Show Your Support for Your Enemies

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!)

Police Brutality Shielded by NPR

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."

Happystan and Memory Holes

(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

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.

The NPR Has No Clothes

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.

• Global warming is not caused by human activity.
• Army Strong is an inspiring recruiting slogan.
• Darwin's birthday calls for Intelligent design propaganda.
• Antiwar activists are all aging hippies and draft dodgers.
• Fracking is just a mom-and-pop way to get clean energy.

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.