Q Tips - Midsummer

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

NPR Loves it Some Dumbness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NPR related comments welcomed.

A Tale of Two Cities - NPR and US Exceptionalism

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

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

NPR related comments are welcomed, as always.

NPR's PR for BP

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

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

Tea & Sympathy: NPR Newsbaggers

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

NPR related comments welcomed.

All Tea All the Time

(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

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

Bad Fears, Good Fears, and Radio Activities at NPR

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."