Q Tips

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

Assassinating English: Belligerent Signals

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

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

A Largely Peaceful Police State

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

NPR related comments and critiques welcomed and encouraged.

Suck It Up! from the NPR Suck-ups

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

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

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

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

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

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

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

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."

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed and encouraged.

NPR Covers(up) Torture...Again

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

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

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.