Advisor Robert “Bud” McFarlane, former Ambassador Max Kampelman, Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey."

No surprise then that the LWJ's snappy charts claim - absent of any hard evidence - that in 2010, US airstrikes killed 801 Taliban/al-Qaeda operatives and only 14 civilians. In all the searching I've done it is clear that hard evidence is extremely difficult to come by - and that estimated of rates of civilian casualties in US drone strikes range from very high (over 90%) to high (about 30%) to low (3.5% ) to the LWJ's very low 1.7%! Given that the US and Pakistani governments have every reason to low-ball civilian casualties - and given that the US military always denies civilian casualties unless confronted by hard evidence - only a propagandist for the US military would claim a source for the lowest number as "authoritative."

This opting for the lowest numbers of civilian victims of the US long, long, long war is nothing new on NPR, in fact it's their gold standard.

Q Tips

2011-03-22T06:33:00.002-05:00

Q Tips is an open thread where NPR related comments are always welcomed.

Libya: The Narrow View

2011-03-20T21:35:00.004-05:00

(Source of image)

With the cruise missile attacks and subsequent airstrikes in Libya, the US is now in it's third active war in a Muslim country (and second in a oil rich nation), and I listened to all of NPR's programming from Saturday's All Things Considered - which was packaged as "special coverage of the military situation in Libya" - and then Sunday morning's Weekend Edition.

It's truly astounding that we live in a country where the engagement in war is strictly prescribed by our Constitution to our House of Representatives. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent summary of how the US participation in the war on Libya defies any adherence to the Constitutional constraints on war-making powers of the President. It seems that some liberal Democratic Representatives are also angered at the dismissal of Constitutional concerns by our Constitutional Professor in Chief, but not NPR. You can listen to all the stories in these crucial NPR news shows from the first day of US participation in the war in Libya and never hear one word about the Constitutional issues raised by US military action in Libya. This is especially striking since on All Things Considered, Tom Bowman made a point of noting that War Secretary Gates made it very clear that this action in Libya "meant going to war."

The Constitutional issues are one point that any thinking US citizen should wonder about regarding the war in Libya. Another obvious question would be the rather gross hypocrisy of launching military action to "protect civilians" when the US is massively arming Saudi Arabia, one of the most radically repressive fundamentalist Islamic states in the region - a state that has helped murder unarmed protesters in its occupation of Bahrain.

To find any alternative views on the supposed "humanitarian" view of US warmaking in Libya, you'll have to go to The Independent, Chris Floyd, Common Dreams, or Al Jazeera - but if you want the Pentagon/White House presentation of this latest US military action then stick with NPR...you won't be disappointed.

Steve Inskeep - More Tortured Distortions

2011-03-20T13:00:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday Morning Steve Inskeep did an interesting story about a popular Egyptian singer who was recently [after the overthrow of Mubarak] detained and tortured by the Egyptian military. Inskeep's direct and moving reporting on the singer, Essam's, torture prompted The Modest Egotist to post the following comment on NPR:

This part of Modest Egoist's comment -

"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?

- drew the following reply from Steve Inskeep:

So Inskeep claims,

"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."

Sounds like a challenge for the NPR-BS detector to me. I spent a bit of time looking on the NPR site and on this blog, and if I were using the truth-o-meter from Politifact, I'd give Inskeep's claim a "barely true" - and I mean barely. I'll quickly list the evidence I could find:

Probably the strongest case for Inskeep's claim is in one report in November 2009, which describes extensive waterboarding as torture. Here's his interchange with NPR's Temple-Raston:
Inskeep: "...this is a man [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] who was waterboarded 183 times. What difficulties are raised by bringing in a man to a civilian court when some of the evidence against him would appear to have been obtained by torture?"
Temple-Raston: "...No, you are exactly right. And this is one of the really big issues here, although in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he actually admitted, before being tortured, that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So that makes him slightly different than some of these other detainees who have been tortured, who maybe only admitted to something after they were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture."
Also back in May of 2006 Inskeep gets credit for using the word torture in an interview with Alfred McCoy. He asks McCoy, "Can we set aside a moment, questions of morality, and just talk about practicality. Many people have said that physical torture does not produce good information, that people will say anything to get it over with. What about psychological torture? Has it ever been shown to be useful, whatever you may think of it?" Given that McCoy was talking about the use of brutal isolation, nakedness, sleep deprivation, etc., the fact that Inskeep calls it psychological torture is exceptional for NPR.

Far more common when the word torture is used for US practices, are qualified uses of the term.

In August of 2009, discussing revised interrogation standards, Inskeep makes this statement about CIA torture of detainees, "In addition to the moral objections to what many would define as torture, is there now a consensus among people who do this work that it also wasn't practical to be abusing prisoners?"

In "Torture Issue Won't Die Down" from May of 2009 - even though photos showing "nudity, guns being aimed at detainees, people in shackles" are being discussed along with previous photos from Abu Ghraib, there is only ONE reference to torture when Inskeep says "the so-called torture memos."

In a June 2006 interview with Alan Dershowitz who wants to prescribe and legalize "limited" torture, Inskeep says about Dershowitz - and a doctor who will be the next day's guest, "Yet, the doctor and Dershowitz agree on one thing. They say the United States is, indeed, practicing torture." Again it's distanced and qualified by "they say."

That's about as much evidence as I could find supporting Inskeep's claims. If I missed something significant, I hope someone will email me or post it in the comments section so I can update this post. As you can see, this supporting evidence is pretty thin and is swamped by NPR's and Inskeep's overall tendency to use euphemisms for torture - or to imply that abuse of detainees is not such a bad thing after all. For example

In June of 2006 Inskeep interviews an Army torturer and NEVER once mentions torture, even when the interrogator describes prisoners who were forced to crawl across gravel being unable to walk afterwards, or when he details subjecting them to hypothermia, dogs and months of complete isolation. In fact this treatment was not apparently brutal enough to intrigue Inskeep's moral instincts and he asks, "Did anybody ever ask you to go beyond the kinds of - well, let's call it abuse, if you don't mind, the kind of abuse that you have described..."

In February of 2007 Human Rights Watch issued a damning report on US torture of detainees, and Inskeep presented a short blurb on the report which featured more Bush-spin than report - and featured Inskeep noting that in the report is one "Jihadist" who "claims to have been tortured."

In December of 2008 when a damning Senate Report on US torture of detainees was released not only did NPR not cover it, they had Inskeep conduct an interview with a "good guy" Army interrogator who worked in Iraq. Inskeep never mentioned torture, but did find time to wonder if uncooperative prisoners ever got the interrogator to the point "where you really wanted to hit the guy."

I could go on and on (search this blog's label "torture" for example) about the direct and indirect ways that NPR's coverage or outright censorship of the US torture of detainees has greatly enabled the establishment and legitimization of formal US torture and detainee abuse practices. A record that makes Inskeep's claim all the more hollow, and of course, I've not even touched on the fact that NPR's ombudsman has asserted that calling waterboarding torture reflects bias and that the policy of NPR is to refrain from the use of such language - a fact that Modest Egoist referred and linked to in his original post.

Q Tips

2011-03-15T05:46:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Happystan and Memory Holes

2011-03-13T11:44:00.006-05:00

(source of the graphic)

In the midst of its own autos-da-fé to its right wing executioners (I'm still waiting for that signed open letter decrying NPR's policy on US torture) - NPR is not about to quit spinning news to favor the US Permanent War Project™ and sending major stories down the memory hole [see earlier post] when they reflect poorly on that war project or on the Washington Consensus. Consider just a few tidbits from the past week.

In about a month, it will be one year since the BP Oil Disaster and the debunked [see here and here] Obama-certified Oil-be-Gone miracle. NPR did have a promising teaser of a report from Richard Harris on the lethally oiled ocean floor a while back, but for the latest on human sickness and death from the spill you'll have to go to al-Jazeera - not NPR.

The Nobel Laureate Approved™ torture and abuse of whistleblower Bradley Manning continues apace, so bad that Amnesty International USA has weighed in with an action alert. NPR remains "strong and tough" in its silence.

The Murky Morass of the ~~Soviet~~ US war in Afghanistan continues its disaster spiral - featuring wanton killings of civilians (even little boys) - Can you guess NPR's take on the issue? Killings of civilians by US/NATO forces are waaaaay down - and "things are getting better" because the US has "taken back a lot of turf from the Taliban"...hurray!

A pair of eye-opening WikiLeaks cables came to light this week and revealed that the US strong-armed Costa Rican president Oscar Arias when he dared to end his country's relationship with the torture academy known as WHINSEC (aka School of the Americas or School of Assassins). In the media, it seems only OpEd News picked this one up - and given NPR's love for brutal US Counterinsurgency - it should come as no surprise that Stands-4-0 gives this story no coverage whatsoever - which is how it has covered WHINSEC in general (notice how School of America coverage has shriveled over the years).

Yes, this is the what we get from the "superb," "impartial news service" that is NPR.

Indefensible NPR

2011-03-12T16:59:00.004-06:00

Given the piece o'crap O'Keefe's punking of NPR and the ensuing shedding o'Schillers that has followed it, I figured a brief round up of some of the reaction to it was in order. It is interesting that most of the liberal to leftist reactions to the whole affair are critiques of NPR's spineless capitulation to the O'Keefe sting that point out what regulars at NPR Check already know - NPR is a solidly conservative/Republican-friendly news organization.

Media Matters highlights how several conservatives have weighed in with praise for the friendly territory that NPR News offers them. No surprise there...

FAIR presents an excellent roundup of it's own research into NPR's long term allegiance to US power elites and bias towards Republicans.

Unfortunately, NPR's devotion to US power elites and conservatives didn't sway some critics from their delusions that NPR news represents some kind of gold standard of journalism.

FreePress continues to tout NPR's glorious mission as one worth going to the wall for.

Jay Rosen at PressThink points out that NPR's capitulations to the right in this affair will have no effect on the triumphalist, take-no-prisoners conservatives who hate all public media and will only be satisfied when it is fully destroyed. Unfortunately, in his critique Rosen perpetuates the false notions that NPR is a valuable news source. He describes NPR as being "in the business of reporting facts," lauds Vivian Schiller as "a visionary leader who knew where NPR had to go in the digital age," and claims that NPR has been guided by a "commitment to [be] an impartial news service."

Worse than Rosen's were Joel Meares' comments about NPR at the Columbia Journalism Review. After making the point that NPR's actions will not appease its conservative enemies, Meares drifts into the land of pure fantasy, stating that
"NPR is a legitimate, independent news organization that is consistently strong and tough in its reporting."
Gad! I hope he'll send me a link to that alternate universe NPR so I can listen to some of that "strong and tough" reporting.

Of all the reactions to the NPR Schiller debacle, the one that really saddened me most was the article, "In Defense of NPR," by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship first posted on Salon.com and later republished by Common Dreams which interestingly has never shown any interest in publishing NPR critiques I have submitted to them - including the earlier relevant post on NPR funding campaigns by progressives. It was depressing to read Moyers and Winship promoting the lies that NPR has a

"superb news division"

and to see them close their defense with this painfully ironic warning

"But for all its flaws, consider an America without public media. Consider a society where the distortions and dissembling would go unchallenged, where fact-based reporting is eliminated."

And where, pray tell, on NPR are those distortions and dissembling being challenged? And where is all that fact-based reporting? If you find it on any of the NPR flagship news shows - Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the Weekend Editions - please write to me and I'll post them here on NPR Check.

Q Tips

2011-03-08T05:05:00.004-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

It's the History, Stupid

2011-03-05T11:09:00.012-06:00

(free candy from the US Air Force)

Tuesday morning, March 1, NPR's Deborah Amos had a story on the rising popularity of Al-Jazeera in the US. Early in the report, Amos says,

"The range of breaking stories has gained Al-Jazeera an unprecedented number of new fans in the U.S., and more powerful enemies in the Middle East."

A little later in the story, Amos - providing no details or explanation - notes that,

"Al-Jazeera Arabic has been controversial since broadcasts began 15 years ago."

The focus of Amos' piece is on the current hostile reaction of authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes to the informative news that Al-Jazeera produces, but there is an odd and glaring lack of context to the report. Except for this one brief mention regarding Al-Jazeera English - " It was shut out of the American market by reluctant cable operators after the Bush administration labeled the network anti-American" - listeners would never know that Middle East dictators attacking Al-Jazeera are simply following the same playbook used by US during the past "controversial" decade. The tactics of the US playbook against Al-Jazeera range from mild to very extreme:

public critiques and complaints
aggressive, hostile lies and denunciations
detention of reporters and confiscation of tapes
detention and torture of reporters [case of Salah Hassan]
detention and torture of cameramen [case of Suhaib Badr al Baz]
long term detention and torture of reporters [case of Sami al-Haj]
killing reporters [case of Tareq Ayyoub]
blowing up its offices in Kabul in a missile attack
blowing up its offices in Baghdad with a missile attack
plotting to bomb its main offices in Doha

The complete omission of this background history leads to some excruciating irony - for instance, this bit from Amos:

"Al-Jazeera's office was closed and burned, journalists beaten and detained, tapes confiscated or destroyed."

She is talking about recent events in Egypt - not Iraq or Afghanistan.

Hearing this latest example of the NPR history scrub made me wonder if I was being too harsh on NPR. Perhaps they have covered some of the United States government's most egregious abuses against Al-Jazeera and so decided that repeating them was unnecessary. So let's see what on-air coverage NPR has given to the most significant cases of US assaults on Al-Jazeera:

US strike on the Kabul offices of Al-Jazeera - nothing
US strike on the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera - nothing
US detention and torture of Salah Hassan - nothing
US detention and torture of Suhaib Badr al Baz - nothing
the 6 year imprisonment, torture and eventual release of Sami al-Haj - nothing

What can you say? NPR has not given a single bit of coverage to even one of these US-orchestrated assaults on journalism in general - and Al-Jazeera in particular. I have to confess that - even as critical as I am of NPR - I was stunned at its absolute censorship of these stories. Given NPR's hypocrisy when it comes to covering attacks on journalists, I guess I should not have been the least bit surprised.

Q Tips

2011-03-02T05:37:00.002-06:00

Q Tips is an open thread that welcomes and encourages any NPR related comments.

So Just Who is Sheera Frenkel?

2011-03-01T20:09:00.006-06:00

Something caught my ear in Sheera Frenkel's vacuous piece on the Palestinian Papers this morning. Discussing effect of the Palestinian Papers on Saeb Erekat, Frenkel says,

"Erekat says he resigned in disgrace, because of leaks someone in his own office provided to Al-Jazeera, the popular Arabic satellite news channel. Thousands of documents - nicknamed the Palileaks - revealed much about the peace talks over the last decade."

"Palileaks"? I'm a bit of a news junkie and follow developments in the Middle East, but I have never seen or heard the Palestine Papers described as the "Palileaks." I thought maybe I had missed something and did a Google search on the term. The results are quite interesting: almost all of them are pro-Zionist sources. The first two are telling: The Jerusalem Post (that Frenkel has written for) and the an article from CBN (the far-right Christian Broadcasting Network). Interestingly if you search "Palileaks" on Al-Jazeera or The Guardian (the two press outlets that actually released the Papers) you get nothing.

Sheera Frenkel has done some pretty awful reporting from Israel, and I want to know who this reporter is - you know, the basics: her education, what jobs has she held, has she done internships, etc. NPR has no bio on her, and I still haven't found anything substantive online, except that she has written for the Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of London, and McClatchy. I did turn up two interesting bits on Frenkel: she has an article on the Christian-Zionist Frontline Israel website and in the PDF brochure from a Crossing Borders Media Conference, August 2007, in Bonn, she is identified as being from California and an Israeli citizen (which seems relevant for a reporter covering the Israel/Palestine conflict).

If anyone finds a legitimate and relevant bio of Sheera Frenkel and can send it to me, I'll post it here. Until then I'll drop a line to the Ombudsman and request that NPR at least provide the basics on Frenkel who is a frequent contributor.

As a postscript, I should note that back on January 25th, I posted on NPR's distorted coverage of the Palestinian Papers back when they were released. A few days later Lourdes Garcia-Navarro did a decent piece that looked at the Palestinian negotiators' disappointment in the Obama administration as revealed in the papers. But that's it, and the critiques of my first post remain valid: NPR has been mute on the major revelation of the Papers: the utter sham of the entire "peace process" which has only furthered the violent US-supported Israeli policy of colonizing the Occupied Territories and destroying the possibility of any meaningful Palestinian state.

65 and a Half Men (Women and Children)

2011-02-27T21:42:00.007-06:00

Here's a brief glimpse into recent activity at the NPR memory hole:

How about that crazy General Caldwell running psy-ops in Afghanistan on US Senators?And the coverage on NPR? Anyone home?
Somewhere else in Afghanistan a few (dozens) unarmed folks got wasted in a NATO operation. The response from NPR? Yawn.... Oh well, I guess since the Afghans burned their children to make the US look bad (at least according to that "special breed of soldier: the warrior-scholar") there's nothing to cover on this one...

Then again NPR doesn't have unlimited resources and has to focus on the stories that really matter...such as Ronnie Reagan's Hollywood buddy and Charlie Sheen's personal implosion....

RheePulsive, RheePugnant, and Rheevolting

2011-02-27T14:51:00.000-06:00

Mouth-taping, achievement-exaggerating, bullying, arrogant, and downright dishonest darling of education "reform" Michele Rhee will probably be on NPR a lot more in the future now that she's started her own "advocacy"/lobbying organization called Students First. Who can resist someone who loves children so much that she's willing to attack teachers to prove it? Amazingly Oprah loves her, while Diane Ravitch (who once peddled Bush's No Child Left Behind snake oil) doesn't.

But if you're someo ne who ig nores policies that drastically benefit the wealthy and increase poverty (which is the single greatest factor in ruining the educational opportunities for EVERY child) and instead focus on destroying the rights of job security won by unionized educators, then NPR has lots of airtime for you. In fact this past week Michelle Rhee was the NPR star on Wednesday's ATC and Saturday's ATC. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join em: l

Tales from the Slick Adventures of Students-First Lady

Echo Chambers, Mirrors and Henny Penny Temple-Raston

2011-02-26T18:35:00.006-06:00

Juan Cole and NPR Check reader, informedveteran, recommended Tom Englehardt's excellent piece on the Washington Echo Chamber's reaction to the revolutions sweeping the Middle East. Englehardt writes:

"It would seem like a good moment for Washington - which, since September 12, 2001, has been remarkably clueless about real developments on this planet and repeatedly miscalculated the nature of global power - to step back and recalibrate.

As it happens, there's no evidence it's doing so. In fact, that may be beyond Washington’s present capabilities, no matter how many billions of dollars it pours into 'intelligence.' And by 'Washington,' I mean not just the Obama administration, or the Pentagon, or our military commanders, or the vast intelligence bureaucracy, but all those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital, and the media that reports on them all. It’s as if the cast of characters that makes up 'Washington' now lives in some kind of echo chamber in which it can only hear itself talking."

(Enter Dina Temple-Raston stage far-right)

Dina was not about to let her bread and butter (banging the al-Qaida fear drum) get drowned out by the inspiring and historic events in North Africa and the Middle East. On Thursday's ATC she dragged out a trio of "those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital" to rattle on about the terrifying opportunities that the uprisings provide to al-Qaida. The statements of these "experts" provided some rich irony:

Bush stooge Juan Zarate said,

"That is to say, al-Qaida has been very good at focusing the attention of their constituents and of the world on this idea of the far enemy. That is that all of the world's problems, all of the angst and grievances of the Middle East can be blamed on the United States, or at least can be affected by attacking the United States."

Seems to me there was some other terrorist organization that focused its constituents' attention on a far enemy and blamed every problem on a distant foe.

Then Temple-Raston trots out NPR regular & CIA-award winner, Bruce Hoffman to state that al-Qaida will

"exploit whatever issue is served in front of it, and do so equally adroitly. So for now it will focus on the near enemy."

Oh my God, enemies of freedom and civil rights focusing on the "near enemy"!

Lastly Temple-Raston highlights the expertise of Rick "Ozzie" Nelson whose "last military assignment was with the Joint Special Operations Command" (can you say JSOC?) Regarding Yemen and Libya, special operative Nelson explains that al-Qaida's leadership is

"probably best positioned to exploit the weakness in those countries."

Imagine the cynicism of a group that exploits weakness and upheaval in troubled countries to indiscriminately murder civilians.

Seriously, one of the things that I love about these uprisings in the Middle East is how starkly they expose the history of US government actions in the region as being based on complete contempt for the human rights and dignity of the actual people in the region. The fact that al-Qaida apes Washington in its contempt for the people it claims to champion and - like the US government - is willing to use extreme methods of violence to achieve its aims is almost laughable compared to the decades of such behavior by Washington.

But it's not laughable if you are one of the media "professionals" who depend on the Washington echo chamber that Englehardt critiques. In that case you have to keep hammering on the same discredited themes that earn you access to the "expert" think-tankers and counterterrorism wankers that populate your predictable reports. These reports are predictable that you'd think a journalist would be embarrassed. Not Temple-Raston, she was back on Saturday morning squawking about the terrible danger of al-Qaida rising Phoenix-like from the turmoil in Libya. Want to guess who her experts were? Bruce Hoffman, Juan Zarate, and Rick "Ozzie" Nelson. Now where have you heard those names before?

Q Tips

2011-02-22T05:18:00.001-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

If it Talks Like a Fox

2011-02-20T16:28:00.007-06:00

(disclaimer - graphic is slightly altered from the actual screenshot from NPR)

His name is Larry Abramson and he counts like a FOX:

On Saturday's ATC,. Referring to the thousands of anti-union protesters who came to Madison - and were massively outnumbered by pro-union activists - Abramson said, "But today, as you mention, there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Tea Party supporters and other supporters of the governor's plan,..." Talk about just making crap up.

and he talks like a FOX:

On Sunday's Weekend Edition he crowed that "supporters of Governor Walker...brought in some Tea Party firepower." He said, "One local remarked he'd never seen so many conservatives gathered at one time in notoriously progressive Madison." And according to Abramson, the Capitol building in Madison isn't an important symbol or platform for getting labor's message across any longer; it "has turned into what amounts to a giant performance space."

Well dang, if it counts like a FOX, talks like a FOX, and scoffs like a FOX - it must be...an NPR reporter!

Party's Over Entitlement Freeloaders

2011-02-19T17:18:00.010-06:00

(source of graphic)

Dean Baker has been calling NPR on its economic BS for a quite a while. One of his most pointed attacks against NPR (and the rest of the lovin'-the-rich-and-powerful media) has been to continually remind his readers that unless discussions of the so-called deficit crisis do not cover the $8 trillion housing bubble scam and the savvy ~~criminals~~ businessmen who created and benefited from said scam, then you are being sorely misinformed. This misinformation is not unintentional, but part of a sustained class warfare featuring attacks on middle and lower classes and an intentional downplaying (or downright ignoring) of the the real crises of unemployment, wage stagnation, and health care robbery (Yes we can, but....)

Did I say economic BS? Did I say misinformation? Brings to mind a certain radio news organization that stands for nothing, doesn't it?

Reader JayV of Blazing Indiscretions earlier in the week pointed out two stinging Dean Baker posts about economic rubbish on Thursday's Morning Edition featuring two Senate deficit squawkers. Baker pointed out that Senator Warner (and the interviewer Inskeep) are stupid when it comes to the basics about Social Security, and that the whole framing of the deficit crisis and its targeting of Social Security is...well...a bunch of crap. I would also add that the report was presented as the case of a Democrat and Republican willing to compromise...but the compromise was that the Democrat was willing to attack Social Security while the Republican was willing to lower income tax rates and reform deductions - some compromise!

If Saturday is any indication, NPR's Attack Entitlement's Posse shows no signs of letting up. In the morning, Scott Simon had a chummy talk with a freshman GOP representative who is a "fiscal and social conservative" and let him claim that his vote against a Pentagon-opposed jet engine "was Defense cuts first." He also let's him set the frame for slashing the budget by claiming: "We have a $1.3 trillion deficit for the year....What has to happen is we have to have a fundamental change in the trajectory of spending in Washington." Nothing from $300,000 a year Scottie about the government's trajectory of revenue when it comes to taxation of the rich or corporations.

If the morning seemed bad, Linda Worseheimer on ATC was, well, a lot worse. In a 10 minute hate-fest against entitlements, she featured NPR's favorite Catfood Queen, Maya MacGuineas who calmly explained that

"well, there's no question that all attention is on the budget now...the biggest parts of the problem are in the rest of the budget: mandatory spending or entitlements."

Apparently, Maya wasn't hitting the Elephant in the Room talking points hard enough, so Wertheimer pushed her,

"...that's the biggest deal isn't it: that not even the very excited budget cutters in the house have got to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?"

To which Maya responded,

"That's the elephant in the room...they are very beloved and people look forward to their checks, but bottom line - they are unsustainable; they will bust the budget."

What does NPR do to balance this mugging of all those self-centered freeloaders "looking forward to their checks"? Wertheimer brings on far right Senator Tom Coburn...I'm not kidding. Just in case Sen. Coburn has an off-script decency moment, Wertheimer steers him along regarding budget cutting:

"I think there's sort of general agreement that not enough has been done...Let me ask you about the big entitlements. Do your think the Congress is anywhere near contemplating addressing those portions of federal spending..."

Coburn's not about to let that softball get by without hitting it out of the park:

"We have to get the fraud out of Medicare...we need to drive down health care costs and you're not going to do that with a centralized government operation on that. Everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice - and that means the wealthiest and those experiencing the safety net."

Wertheimer, near the end of the report mentions that Coburn was on the President's Catfood Commission and says,

"Your group did try to address the big entitlements, the elephants in the room...

Q Tips

2011-02-17T20:48:00.004-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed, as always.

The NPR Has No Clothes

2011-02-15T19:16:00.009-06:00

Given that I've been running this blog for almost five years now, I thought I should weigh in on the current NPR and PBS funding cuts issue. As much as I detest how squarely NPR News supports unbridled corporate and US government power, I take no pleasure in seeing a Republican and far-right mobilization to cut off all public media funding. However, I've been unable to bring myself to sign on with the current campaigns to support NPR and PBS funding, and so I'm posting the following, hoping it will spur debate:

NPR, It's Just Not That In To You

Many progressive and liberal activists have probably received emails from MoveOn.org and FreePress.net exhorting them to, respectively "Sign the petition to save NPR and PBS" and "Sign our letter now and urge your member of Congress not to play politics with public media."

Leftists and progressives make bold claims about NPR reporting. In 2009 Megan Tady of In These Times, referring to NPR, wrote, "Public broadcasting provides some of the country’s most hard-hitting journalism....Public media produce some of the best reporting and programming on radio...." In 2010 FreePress President, Josh Silver, asserted that "Public media like NPR play a crucial role in America, providing original, in-depth journalism..."

Unfortunately these claims have no basis in reality. The painful truth is that - like the national Democratic party and the Obama Administration - NPR's signature news shows - Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition Saturday/Sunday - relentlessly exhibit nothing but contempt for leftists, progressives, and antiwar and social justice activists while constantly airing reports that bolster US militarism, corporate power, and legitimize radical rightwing ideology and movements. If you doubt me, I have assembled almost five years of evidence on this blog. For skeptics, I'll offer but a few examples that are the rule not the exception.

I didn't even mention the well-known cases of NPR's refusal to call torture torture, or how NPR smears leftists when they die.

Chris Hedges recently derided liberals because they "make passionate appeals to work within systems, such as electoral politics, that have been gamed by the corporate state. And the result is to spur well-meaning people toward useless and ultimately self-defeating activity." And such are these worthless drives to save NPR and PBS funding. Notice that the campaigns to save NPR and PBS funding make no demands and insist on nothing more than the status quo.

It is a shame that organizations like MoveOn, which claims 5 million members, or Free Press are not tying the campaign to save government funding for public media to demands that NPR offer more diverse and critical journalism. The campaigns of these organizations should mobilize their members and supporters to contact their local NPR stations and demand that NPR news programming be improved within a year or be dropped. This demand should be backed by a pledge to cut off membership support if these modest demands are not met.

Glenn Greenwald recently made an astute observation about politics in Washington: "There's a fundamental distinction between progressives and groups that wield actual power in Washington: namely, the latter are willing (by definition) to use their resources and energies to punish politicians who do not accommodate their views, while the former unconditionally support the Democratic Party and their leaders no matter what they do."

Progressives have a choice with public media: produce journalism that challenges the powerful or use their resources and energies to punish them. That is a campaign I could sign on with.

Sixteen Long Grueling Days

2011-02-14T19:31:00.007-06:00

Back on January 29th I asked you - dear readers - to start your timers to see how quickly NPR would jump on the Mattel marketing bandwagon for Ken and Barbie. Boy, did NPR ever prove me wrong. Given all the crucial news stories they are probably working on even now - the arrest, torture, and 9 year prison term given to a human rights activist in ~~Iran~~ Israel (still waiting), the first hostage to complete his life sentence [as opposed to being murdered - still waiting] at Gitmo (still waiting), George W. Bush's indictment on torture (still waiting), the US teen tortured in Kuwait with likely US approval (still waiting for more than pro-FBI propaganda), etc. - NPR took sixteen full days to finally catch up on the Ken and Barbie story.

NPR featured the plastic pair on Monday's painfully named All Things Considered. It was NPR's sweet little Valentine to its listeners...and of course, Mattel - whose permission I did not get for the creepy graphics.

Q Tips

2011-02-13T17:08:00.002-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Tank Diving with Jackie Northam

2011-02-11T16:13:00.006-06:00

Jackie Northam is one of the worst of the Think Tank Scrapers™ at NPR. She gained early recognition on this blog for her tanking prowess way back in Oct. 2006, again in Dec. 2006 and March 2007, and was still going strong in March 2009. So on Thursday morning when I heard that Northam was covering US and Israeli talks focusing on Egypt, I wondered how deep her think tank plunge would go. I think she may have set a new low mark in this area.

Northam's first "expert" is Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations. The most stellar part of his bio has to be his role as

"Former head, Office of the Quartet Representative, Tony Blair, in Jerusalem" (Tony Blair...ouch!).

Danin also has been employed and recognized by the US State Department with "Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards."

Northam's second guest, Aaron David Miller, from the Woodrow Wilson Center is also a standard State Department award winning expert. As Miller's bio indicates:

"...he served at the Department of State as an advisor to six secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process....received the department's Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards."

But it is Northam's third expert that sets a new low standard. To bring in the Israeli perspective Northam features Dan Schueftan , a professor who has made the following classy and nuanced remarks:

"The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race.”
"While Israel sends while sends a sophisticated satellite into space, the Arabs come up with a new kind of hummus." "
"There is nothing more fucked up under the sun than the Palestinians."
"The Palestinians are a repulsive part of the Middle East, let’s leave those ratbags."
"All over the Arab world they fire shots at weddings in order to prove that they have at least one thing that is hard and functional and can shoot."

How's that for a diverse line-up? And what do these three have to say about the situation in Egypt?

Danin makes the relatively innocuous comment that "There have been a few comments out of Israel, but for the most part they're keeping quiet, and that is wise."
Miller also contributes a rather dull observation: "I think the administration is doing a lot of hand-holding and minding of the Israelis. But then again, why would the Israelis bet on our assurances?" Later his comments expose his State Department roots, noting that "The critical point will come once the transition is secured and once a process of political reform is underway, to see exactly how constraining the new Egypt is to American interests, how hostile it may be toward Israeli interests."
Schueftan - speaking like the Neocon that he is - rails "There has been almost unanimity here in understanding the significance of the American policy vis-a-vis Egypt, namely you can't trust the Americans. More specifically, you can't trust Barack Obama.

Of all the substantive reflections and analyses that one could find on the effects that the Egyptian uprising might have on Israel and US behaviors in the region, this lousy lineup is the best that Northam and NPR can offer.

Q Tips

2011-02-08T04:56:00.001-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Nonstop Praise of Reagan

2011-02-06T21:48:00.000-06:00

If he'd been alive, Ronald Reagan would have turned 100 on Sunday, February 6th. Starting on the morning of February 3rd, NPR began running numerous stories on Reagan's legacy. Listen to the first six stories and - aside from two brief mentions of the Iran-Contra scandal and one mention of the Beirut barracks bombing as a "failure" - you will hear no criticisms of the Reagan presidency. A couple of the stories (e.g. 2-4-11 ME & 2-5 WE Saturday) - positively framing Reagan as a pragmatist - noted that contrary to popular beliefs, Reagan did raise taxes and deficits - and did negotiate with the Soviets.

Only in the seventh and final piece, Sunday's ATC interview, is any pejorative assessment of Reagan voiced; the director of an HBO Reagan documentary, after noting many positive aspects of Reagan, states that Reagan "came in many ways to betray that [small town] America...hurt the very America that I know he identified with." This one critique is lost in the flood of praise heaped on Reagan:

2-3-11 ME

(Tom Brokaw) "A pure product of Main Street, Heartland America...People were comfortable with him from the start."
(Pete Wilson) "Brilliant."
(Jaffe) "If there was any disagreement...it was over where Ronald Reagan ranked in the pantheon of American presidents."

2-4-11 ATC -

(Liasson) "...upbeat, forward-looking and self-consciously optimistic - the definition of Reaganesque."
(Lou Cannon) "The American people aren't fools. Reagan was able to run on Morning in America because for millions of Americans, it was morning in America."
(Liasson) "Doug Brinkley says President Obama is wise to identify himself any way he can with the 40th president."
(Doug Brinkley) "Reagan...He's in the DNA of America at the moment. He is beloved by the American people."

2-5-11 ATC

(Wertheimer) "Ronald Reagan...was part of almost every campaign, mostly invoked by Republicans, but also occasionally by Democrats and sometimes by President Obama." (Fallows) "You could take this as a good sign of the possible harmony and unity in American history that....representatives of all political parties and all political heritages find things in this background, of this tradition they want to align themselves with."

2-6 WE Sun

(Reagan hometown local) "Nice man. Good person."

2-6 WE Sun

(Hansen) "...his stature has continued to rise among conservatives...as well as with the general public."

Somehow, NPR inadvertently left out a few details regarding that "upbeat, forward-looking" "nice man" who was Ronald Reagan: his disastrous War on Drugs, his deadly lack of action on AIDS, his promotion of terror, war and torture in Central America and Africa, his riddled-with-criminals administration, his assault on the environment, his crushing of wages and war on unions, and his success in creating a sophisticated, murderous organization of Islamic extremists. Other than that, it was a very fair and very balanced assessment of the Reagan years.

Velvet Gjelten Covers Iron Fist

2011-02-05T15:26:00.001-06:00

(source of graphic)

Tom Gjelten weighed in Thursday morning to explain how US-supported torture states are one of the greatest assets to the United States in its "war on terror." Gjelten - in yet another NPR report [see Wednesday's ME piece] warning of the grave terrorism & security threats produced by a free, open Internet - used the uprising in Egypt as a chance to once again champion the benefits of torture and authoritarian rule:

Gjelten: "Egyptian democracy activists, nevertheless, complained the Obama Administration moved too slowly. If so, that could be because pushing too hard in Egypt on one goal could set back progress somewhere else. Promoting Internet freedom, for example, might have been seen as competing with the goal of fighting terrorism. And that's an area where the U.S. relies on Egypt, according to Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Clarke: "The Egyptian role in counterterrorism has been essential to us for the last 15 to 20 years. They've been one of the best allies we've had in the fight against al-Qaida and other radical groups.

On its face this all sounds rather bureaucratic, bland, and acceptable. Gjelten uses positive terms like "progress" "fighting terrorism" and "relies on Egypt," and former US official Clarke speaks in likewise euphemistic and glowing terms: "role in counterterrorism" "essential to us" and "one of the best allies..." But consider for a moment what these empty words and phrases actually refer to.

Among the Egyptian security services techniques that have been so "essential" to "progress" are documented cases of severe beatings, electroshocks to all parts of the body, suspensions resulting in dislocations, whippings, sexual assaults, rape, threats of rape, torture of children, torture of victims in front of family members, drownings, and of course murder and disappearance. What Tom Gjelten (and NPR) are praising is Egypt's role as an "international centre for interrogation and torture on behalf of other states as part of the 'war on terror'."

Back in the summer of 2009, when Alicia Shepard was pushing her defense of NPR's refusal to call torture torture, she wrote on her blog, "To me, it makes more sense to describe the techniques and skip the characterization." Putting aside the fact that Shepard was well aware that NPR never did or would describe in detail what the US was doing to its detainees, can you imagine how different Gjelten's (and ALL NPR's slanted Egypt coverage) would be if the actual practices and their effects on real human beings were described and the US foreign policy "characterizations"/euphemisms were dropped? Imagine if Gjelten said,

"Having an Egyptian state where detainees know they will be sodomized with sticks, raped, cut with razors, beaten and hung from hooks so that their bones are broken and joints dislocated really helps the US fight terrorism and keep its Middle East agenda in place. It is essential that Egyptians are so terrified of being held by state security forces in Egypt that they dare not organize against US wars on Muslim countries or US/Egyptian support for Israel no matter how unpopular these policies are."

That would be eye-opening! Obviously, such honesty would require a universal standard of decency and morality - instead of one that assumes US government/military goals carry the greatest moral weight with everything else being secondary [not to mention the inherent anti-Arab racism that assumes Arab people deserve nothing but poverty, torture, corruption and dictatorship as long as such conditions support US foreign policy goals.]

Finally, Gjelten's stance is not even internally consistent within the limits of its own sick reasoning. Looked at in a detached and cold-blooded light, one can easily demonstrate that instead of aiding counterterrorism, the US support for torture states (and its own torture practices) serve to swell the ranks of extremists and potential terrorists. In 2005 Naomi Klein wrote how torture is an essential ingredient in the radicalization of extremists. Chris Zambelis brings the issue up to date in 2008 and Glenn Greenwald makes a similar case in 2009. A detached observer might also note that torture produces radically false information, such as the torture confessions in Egypt of al-Libi used to buttress the launch of the Iraq War. Any rational person would have to at least consider that one of the main reasons for supporting torture regimes is to produce more violence and terrorism, thereby sustaining the endless "war on terror" and justifying the grotesque injustices (and spending) involved in this cynical enterprise.

Gjelten concludes his homage to the Iron Fist with this gem:

"The Obama administration may learn whether a new government there, one that more vigorously supports Internet freedom and other democratic values, could be as strong a counterterrorism ally as the Mubarak regime has been."

Gjelten is one scary character...

Q Tips

2011-02-01T06:25:00.001-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Gjelten for the Prosecution

2011-01-30T14:30:00.011-06:00

NPR has joined with much of the corporate media in the US in vilifying Julian Assange and ignoring the significant (and damning) material contained in the various WikiLeaks releases - and has been silent on the inhumane and extrajudicial punishment imposed upon Pfc. Bradley Manning in his military confinement as a suspect for the source of many of the WikiLeaks revelations.

You might think that a news organization would focus on the well-documented and internationally infamous abuses of power by the US state security organs (as in the case of Manning), or on the extrajudicial attempts at silencing WikiLeaks and targeting its founder Assange for a sham prosecution under the US Espionage Act (even the Columbia School of Journalism has denounced the US effort).

Then again if you are NPR's Tom Gjelten - and your primary allegiance is to the security apparatus of the United States regardless of its aims or tactics - you cobble together a piece of misinformation aimed at covering up the abuses of Manning and promoting the case for prosecuting Assange. Gjelten's report aired on Thursday's ATC (1/27/11).

Regarding Manning, Gjelten never mentions the UN investigation and Amnesty International's condemnation of Manning's detention, instead describing it himself - telling listeners that Manning

"is held in what the military calls Prevention of Injury status, supposedly because he's a threat to himself. According to some reports, Manning has been depressed. He's held alone in his cell for 23 hours a day under constant surveillance. His lawyer last weekend filed a complaint objecting to Manning's treatment."

In contrast to this euphemistic gloss, Gjelten brings on Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, to give us the unchallenged Pentagon description of Manning's incarceration:

"He's being provided well-balanced, nutritious meals three times a day. He receives visitors and mail, and can write letters. He routinely meets with doctors, as well as his attorney. He's allowed to make telephone calls. And he is being treated just like every other detainee in the brig."

Done with Manning, Gjelten then turns his sights on Julian Assange. Noting that no direct connection has been found between Manning and Assange, Gjelten - friend of the CIA - states,

"If Assange were himself not a party to the theft of the classified U.S. files, he'd presumably have to be charged simply for publishing them. Difficult but not impossible, says Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel."

We then get CIA reinforcement, Smith to tell us,

"It would arguably be made easier if they could establish a link between the removal of the documents by Manning and the transmission of those documents to Assange, but I don't think the absence of that link is fatal to the prosecution of Assange."

And just in case any actual journalists might find Gjelten's "case" unsettling (and unseemly), Gjelten closes his report by turning to the New York Times to bolster his case:

"If government lawyers go after WikiLeaks, they'll probably say it's not a news organization. And they'll have the New York Times to back them up. In an article released on its website, Times editor Bill Keller writes that the newspaper has regarded Assange, quote, as a source, not as a partner or collaborator."

At least one can say that Gjelten is an expert on what is "not a news organization."

Start Your Timers

2011-01-29T17:55:00.006-06:00

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.

Q Tips

2011-01-27T22:15:00.002-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed - of course!

When the Shit Hits the Fan - Make Brownies!

2011-01-25T20:31:00.008-06:00

The bombshell release of The Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera and The Guardian hit the news this week and provide stark evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the Israeli government and the US government in the sham "peace process" - (not to mention the craven subservience and collaborative nature of the Palestinian Authority). As The Guardian editorialized

"It is hard to tell who appears worst: the Palestinian leaders, who are weak, craven and eager to shower their counterparts with compliments; the Israelis, who are polite in word but contemptuous in deed; or the Americans, whose neutrality consists of bullying the weak and holding the hand of the strong. Together they conspire to build a puppet state in Palestine, at best authoritarian, at worst a surrogate for an occupying force."

So what does NPR do when someone else has done all the work for them and hands them a huge trove of damming evidence?

First, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro did a decent job of reporting on reaction by the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, and the Israeli government.

This modest piece was followed by a sad hodgepodge of spin from the awful Michele Kelemen - a story that the NPR scribe monkeys titled "Release of Palestinian Papers Raises Issues for the US." Raises issues!? Sheesh...

Melissa Block introduces the piece, asking "And how does the U.S. try to revive talks when all sides seem to be losing credibility?" as if the complete lack of US legitimacy and credibility has not been exposed in these documents. From there Michele Kelemen turns to Professor Kurtzer of Princeton who states that one thing the documents show is that the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians

"are far narrower than people would have assumed....therefore...the administration...now has evidence that the bridge can be built."

Kelemen then turns to - as she says -

"Another U.S. veteran of the peace process, Robert Danin, of the Council on Foreign Relations, cautions against reading too much into the documents."

Kelemen and NPR definitely take this advice to heart, and - instead of any scrutiny or critical assessment of these damning records of the US/Israel/PA attempt to destroy any hope of justice for Palestinians - opts to continue airing the views of other US official participants in the peace process sham. As if to drive the point home that the revelations will have no effect on Michele Kelemen and NPR's determination to echo the views of the US State Department, Kelemen allows State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley to have the final word:

"The best and only way to fundamentally resolve the core issues, reach an agreement and end the conflict once and for all is through a negotiation, not through unilateral statements, unilateral actions."

Unbelievably, it's not meant as some kind of sick joke...

NPR Black Sites Updated

2011-01-25T20:06:00.006-06:00

(source of photo)

UPDATED below [1-26-11]

Just checking in on the torture and authoritarian-watch clock at NPR.

Remember Gulet Mohamed - that young US citizen held, probably tortured, illegally prevented from travelling, and grilled and harassed by the FBI? A week ago I posted on NPR's silence regarding his treatment. Since then, the ACLU sued to get Mohamed off the no-fly list and succeeded in getting him home. Even the Washington Post covered his return. How's NPR doing with on-air coverage? Still nothing, not a word...

And what about Bradley Manning, the young army private - convicted of no crime - who is being held in conditions that are so atrocious that even Amnesty International has weighed in on his case. NPR's on-air coverage? Absolutely nothing about his ill treatment - zilch.

UPDATE

As if to prove that it is nothing but a pro-torture mouthpiece for the new, enhanced Yes We Can Security States of America, NPR finally gets around to covering Gulet Mohamed by covering up his torture, and providing FBI disinformation as a bonus! On Wednesday ME [1-26-11] Jamie Tarabay discusses Gulet Mohamed's situation of being on the no-fly zone - but the fact that he was tortured by the Kuwaitis (with likely US approval) and then grilled relentlessly by the FBI is NEVER mentioned! Tarabay also states as fact that the numbers on Big Brother's no-fly list are "smaller than you think." She's speaking with FBI propagandist, Timothy Healy, director of its ~~Torture Screaming Center~~ Terrorist Screening Center :

Tarbay: "The actual number of people on the no-fly list isn't as high as you might think."
Healy: "About ten thousand. And then the U.S. citizens on the no-fly list is even much smaller, between 500 and 1,000."

Several commenters at the NPR site noted that there are mainstream news reports that show these numbers are probably off by a factor of about 50!

Q Tips

2011-01-20T19:34:00.003-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

A Tale of Two Teens

2011-01-18T19:30:00.006-06:00

If the security apparatus of the United States assists a client state in disappearing and detaining an American citizen, torturing him, and keeping him imprisoned so the FBI can aggressively interrogate him - how long does it take NPR to report on this assault on the rights of a citizen?

The horse hasn't even left the gate on that one. The story of Gulet Mohamed's detention and alleged torture was broken by the NYT on January 5, 2011, and as of the evening of January 18, 2011, NPR has yet to give ANY airtime to the case. As of tomorrow we'll be at two weeks and counting...

However, if you are an American citizen arrested on the evening of November 26, 2010 for planning to bomb a public event in Portland, Oregon, how long will it take NPR to jump on the case? The answer is four days (that does not include the immediate on-air hourly news-updates which NPR doesn't archive for searches). On November 30, 2010 there will be a full story on the case itself, and additional report featuring confrontational questioning of the mayor of Portland challenging the wisdom of his city's not fully joining a federal security "anti-terror" organization.

The complete lack of coverage of Gulet Mohamed's ordeal is no accident. It has been written about extensively since January 6, 2011 by Glenn Greenwald - and a "big follower" of Greenwald's writing is none other than NPR's go-to "Counterterrorism Correspondent," Dina Temple-Raston. Here is what Temple-Raston said to Greenwald on Nov. 5th at the NYU Constitution and National Security Conference [beginning and ending time is indicated]:

(53:16) "Hi there, I'm Dina Temple-Raston with National Public Radio, and I'm a big follower of yours Glenn and I like your stuff very much, but I'm sorry I'm going to have to correct you on a number of very basic points that clearly, uh, our representative from the FBI feels uncomfortable correcting you on..." (53:32)

The stark nature of attention and promptness NPR devotes to stories promoting the enhancement of state encroachment on individual liberties versus its complete lack of interest in reporting on the crimes of the US security apparatus is telling in this case. Both central figures in these events are about the same age, are American citizens, and were born in Somalia - and when it involves Somalia and the US "war on terror," Dina Temple-Raston is usually all over it.

Q Tips

2011-01-17T08:13:00.002-06:00

As always, NPR related comments welcomed.

Roads Not Traveled

2011-01-16T11:00:00.000-06:00

NPR gets credit for getting French-speaking reporter, Eleanor Beardsley into the capital of Tunisia by Friday morning. Her reports have provided some dramatic first-person accounts of police repression and the chaos of the revolutionary scenario in the capital. However, NPR's general coverage lays the blame for the uprising on Tunisia's dictatorial regime and the spike in food prices - while avoiding any in-depth discussion of two important elements of the Tunisian uprising:

The way in which the the Tunisian dictatorship reflects the gross hypocrisy of the US-led "war on terror" which has created increased global repression (and terrorism).
The role that US/European economic neoliberalism has had in bringing on the misery which helped ignite the Tunisian rebellion.

A discussion of these two threads practically begs to be covered, given the WikiLeak cable on the US awareness of repression and corruption in Tunisia - a cable that was widely know and discussed in Tunisia [and terrifies our newest ~~thug~~ ally in the "war on terror."] And more cables on US complicity in Tunisian repression and cronyism were released yesterday. Amazingly, Beardsley trumpets the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising but WikiLeaks is never mentioned (search NPR "heard on air" for Wikileaks + Tunisia and you get zilch as of Sunday afternoon!).

As far as the role of neoliberal economics (and US foreign policy) in compounding North Africa's miseries, not only does NPR completely ignore it, but to explain rising food prices there turns to Gary Blumenthal, who

"served as Deputy Assistant for Cabinet Liaison to former President George Bush, and as Special Assistant to the President for Agriculture Trade and Food Assistance....served as Executive Assistant and then as Chief of Staff to then Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter, providing oversight of all operations in this large federal agency (110,000 employees) and exercising continuous scrutiny over $65 billion worth of programs including research, education, production, domestic and international marketing, food safety and inspection, nutrition, environment, public affairs, economic analysis, legal counsel and administration matters related to USDA's mission in the U.S. and in 60 countries around the world. He also served with the Foreign Agricultural Service as Legislative Director, and as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Larry J. Hopkins (R-KY)."

Mr. Blumenthal explains that rising food prices in the Maghreb are the result of increased demand and "imperfect weather." How's that for insight?

Eleanor Beardsley has mentioned several times in her reports that people in Tunis are watching Aljazeera TV - too bad none of Aljazeera's coverage is finding its way into NPR's coverage. I'd also recommend Juan Cole's Informed Comment for far more substantive coverage and analysis of the Tunisian revolution.

Learned Helplessness

2011-01-15T12:18:00.006-06:00

(photo compliments of the Pentagon)

NPR and it's stealth Xtian-extremist, Barbara Bradley-Hagerty [yes, her!], must think its listeners are like the poor dogs of Martin Seligman's learned helplessness experiments: after being subjected to pain that they cannot control, they simply lie there and whimper when subjected to shock after shock - even when a way of escaping is provided.

Fortunately, listeners are not always as ignorant as NPR must think they are. On Thursday's ATC, Bradley Hagerty reported on the Army's "Spiritual Fitness" test, and kept the focus solely on the legal/Constitutional issues of the story, while completely ignoring very important facts and context that are essential to a full understanding of the case. Fortunately some of the commenters at the NPR site were not about to let her distort the history of the case.

One listener, providing the relevant link wrote:

"NPR left out a major part of this story, which was reported last week by Truthout.org and then reported by Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The person who is responsible for coming up with this crazy idea is Martin Seligman, who was also the inspiration for the CIA's torture program."

The listener noted that no credit was given to Truthout.org for the story.

Another listener, complimenting the mention of the Truthout.org piece, noted that Salon.com had covered the war-profiteering and slippery ethics of Martin Seligman angle of this story even earlier. Unsurprisingly, NPR and Bradley Hagerty, made no mention of this either.

Understandably, to fully cover this story, NPR would have to violate its own tortuous Torture-That's-Not-Torture policy. Readers here are under no such restraints and should feel free to read more about Seligman's "unwitting" involvement in the Bush era (now Obama era) torture programs. Martin Seligman's rejection of being complicit with torture is interesting, Scott Horton's Q&A with Jane Mayer is helpful, and Andrew Sullivan's ruminations are worth looking at, too.

I should note that General Warlove appreciated Ms. Bradley Hagerty's narrow focus.

Q Tips

2011-01-12T05:18:00.002-06:00

"Parting seas of misinformation since...well...um....okay...only since 2006."

NPR related comments, notes and observations welcomed.

Fourth Estate Finds Third Way

2011-01-10T21:31:00.006-06:00

(you can buy the original here)

Mara Liasson's statement on last Tuesday's ATC caught my attention. She was reflecting on Joe Biden's statements made at the time that the Obama/Democratic gift to the insurance industry was signed into law:

"The final girder in the great liberal project - Biden knew what he was talking about. The health care bill will be the last great middle class entitlement, says Jim Kessler of the policy think-tank Third Way."

Well, that was a doozy. And Jim Kessler of this "Third Way" think tank didn't let up:

"With the passage of health care reform, the 80-year Democratic quest to build the best possible safety net is essentially over. And the Democratic Party has to shift from being a party primarily concerned with economic security and dividing up the pie to one that is primarily concerned with economic growth and expanding the pie."

Did you get that? The party's over folks. You know all that redistribution of wealth that the Democrats have been fighting for all these years (hee...hee...) and that glorious safety net (hee...hee...) - those namby-pamby days are over! Too bad there wasn't a journalist around to remind Mr. Third Way that the pie has been growing and growing - it's just that one segment of the population has been eating the biggest pieces.

I wondered about this creepy "Third Way" tank of thinksters. Who are they and why are they getting so much airtime on NPR? No surprise: Third Way is a basic "Blue Dog" corporate-lovin' Democratic think tank - which explains why it has found such a warm welcome at NPR - and, with Obama's appointment of Third Way William Daley, it's star is on the rise.

This infatuation with Third Way seemed so typical of NPR's love of the corporate center that I wasn't going to bother posting about it until the tragedy of the massacre in Arizona broke, and NPR weighed in with it's personal connections to Representative Giffords.

On Weekend Edition Sunday, Scott Simon - lauded Representative Giffords and revealed,

"Our families are friends. We don't talk a lot about politics when we get together as much as kids and parents, great quesadillas, and all the new movies we never get a chance to see. We swap jokes and dreams."

It struck me as odd that a reporter would be close friends with the government officials they are supposed to be scrutinizing - and show no qualms in revealing that information. But Simon is always eager to show his caring, emotional side...and this was an obviously an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Then, on Sunday's ATC Andrea Seabrook had this interchange with Guy Raz:

[Raz] "Andrea, I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to ask you to step out of your reporter's shoes for a moment and just talk about Gabrielle Giffords. So many people seemed to love this person on both sides of the aisle, and you've come to know her pretty well yourself, haven't you?"

[Seabrook] "Yes...Gabrielle Giffords is a wonderful woman. Aside from her politics, we members of the press up here often work with these members of Congress and their staff so closely that we come to think of these people as colleagues. And often, we care more...about how a person is as a person than we do about their politics."

This is truly astounding. Representative Giffords may be a wonderful person, but you begin to suspect that NPR reporters think the Fourth Estate is a social club where they get to be friends with the powerful, instead of an institution that should keep a check on power (though that institution may be so far gone as to be dead). Hearing these unabashed declarations of friendship and collegiality made me wonder how many other officials (military, corporate, and governmental) NPR reporters count among their friends - and how these friendships affect the news that finds its way onto the air.

And that brings me back to Third Way and the tragedy of the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords. I thought her name seemed familiar, and then it dawned on me that when I was researching the Third Way think tank earlier in the week - I had seen her name and picture on the Third Way website: she's one of the honorary co-chairs of Third Way. Seems like the Beltway social club is a small world after all...

Little Dutch Boy Takes a Wikileak

2011-01-10T20:22:00.003-06:00

Back in late November Noam Chomsky pointed out that the cables released by WikiLeaks regarding statements on Iran from Arab and US leaders demonstrated a "profound hatred for democracy" on the part of those leaders. His evidence was that polling clearly showed that Arab public sentiment on potential Iranian nuclear arms - and on what nations were viewed as the greatest threat to peace -

(from the UM/Zogby 2010 Poll - click to see full PDF version)

were diametrically opposed to the policies of their leaders. Even the Washington Times noted the results of the polling.

Contempt for democracy might well describe the editorial stance at NPR, and Michele Kelemen goes at it full bore on Monday evening. Kelemen, one of the many the State Department spokespersons for NPR, recently tried to stanch the flood of ugly coming out of the WikiLeaks cables disclosures, showed her own contempt for democracy by distorting the content of the WikiLeaks cables to favor US aggression toward Iran:

"Diplomatic cables recently released by Wikileaks show that many in this region are worried about Iranian intentions. The ruler of Abu Dhabi was quoted in one as comparing Iranian President Amadinejahd to Hitler, warning he could drag the region into war."

Those are really her words from the broadcast! It's clever how she manages to change a handful of Arab dictators and plutocrats into "many in this region." And you have to love how she manages to ring the Hitler gong [standard neocon propaganda that even Fareed Zakaria knows is rubbish] by repeating the nonsense from Abu Dhabi's crown prince.

Q Tips

2010-12-30T15:42:00.004-06:00

As 2010 sputters to an end, NPR related comments are encouraged and welcomed.

Bobble Siegel's Profound Humanity

2010-12-29T09:34:00.009-06:00

After Rachel Martin's pumped up assessment of Plans A & B on Monday's ATC [see previous post], we were treated to further explanations of the Global War on Terror from Robert Siegel - a reporter of "intellectual heft and profound humanity." Robert Siegel's sympathetic attitudes toward criminal secrecy, the slaughter of civilians, and the erasure of history are breathtaking.

Siegel opens the interview stating, "

I'm joined by Ben Venzke, CEO of IntelCenter. It's a counterterrorism contractor. And we're going to hear about other fronts in the war against al-Qaeda and its allies."

We are already in a propaganda minefield here. The first problem is the non-information provided about Ben Venzke. He runs IntelCenter that distributes "terrorism" videos of questionable sourcing, and he worked with iDefense before starting his company. At iDefense, Venzke worked closely with military intelligence operative, Jim Melnick, a Rumsfeld propaganda operative. Given his background, he is an untrustworthy "expert" at best. The second issue in this brief opening is Siegel's description of "other fronts in the war against al-Qaeda." The media's use of the language of conventional war (e.g. "other fronts") to describe US operations against a minuscule number of al-Qaeda operatives has to be one of the great propaganda triumphs of the US security/permanent-war state.

If this were the only problem with Siegel's interview, I'd chalk it up to typical NPR laziness, and would not have bothered working on this post. But after its lackluster opening, it becomes truly pathological. Siegel asks a direct question about US involvement in Yemen, and Venzke says, "Well, I can't comment because of our involvement with the government...." To which, Siegel follows up with

"According to one of the biggest disclosures in the WikiLeaks cables, one of the biggest contributions of Yemen's president is not bombing al-Qaeda targets, but saying he is and letting the U.S. bomb al-Qaeda targets. Is there a vigorous local counterterrorism effort in Yemen? Or is it more simply permitting the United States to do what it has to do there?"

To do what it has to do there? One has to assume that Siegel is talking about slaughtering 55 human beings - including 14 women and 21 children; after all, that is what the WikiLeak cable is about. To this question Venzke again hides behind secrecy, "That's not something that I could comment on." And Siegel's response? He laughs. I'm not kidding; here's the transcript from NPR:

Siegel: "Can't comment on that. (Soundbite of laughter)"

In the finale of this bloodsport of an interview Siegel directs his line of questioning to Somalia. After Venzke explains the supposed terrorism threats posed to the US by Somalia's al-Shabab, Siegel asks,

"And is there any countervailing authority in Somalia that's doing anything there? Or do they really have a dysfunctional state and have the run of the place?"

Of course the direct US role [involving a grotesque level of indiscriminate slaughter] in creating this "dysfunctional state" (by pressuring and then assisting a reluctant nation to invade Somalia when it was beginning to stabilize) is never mentioned. And why would it be? - on NPR it was never covered in the first place.

Less Tea Drinking, More Drone Strikes

2010-12-28T15:09:00.017-06:00

NPR's perky sock monk ey has earned her own comic strip with her latest effort. All Ms. Martin's statements are straight from Monday's ATC "report" which is introduced by Audie Cornish. Hover over panels to see which ones have superpowered hyperlinks!

Dunces Weigh in on Education

2010-12-26T13:07:00.009-06:00

In its education coverage, NPR consistently ignores the negative effects of poverty on student outcomes - and instead opts for the corporatist focus on "effective teachers." It's an approach that one expects from right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, not from a news organization [though the American Enterprise Institute gets inordinate and favorable airtime on NPR].

Today's Weekend Edition featured two education reports that ran back to back and are striking for highlighting NPR's intentional focus on the small effects of teacher effectiveness versus the overwhelming effects of poverty.

The first "report" featured host, Liane Hansen talking to Claudio Sanchez and Larry Abramson about education (if there were merit pay for reporting on education both these characters would be seeing pay decreases). To his credit, Sanchez made these startling points:

"...and finally a handful of reports are out that are kind of scary. They warn that the poverty rates among children and families are on the rise and the numbers are off the charts. The Southern Education Foundation for example says that over 2 million Americans now face acute hunger, homelessness and medical problems - and all of this, of course, has horrible implications for school-age children and how schools deal with them."

How does Liane Hansen respond to this stunning statement? She says, "Is there an issue or event that might make news early in 2011?" That's it. These are exceptional observations that Sanchez has made, and any rational (not to mention compassionate) human being would be interested in pursuing more information about them. He is absolutely correct - the data is scary

and the implications for education are horrible. But as a writer for the Washington Post (of all places!) pointed out, discussions about poverty and its effects on student achievement are the elephant in the room for our press.

Ignoring Sanchez' statements, Hansen then turns to Abramson to ask briefly about higher education and finally turns her sights where NPR loves to focus:

"What about the emphasis on teachers performance? How will that play out in 2011?"

Abramson then introduces the theme of the next story on the show; he says, "...I think what a lot of people are more focused on...what makes an effective teacher...There's one program that I looked at that's pretty interesting from the Gates Foundation. They're spending millions of dollars to answer that question..." And what is this "pretty interesting" program? The amazing idea of - brace yourself - videotaping teachers as part of evaluating their classroom practice.

Whoa, how cutting edge! It just happens that in 1987, when I was working on my masters in education at the University of Iowa, we used videotaping to evaluate our teaching techniques. Good thing one of the beneficent billionaires is "spending millions of dollars" to help teachers be more effective. If only these billionaires had 80%-90% of their wealth taxed, maybe we'd have less poverty to begin with - and then we really could justify focusing on teacher effectiveness.

Pottersville Persists - Happy Holidays

2010-12-23T08:24:00.007-06:00

(click here to see original still)

Seems like a million years ago when I first put up a Wonderful Life remix, and it's been a long year since Wonderful Obamaville greetings. Here goes again: this is for all those savvy businessmen and all those savvy Americans benefiting from the latest Middle-Man tax cuts. On the other hand you working poor, long term unemployed, leftist losers, and public option supporters - there's always room under the bus...

Where's the Beef?

2010-12-20T12:24:00.010-06:00

(original graphic here)

(Update below)

Over the past week or so there were some very important stories that somehow just didn't make it into the main NPR news shows:

Georgia inmates organized a historic, peaceful multi-institutional strike and the best NPR could muster was a segment on Talk of the Nation that discussed the general topic of jobs in prisons.
Senate Republicans essentially told seriously ill 9/11 first responders to go die, but it just wasn't terribly important to NPR. There was someone who did cover it, though.
There was protest at the White House with over 130 people getting arrested. Those arrested included nobodies such as Daniel Ellsberg, some alleged Pulitzer Prize winner, a former CIA analyst, and war veterans. NPR's on-air response - yawn... Wait, it did get a mention from Mara Liasson who got out her trusty FOX converter and turned these 135 arrested citizens and noteworthies into anonymous "dozens."

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on NPR, after all there is only so much time in a broadcast and it's important to touch on the finer things in life like cappuccino ala Milton Friedman, $60 a bottle wine tasting with Scott Simon, and exciting mail-order gourmet meats (click the graphic at the top of the post) that will help a Tea Party crooner give money to groups like Focus on the Family. Oh baby, life is good!

To their credit, the NPR "Two Way" bloggers did have posts on the anti-war protest and on Pat Boone's creepy creds, but those posts were brief, and don't begin to compare with the exposure of featured, on-air news stories. Furthermore, as readers of this blog have pointed out, the online snippets and AP-wire feeds allow NPR to claim that they are covering news that they are essentially ignoring.

Update (12-23-10)

On Thursday morning, NPR covers the passage of the reduced First Responders bill and essentially ignores the media criticism of John Stewart's scathing episode against the non-coverage of the Republican attempts to kill the original Zadroga bill. It's really a brazen piece of hypocrisy and I'd recommend people to visit the story and post comments...

Q Tips

2010-12-18T11:52:00.004-06:00

Comments, critiques and/or observations related to NPR are always welcomed. (I apologize for comments that are delayed due to Blogger's spam filter, which apparently is not optional. I try to check the spam box every day or so and get them posted.)

Good JSOC Monkey

2010-12-16T21:49:00.007-06:00

On Thursday morning our favorite sock monkey had this to say about the US war in Afghanistan:

"Administration officials say this review isn't a referendum on the strategy itself, but a close look at how it's being implemented; a gut check on what's working and what's not. And there are things that are working. U.S. led operations in the southern part of the country have pushed insurgent groups out of key areas. Special forces raids have captured or killed hundreds of insurgent leaders in the past few months."

Yes, there are things that are really working in Afghanistan: airstrikes are working wonders, civilians are benefiting immensely, operations in the south are clearly driving somebody out, and JSOC (special forces) raids - well they are definitely working. Astounding really. And the evidence offered? Martin says,

"Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says some progress was inevitable."

This is the same Anthony Cordesman who weighed in on Mr. Holbrooke on Tuesday's ATC and summed up his work in Af-Pak as follows:

"Mahatma Gandhi, had he been involved, could not have done better."

Now why didn't I think of Mahatma Gandhi when I thought of Richard Holbrooke? I guess that what experts like Cordesman are for - and why NPR returns to him again and again.

You're Soaking It In Now

2010-12-15T20:33:00.008-06:00

About a week ago ATC ran one of those OMG! stories about how poorly educated US students are. The report was sloppy - telling us nothing about differences in the pools of students surveyed or the overall rates of public education in areas being considered. A great deal was made about the superiority of students in Shanghai compared to the entire US public school student population, though an "expert" in the story actually referred to Shanghai as a "country." Whatever shortcomings our public schools may have, US journalism schools are having no problem churning out job-ready knuckleheads for the US media market. (Did someone say Ombudsman?)

The report lamented how badly US students perform when it comes to math and science. Hmmm...I wonder why Americans might be so poorly informed when it comes to science? Could it be that some media outlets constantly present junk science as deserving equal treatment with real science?

That brings us to NPR's Wednesday morning's dirty story about dishwashing detergents that don't have phosphates in them. The phosphates have been removed because more and more states have banned their use because they contribute to water pollution. The gist of the story is that consumers are devastated by the poor performance of non-phosphate detergents in their dishwashers. Here are some of the dire conditions that NPR's Elizabeth Shogren describes:

"...something was seriously amiss with her dishes."
"...many people across the country are tearing out their hair over stained flatware, filmy glasses and ruined dishes."
"...months of aggravation and expense..."

Shogren does at least mention why the dish detergents are phosphate-free:

"Seventeen states banned phosphates from dishwasher detergents because the chemical compounds also pollute lakes, bays and streams. They create algae blooms and starve fish of oxygen."

Not a bad start, but let's pick it up at the end there and see what comes next:

"...and starve fish of oxygen. But dirty and damaged dishes are turning lots of people into skeptics, including Wright."

Ms. Wright: "I'm angry at the people who decided that phosphate was growing algae. I'm not sure that I believe that."

There it is. Just left there as if it's a perfectly rational statement: I'm angry at what scientific research has proven so I just won't believe it.

Probably the most reprehensible part of this whole rehashed, dish detergent story (and it is an old story), is when Shogren - instead of rebutting the ignorance with researched facts (this link was posted in the early comments on the story) or pointing out responsible solutions for frustrated consumers - gives listeners detailed instructions on how they can defeat the ban by adding phosphates to their dishwashing machines...I'm not kidding:

"But not everyone is willing to adjust. Sandra Young figured out a way to undo the phosphate ban, at least in her own kitchen. She bought some trisodium phosphate at a hardware store and started mixing her own formula. "

Who needs clean lakes, rivers and streams? The important thing is to defeat the "nanny state" by any means necessary. Go FOX...I mean NPR.

Q Tips

2010-12-13T06:42:00.005-06:00

Q Tips is an open thread forum for NPR related comments and posts.

Got History?

2010-12-12T10:00:00.006-06:00

This past week NPR had Quil Lawrence providing us with "history" lessons on Afghanistan - always a dodgy prospect on NPR. This series features a major hole in the narrative; the active, long-term role that the United States played in bringing Islamic extremism and terror to Afghanistan is both ignored and covered up.

On Monday's ATC Quil gives us the long history of imperial adventures in Afghanistan. He says this:"In 1978, a communist coup installed a pro-Soviet president. The tribes rose up, and the Soviets invaded. Andrey Avetisyan is Russian ambassador in Kabul....By the mid-'80s, the United States was aiding the Mujahedeen to the tune of half a billion dollars...." [This "mid-80s" claim is furthered with a time-line on the web version of the story.]

Then on Tuesday's ATC - in a report that does at least note that many of the depraved warlords of the post-Soviet civil war are now in the government that the US is backing - we hear only that

"The mujahedeen, a patchwork army of Islamist guerrillas, bolstered with copious funding from Washington, defeated the Soviet army in 1989. What they couldn't do was unite to govern Afghanistan."

There are several problems with the NPR narrative:

It places the beginning of active US involvement in stoking conflict in Afghanistan in the mid-80s, when in fact the US was actively assisting Islamic extremists there starting in the early 1970s. As Robert Dreyfuss has documented, this policy was just one part of the US government decision to encourage and promote Islamic fundamentalist movements as a counterweight to nationalist movements in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The NPR version also ignores the role the US played in luring the Soviets into the Afghanistan trap (as recalled by Robert Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski), leaving listeners to conclude that the US was simply reacting to events that were out of its control.
Finally, NPR presents the US as simply funding what mujahedeen forces existed, instead of accurately exposing how the US recruited, organized and supplied the most ruthless, criminal and fanatic elements for fighting in Afghanistan. The idea was to foster these Islamic terrorists as a way of attacking the Soviet Union. The fate of the Afghan people never figured into (and still doesn't) the geopolitical maneuverings of US foreign policy players. As this pre 9/11 article from The Atlantic notes:
"...the CIA began providing weapons and funds -- eventually totaling more than $3 billion -- to a fratricidal alliance of seven Afghan resistance groups, none of whose leaders are by nature democratic, and all of which are fundamentalist in religion to some extent, autocratic in politics, and venomously anti-American."

Some might argue that NPR's oversight is not all that important to the current complications that the US/NATO finds itself entangled in. But understanding the cold-blooded, ruthless arc of US foreign policy is essential to a critical assessment of the current US occupation of Afghanistan. By ignoring this, NPR can present the current US mission in Afghanistan as having only noble aims, allowing Quil Lawrence to make this closing statement in his Friday ATC report on "the mixed report card" from Afghanistan:

"And many of even the harshest Afghan critics of the Obama policy think it would be a disaster for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan in the state it is today..."

Really?...

[click picture to view the original WWI version]

Web Foxes

2010-12-12T09:39:00.002-06:00

(click on the picture to Supersize it)

Somebody should start a blog that simply tracks all the utterly stupid things that appear on the NPR web site and the web versions of their stories. Notice that "War on Christmas" is not in quotes - see, there really is a war on Christmas... And in case you were confused by facts and thought that US foreign policy is in complete lockstep with Israel's policy of destroying the Palestinians and rendering any humane solution impossible, the web scribes are there to remind you that Clinton is trying another approach to "peace" in Middle East... Finally, you have to love the Ally Bank ad: "Everyone needs an ally" (hee...hee).

Good Sock Monkey

2010-12-11T15:17:00.006-06:00

NPR has been sending crack reporter Rachel Martin to Afghanistan to accompany military bigwigs so that she can dutifully repeat what they say. And she doesn't fail.

On Tuesday morning she provided a positive account of her trips in Afghanistan with "Major General John Campbell...the U.S. commander in charge of the area in the eastern part of Afghanistan right along the Afghan-Pakistan border." She stated:

"So as you can hear, clearly this is an issue that gets under Campbell's skin: corruption. And it's another part of the war that commanders are trying to get a handle on." [Of course, as always on NPR, the corruption they're talking about is Afghan corruption - since the Americans involved in the Afghanistan War are above reproach.]
"But in other places where Campbell's troops are operating, they seem to have captured the momentum at least for the time being."
"General Campbell is adamant. He says that they are making progress every day. He sees examples of this progress, but it's really a mixed bag."

On Tuesday afternoon she was reporting on her travels with an upbeat Secretary of War Gates, and all his remarks were supplemented with other military spokespersons: Lieutenant Colonel Vowell, Major General John Campbell, and General Petraeus. Here's a sampling of Martin's critical input:

"Vowell says part of the reason violence is up is because the Pakistani military has pressured insurgents on its side of the border, and now they're being pushed over here into Afghanistan. Stirring up the hornet's nest is what some military officials call it. And Secretary Gates told U.S. soldiers in Kunar that it's working."
"The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, said the Taliban still has areas where it can operate freely, but there have been gains."

In case you didn't appreciate positive spin on the war being promoted by Sec. Gates, Martin was on one more time Thursday morning to give airtime to the optimism of military geniuses of the Afghanistan War and then to restate their remarks. This report featured this truly astounding segment, where a sound bite of Gates recounting the "successes" and rosy future of the US war effort is followed seamlessly by Martin - to the point where it is hard to tell them apart:

[Gates]: "...And as a result, more and more Afghan people are able to live without being terrorized."
[Martin]: "That is just the first step. The next goal is getting Afghan forces to take responsibility for providing security one province at a time, and ultimately for the Afghans to take full control of the security situation by the end of 2014."

See, the first step of saving the Afghan people has been accomplished with the gentle boots on the ground of the super-careful, relationship-building US military. Good thing the US isn't leaving Afghanistan anytime soon - otherwise the poor Afghans would be terrorized all over again.

Q Tips

2010-12-07T05:14:00.002-06:00

It's open thread time. Any and all NPR related comments are welcomed.

Hatchet Job

2010-12-06T05:50:00.003-06:00

Liane Hansen works hard to convey a friendly, down-to-earth, aunt-like persona as she reads her scripts for NPR. But like the gooey Scott Simon, she too knows how to carry a blade. Don't you ever wonder what kind of dysfunctional, warped childhood people like Liane Hansen had that would make them want to front for a journalistically bankrupt institution like NPR? No? Of course not. What in God's name, does someone's childhood have to do with reporting on the actual content and substance of that person's behavior? Everything - if your purpose is to smear and discredit them. Which brings us to Hansen's chat on Sunday morning with the sleazy, discredited New York Times reporter, John Burns. Hansen opens up her tabloid discussion with this:

"Before we get to his current troubles, can you give us just a little bit of biographical information on Mr. Assange, specifically, what was his childhood like in Australia?"

Burns is more than willing to supply irrelevant hearsay:

"He was brought up by his mother. It was a nomadic life. I think he had some troubles in school. In fact, he very often wasn't in school."

And that's the nice stuff these two jorno-assassins had to say about Assange. Here's Hansen at her reportorial best:

"People who know him have described him as imperious, a control freak, an ideologue, an egomaniac, a genius, and unique."

"His detractors say he's reckless; he puts lives at risk."

And so it goes, with Burns providing most of the smears and hits:

"...he struck me as being, yes, brilliant, capricious, arrogant, but not terribly self-knowing..."

"He is strange because, as you said in your introduction, he lives in the spotlight, occasionally popping up at news conferences and bathing in the celebrity. And then he disappears again."

"...his mobile phones, which he switches...like other men switch shirts."

"He's very concerned about his security. And, who knows, maybe he has reason to."

Who knows? Yes, you might think powerful figures were calling for his assassination [e.g. here, here, and here] or execution, or that the the world's most bloated and violent military institution had targeted his organization for destruction [pdf of leaked document here], or that the nation that runs that institution is in the habit of assassinating "high value targets" or kidnapping [with its allies] and torturing such people. You have to love that Mr. Uber journalist John Burns can only murmur "who knows" and yet say about Assange:

"And he struck me as...not gifted, I have to say, with much of a sense of irony."

Irony indeed...

CONNECTING THE iDiOTS

2010-12-04T14:55:00.027-06:00

NPR's web scribes, for the Friday ME story "US 'Connects the Dots' to Catch Roadside Bombers" tell us

"With his doctorate from Princeton, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has become the prime example of a special breed of soldier: the warrior-scholar, trained in history and politics as well as how to fight wars. Now there's a variation on the theme: the warrior mathematician, adept in the complex modeling that has become a key part of military planning."

Hey, if it's all about scholars, war, and deep c~~over~~ thoughts then who better than the CIA's best friend in journalism - Tom Gjelten. And why not honor Reporter Tom with another installment of his own dynamic, hyperlinked comic strip [click on each panel to visit the super-brainy links] :

Q Tips

2010-12-01T18:26:00.002-06:00

NPR related comments welcomed. I apologize if your comments disappear; Blogger software has added an automatic spam filter that occasionally dings legitimate comments until I clear them. I will try to check it regularly and move them past the filter. Lastly, for those of you who want to know how to put links in your comments:

Yak and Check

2010-12-01T05:45:00.003-06:00

YAK

Longtime reader/commenter Porter asked if I'd cross-post his latest on Mr. Siegel. Here's the opening:

"Didn’t Siegel get some prize or whatever, a while back? Or am I thinking of somebody else?

Yesterday he was ‘considering’ a new film that deals with the speech problems of King George VI, and Colin Firth, the lead actor in the picture, was there to explain. He did so quite well, despite the fact that Siegel was more interested in the king being some sort of out-of-date figure, or whatever...."

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