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.

Dronespeak: Temple-Raston Goes Radical

[cross-posted at NPR Team Check]

Running a series called "Going Radical," NPR claims the mantle of "investigative journalism" as it works to shore up the military and foreign policy interests of the United States. Instead of investigating how - under the rubric of a "war on terrorism" -

• the tradition of Constitutional law in the US was chucked in favor of unrestrained surveillance, illegal detention, disappearances, assassination and torture, or
  
• an unsuccessful businessman/crook of low to middling intelligence became so radicalized that he lead the US into two wars of aggression against two predominately Muslim states based on propaganda and manufactured intelligence, or
  
• the state of Israel was brazenly supported by the US government through two massive military assaults (Lebanon & Gaza) targeting civilians and in enacting policies against Palestinians that are tantamount to genocide, or
• how someone goes from a position of privilege to one of radically bragging about committing an international crime for which the penalty on conviction is death or life imprisonment,
  

NPR throws its resources into supposedly explaining the radicalization of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas bomber of Flight 253. What this "investigation" dutifully refuses to explore is any detailed assessment of the grim human toll of US foreign policy in Central Asia and the Middle East and why this policy continues to win recruits to extremism and terror. Daring journalism also would seek answers as to why Abdulmutallab was allowed onto a US bound flight even thought the "intelligence community" had it's eye on him, and would want to find out exactly who helped Abdulmutallab get on Flight 253 in the first place. But if you are a believer in the exceptional goodness of US foreign policy and the nobility of the US war on terror, then NPR won't disappoint.

The star of NPR's Going Radical series is Dina Temple-Raston (NPR's resident FBI spokesperson). She hosts three of the features in the series:

• Her Thursday morning piece is a thing of twisted beauty. In a matter of minutes she is able to conflate anti-Guantanamo, anti-torture activism with terrorist extremism. She notes that ex-GITMO detainee Moazzam Begg spoke at a University College London 2007 "Terror Week" event. First she ties Begg to Abdulmutallab by stating, "People who attended the conference say Begg and Abdulmutallab were sitting next to each other" and concludes that "when Abdulmutallab started meeting people like Moazzam Begg, he was exposed to vitriolic and very anti-American views." What is it with these people who've been kidnapped and tortured by the US being so vitriolic and anti-American? - sheesh!

• On Thursday afternoon Temple-Raston is back to highlight a character who features in all three of her reports, a Hitchenseque fellow named Shiraz Maher who used to recruit for Islamic extremism, but is now firmly in the camp of rationalizing Western exceptionalism, state repression and aggressive Zionism. His writing can be sampled in Standpoint Magazine where he takes a stand on Israel's annexation wall:

  "We tend to hear only about Israel's because of the news coverage and hippy activism it attracts. No other security fence has attracted quite as much attention and theirs - that despite Israel suffering a torrent of terrorist attacks from 2000-2003....where is the ‘fairness' and ‘consistency' that Islamists and their leftist cheerleaders continually complain about?"

  It is telling that there actually is another former recruiter with a similar story to Mr. Maher's. His name is Maajid Nawaz, but instead of excusing the "western" security state or Israeli aggression - he brings a far more compassionate, nuanced approach to the lessons he's learned.

• Finally on Friday afternoon Temple-Raston - like our President - plays the role of judge, jury and executioner. Remember Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen targeted for assassination by the US government (see post below)? Speaking of al-Awlaki as if she were discussing him receiving a traffic ticket, Temple-Raston explains that

  "The U.S. has been trying to bring him in for questioning for years. After the Fort Hood attack, it even launched a missile strike on one of his houses in Yemen, but he survived the attack."

  Hey, but he deserves extrajudicial execution because Robert Siegel opens the piece with the damning evidence that

  "He's admitted to knowing Abdulmutallab. But their relationship, according to intelligence officials, goes far deeper than that. In fact, NPR has learned that al-Awlaki may have been in charge of a small terrorist cell and that Abdulmutallab may have been his first al-Qaida recruit."

  Still not convinced? Temple-Raston lays it on:

  "He is the same radical imam who was implicated in the Fort Hood shootings last year. He was in email contact with the suspected shooter, Major Nidal Hasan. And, apparently, he blessed that attack and then called Hasan a hero"

  and

  "Al-Awlaki has always been a propagandist. If he actually mentored Abdulmutallab while he allegedly trained to bomb a U.S. airliner, that would mean al-Awlaki had moved into an operational role in the organization."

  Still not ready to lynch? Nothing like a huge dose of fear to nail the case: "What's more, officials tell NPR that they believe al-Awlaki was put in charge of more people than just Abdulmutallab. They believe he trained an entire cell of English-speaking recruits. Apparently, Abdulmutallab named names and provided locations to authorities. Law enforcement officials are looking for those young men now. Officials say they don't believe the young men are in the U.S."

A final note about Temple-Raston's choices of "experts" in these pieces. As mentioned she leans heavily on Shiraz Maher, and she also features a man of similar politics in the reports - Douglas Murray, director of the Centre for Social Cohesion which focuses only on Islamic radicalization - not Euro-American radical militarism. Interestingly, the other former-recruiter I mentioned above Maajid Nawaz - also runs a center against radicalism that is well worth exploring and highlighting - unless your main interest is in promoting the US "war on terror."

The Big Yawn

Two early events in our US government's dismantling of due process and the rule of law stand out in my mind. First, the very public release by the US in January 2002 of the photos of detainees at Guantanamo. Could there have been a more brazen display of official US contempt for its international obligations for the humane treatment of prisoners? The second shocker for me occurred in June of 2002 with the seizure of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, on his arrival at O'Hare airport in Chicago and his subsequent transfer to incommunicado detention in a military brig. NPR's coverage of Padilla's kidnapping was presented by NPR with complete sympathy to the government's actions. Barbara Bradley reported the story for ATC on June 10, 2002, and pointedly noted that the "advantages" of moving Padilla's case to "military custody" included no right to a speedy trial, no need for evidence, and the fact that he could be held indefinitely.

Anyone who listens regularly to NPR news knows that - in deference to the US security state and its purposely amorphous "war on terror" - NPR has demonstrated nothing but a thinly veiled contempt for Constitutional protections required for detainees and suspects - whether US citizens or not. So when another big story recently broke regarding a significant US government assault on Constitutional guarantees, it's no surprise that NPR - by omission - again displays a disregard for our laws and basic constitutional principles. Though not a surprise, it is appalling.

I know it's quaint but the 5th Amendment seems pretty clear about the rights of any "person" (excepting members of the military in cases involving "actual service") not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." So shouldn't it be a BIG story when we find out that the previous and current US presidents have been ordering the assassinations of people - including US citizens(!)? Not on NPR; search NPR for "Dennis Blair" the US Director of National Intelligence who recently testified about "killing an American" and you will find nothing about the assassination program...absolutely nothing!

The assassination program also points toward another NPR-censored story. One of the targets of the US assassination program is apparently US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki who the US - and NPR - ties to the Christmas bombing attempt (and who apparently sympathizes with terrorist attacks on US civilian targets). The truly stunning news about the Christmas bombing attempt is the apparent role played by the US intelligence and law enforcement "community" in preventing the would-be bomber's visa from being revoked. Alex Lantier of the WSWS has an excellent write up of the story and you can watch for yourself the testimony of Patrick Kennedy before the US House here (the recording is 3 hours long, but the relevant material comes at the 34:28:00 point and also at the 2:55:25 mark). The testimony is not an airtight indictment, but its potential implications are disturbing at best, and at the worst imply that someone in the intelligence "community" wanted to have a major terrorist event occur during this period of the Obama administration. Like the rest of the mainstream media, NPR gives this story no coverage whatsoever - sticking with the original nonsense that it was a "failure to connect the dots.

One would think that given the large number of people who have been falsely seized in the fraudulent war on terror and Iraq (and even standout cases such as the Oregon lawyer arrested in the Madrid bombing case but then soon exonerated) would cause a news organization to treat all US government actions and pronouncements in the "war on terror" with great skepticism - unless that news organization is more interested in representing the viewpoint of the state, a position euphemistically known as being "mainstream."

In the Mainstream

Imagine if a national radio news organization were committed to providing coverage that had to be "fair, unbiased, accurate, complete and honest." If instead of trying to ape the narrow, acceptable range of opinion and coverage that the mainstream media provides - think how dynamic it would be if that news organization was determined to "present all important views on a subject." Think of the daring stories one would hear if that news organization demanded that it "not approach any coverage with overt or hidden agendas" (including unspoken trust in government spokespersons and a belief in the nobility of military actions and war.)

Clearly, it would be a dramatic change if such a a news organization promised to be "skeptical of all facts gathered and report them only when we are reasonably satisfied of their accuracy....[and] make sure that our language accurately describes the facts and does not imply a fact we have not confirmed." That would definitely be an end to hearing about "militants" being killed in drone attacks and air strikes and "terrorists" being anyone the US government claims is a terrorist.

In these times of obscene financial scams and fraud at the highest levels of our corporate government, just consider how refreshing economic news coverage would be if that imaginary news outlet made "rigorous efforts at all levels of the news gathering and programming process to ensure our facts are not only accurate but also presented in the correct context."

Surprisingly, there is a large, national news organization that is publicly committed to upholding all the standards listed above. Every one of them comes from NPR's published code of ethics. It is a code of ethics squarely at odds with the goal of being mainstream, and yet NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, repeatedly - and unabashedly - reminds listeners that NPR is determined to be nothing but mainstream. Her most recent statements on the subject came in an interview on WAMU highlighted on her blog,

"NPR started in 1971 as an alternative news network and it has definitely - and more towards the left - and it has definitely and intentionally become more mainstream. I am not advocating that it be mainstream; I am explaining that that is what has happened and that they consider themselves - and I speak of them in the third person - to be like the New York Times or the Washington Post. You can listen to NPR and you can get everything..."

Despite claiming that she is "not advocating that it be mainstream" she then goes on to respond to a caller by stating

"I don't think that you hear a lot of libertarians or socialists or Green Party people on NPR and part of my job is to pass that on. I don't think it's going to change dramatically....I think it's always a matter of balance and what your goals are and what your intention is and as I've said I think NPR's intention is to be more mainstream."

Someone needs to remind Ms. Shepard to read NPR's code of ethics and explain to listeners how it can possibly meet it's commitments while aiming to be "more mainstream." And claiming that "You can listen to NPR and you can get everything..." just doesn't cut it as an explanation, especially considering the evidence to the contrary that this blog has amassed over the years."

It's Time for 'The Interesting Comparison' Game

This morning Audie Cornish got to reflecting on the Tea Party movement and the Civil Rights Movement. She said,

"This week, Sarah Palin compared the Tea Party movement to the civil rights movement, saying that the same patriotic indignation drove both efforts, as well as the American Revolution. It's an interesting comparison. After all, the civil rights movement led to two landmark pieces of federal legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

Poor Audie Cornish; it's no wonder she's a bit confused. After all, she works at a Tea Party friendly news organization, which in the past week has run piece after piece bestowing the mantle of legitimacy on the Republicorporatist Tea Party movement. Tuesday morning featured a glowing account of Tea Party "star" Keli Carender whose blog profile states, "I will not allow corrupt socialists and communists to infect this country without a hard, hard fight." On Friday afternoon Don Gonyea was at the Tea Party convention in Nashville chatting up some real winners like Susan Curran who "sees President Obama as a threat to the Constitution and a threat to the America she loves." He also played a clip of Tom Tancredo's convention speech : "People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House." Fortunately, by Saturday morning Gonyea was back to explain what socialism actually is and demonstrate that only a liar, fool, or ignoramus would accuse Wall Street friendly Obama of being a socialist (JUST KIDDING!). What Gonyea actually did was let Judson Phillips, the convention organizer, comment on Tancredo's speech by saying, "The word socialist ....has a very specific political meaning. It refers to a specific political ideology. And I think it's very clear that that is the political ideology of Barack Obama."

With all the tea vapors and talk of socialism swirling around the newsrooms at NPR, it's no wonder that Audie Cornish just got a little mixed up. So I figured I'd have one of my cartoon friends on to help Audie to play Who's the Civil Rights Hero?

Zinn and the Art of Character Assasination

(click the graphic for the source, the inspiring Americans Who Tell the Truth site)

When I heard that historian and activist Howard Zinn died on Wednesday, I wondered how (or even if) NPR would cover his death. They have quite a track record of glorifying some of the vilest characters of the right (e.g. torture apologist and dictator loving Jeanne Kirkpatrick, economist Milton Friedman, and Jerry Falwell) when their lives come to an end, so I wondered how an avowedly leftist person such as Zinn would fare.

When I searched the NPR site the next morning, the only piece was there at the time was from the AP feed that NPR now features on its website. Though the AP article featured Arthur Schlesinger's snide remark - "I don't take him very seriously. He's a polemicist, not a historian" - it did give a fair bit of substance regarding Zinn's WWII service, his academic background, his profound influence, and his consistent bravery in taking on various injustices as an activist. But...

Then came the NPR "remembrance" on ATC, cooked up by NPR history distorter, Allison Keyes. Keyes must have some seriously limited research abilities because for comments about Zinn, she could only come up with Noam Chomsky (makes sense), Julian Bond (okay), and David Horowitz...seriously, Keyes turns to the extremist, right-wing Horowitz, sleazy polemicist "with no...actual occupation" and "no academic credentials" so he can weigh in on the scholarship and character of Howard Zinn. The result ain't pretty. Keyes, dignifying Horowitz with the title of a "conservative pundit and author," tells us that he "calls A People's History of the United States a travesty." She also includes sound bites of Horowitz saying,

"There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect," and "Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse."

I'm not of the belief that nothing contrary should be said about the recently deceased. It would be great if NPR's coverage of important figures who die featured honest assessments of their deeds - think Ford, Reagan, Oral Roberts, William F. Buckley, etc. If a person of renown dies, why not mention their accomplishments and their failings. If Howard Zinn were a historian who was inaccurate and dishonest or plagiarized that would be important. Of course, since there is nothing erroneous or false in the histories that Zinn wrote, NPR has to use character assassination to smear his reputation - and that is frankly inexcusable.

Fortunately, FAIR noticed this hatchet job by NPR and launched an action alert, and NPR obviously has heard from many disgusted listeners - judging from its Thursday ATC letters segment.

Loud Was the Voice of the Lonely Goatherd

Readers of this blog pointed out - as did listeners on each story's NPR's web site - Steve Inskeep's cozy with House Republican leader, John Boehner on Wednesday morning, followed up on Thursday morning with an equally uncritical schmooze with Republican Senator Jon Kyl.

Here's a sample of the completely unchallenged statements by Boehner that Inskeep helped air:

• "We've reached out over the last year, and we're going to continue to reach out. But there has been no reaching back from the White House or from our Democrat colleagues."
• "Their trillion-dollar stimulus plan from a year ago clearly has not worked."
• "The president has a decision to make on Wednesday night: either listen to what the American people are saying, begin to work with Republicans in a bipartisan way and keep his campaign promises, or to ignore them and to continue to go down this very liberal path."

And here are some low-lights from the Kyl interview. Again not a single challenge or critique expressed:

• "And more than a year after he's sworn in, he's still complaining about the Bush administration...."
• "You know, he has created a huge deficit as a result of his spending. Now, he said, well, it was necessary to get us out of the mess. It wasn't. The $800 billion stimulus bill has been shown not to have provided the benefits that he said it would."
• "The point is that we are not saying no to everything, and we do not require 60 votes for everything. That's typical misrepresentation by the president..."

Seems like Inskeep has a hankering for right-wingers [e.g. Doug Feith or Republican Mike Murphy], but gets his undies in a bunch when he's talking to supposedly liberal Democrats such as Charles Rangle or Rahm Emmanuel.

*(thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein for the title)

Asymmetric Accomplices to Murder

(source of graphic)

Remember back in June of 2006 when three Guantanamo detainees allegedly killed themselves? At the time I opined that "reports should say 'the alleged suicides' of three captives with no access to due process." And a few days later when Dan Schorr allowed John Ydstie to report the deaths as suicides, I noted that "it is essential that when prisoners are seized and held extrajudicially and die in custody, one must be skeptical about the conditions of the deaths..."

My skepticism was justified. On January 18, 2010, Harper magazine published a stunning investigative piece documenting (with FOUR named military sources) the apparent murders of those three detainees by US agents at the Guantanamo Prison Camp - and the subsequent coverup of the murders at the highest levels (e.g. war criminal Admiral Harris). The news of these likely murders is not completely unexpected, because as Scott Horton pointed out over a month ago (Dec. 7, 2009), a professor and Seton Hall students poured over the 503 page redacted military investigation (huge PDF file here) and found not only glaring inconsistencies (e.g. the victims had rags stuffed in their throats - the victims had no rags stuffed in their throats), but ludicrous assumptions underlying the official military story (i.e. under intense prison surveillance all three had to simultaneously bind themselves and hang themselves and go undetected for two hours!)

So how did NPR react to this damning news? So far absolutely nothing in the on-air news shows. This is completely inexcusable given the things that NPR reported (repeated) as facts regarding the detainee deaths:

• June 10, 2006 ATC (first major report on the deaths) - Jackie Northam: "the military says that the men hanged themselves....everything is coming from the Pentagon at this point, and they're saying that the suicides were planned and were coordinated....They described them all as dangerous members of terrorists organizations....they described this as an act of warfare...."
• June 11, 2006 Weekend Edition Sunday- Jackie Northam: "All three of the men had made nooses out of their bedclothes and out of the sheets and that, and that's how they hanged themselves.....[the US military] said it was well planned out by these men, who they called dangerous prisoners.....the military called this, not an act of desperation, Liane, but an act of warfare. The Guantanamo commander...Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris said that these men were committed Jihadists....And this falls in line with what the military has always said, that anytime that these suicide attempts are made, it's a tactic used by al-Qaida to garner support..."
• June 12, 2006 ME - Jackie Northam: "...a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay discovered one of the detainees had hanged himself....Shortly after, guards discovered two more prisoners in the same area of the detention camp, had also hanged themselves.....Harris called the three men committed jihadists....Harris said the suicides were an act of what he called asymmetric warfare..."
• June 12, 2006 ATC - Jackie Northam: "Military officials at Guantanamo say the three detainees who committed suicide were ardent Jihadists who were willing to kill Americans and others....The Pentagon says he was a mid- to high-level al-Qaida operative. [The second] is described as a frontline fighter for the Taliban....Guantanamo Bay spokesman Commander Robert Duran said today that [the third] also had links to a terrorist group."
• May 31, 2007 ME [almost a year later] reporting on another supposed suicide Northam again states, "We're expecting to hear later today...whether he hanged himself like the other three prisoners did last summer, or whether it was something else." Renee Montagne adds, "And those of three prisoners who succeeded in killing themselves last year, they hanged themselves. What does the military do to try to prevent suicides?"

As you can see, not only did NPR repeat all the claims of the Pentagon as fact, but also repeated verbatim the US military's completely unsubstantiated claims about the detainees being dangerous terrorists. It's really tragic that it took a law professor and his students to slog through the military's sloppy coverup and that one reporter at Harper's magazine manages to get four former military men to go on the record with their revelations. It's funny that no one at NPR knows how to read long PDF files or how to get in touch with whistleblowers... If NPR had a shred of integrity, it would quickly and forcefully revisit it's coverage of the detainee deaths, issue an apology and remind listeners that there was never any proof for the statements that it repeated again and again as fact.

I should mention that - with grotesque timing (and typical obliviousness) - NPR did have a related story on the same day that the Horton story broke: June 19th's Morning Edition featured the inept Madeline Brand interviewing torture lawyer, and dynamic professor, John Yoo who was on to pimp his book and his slimy reputation. Brand flailed about, mentioning water boarding once and pointing out the unending nature of the "war on terror," but never pursued Yoo's evasions with follow-up questions and never brought up the obvious criminal behaviors sanctioned by Yoo and his Office of Legal Counsel - forced nudity, wall slamming, forced coldness, sleep deprivation, enforced painful stress positions, etc. Needless to say, she made no mention of the numerous detainee deaths by torture which have followed from Yoo's determinations that US "terror" detainees are outside the protections of US and international laws.

History Scrub - The Haiti Chapter

(source of graphic)

In February of 2009, FAIR noted my use of the term history scrub regarding NPR's coverage of Afghanistan. As I noted in my post on Afghanistan back then,

"...if the essential background history to a story reflects poorly on the actions of the US government - that history will be deleted, scrubbed, sanitized - sent down the memory hole."

NPR's Haiti earthquake coverage has been as dismally truncated as any of its censored-history stories. Everyone can agree that the earthquake in Haiti is a horror and that immediate rescue and relief is needed. But people do wonder why the devastation was so overwhelming and complete, and it does have a history. If the history is not honestly covered then the answers are provided by the creepy, rightwing fringe (sort of fringe) types like Pat Robertson (not always fringe on NPR either), or the creepy, respectable rightwing sorts like the smirking NPR regular, David Brooks who states in the NYT,

"Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."

So how was NPR's coverage of Haiti's history?

• On Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Morning Edition Deborah Amos interviewed Miami Herald writer Jacqueline Charles about how great the past year was for progress in Haiti: "I've been reporting on this country for years now and in the last couple of years...in the last two or three years, the country has been enjoying relative stability. I just recently wrote a story about how it was going to get its first international hotel franchise in a decade because investors were starting to feel confident, both Haitians and non-Haitians alike." Ah yes, investors have brought such wonderful benefits to Haiti over the years.

• On Thursday, January 14, 2010 All Thing Considered NPR turns to Johanna Mendelson Forman - stalwart of the US foreign policy and military establishment - to sing the praises of the UN's role in Haiti. Michelle Kellemen tells us that "she said the U.N. mission in Haiti had a lot of successes in recent years, ....everybody was looking at a 2010 that was going to have a much more significant investment future, a greater opportunity for jobs." That's an interesting take on the UN, because as Peter Hallward notes in the Guardian/UK, after the US-backed coup against Aristide in 2004, "The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country....[and] the same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose."

• Also on Thursday's January 14, 2010 ATC Bob Siegel lets the current IMF chief claim that the IMF is going to help Haiti in a big way. Of course, Siegel doesn't bring up any unpleasant reminders about the IMF's role in trashing Haiti - Got Rice?

• On Friday January 15, 2010 ME Deborah Amos had a friendly chat with former US ambassador to Haiti, Timothy Carney - a fellow with a sordid track record in Haiti. With Amos' able assistance Carney gets away with turning history completely on its head. He tells Amos that, along with aid money, the international community "has to have some expectations of Haitians... an end to the sterile politics of group and gang, with an eye on personal advantage, that has dominated the politics of Haiti for, since its independence." Yes, indeed, groups and gangs (French and US) have definitely been sucking the blood and money out of Haiti since its independence.

• On Friday January 15, 2010 ATC NPR goes looking for a Haitian willing to carve up history, and so heads over to the cynically named right-wing Haiti Democracy Project [which the above Timothy Carney once chaired - surprise!]. NPR finds Arielle Jean-Baptiste who -guess what? - blames Haitians for their disastrous history: "They resign themselves to what they have. They don't demand accountability from their government....So it is frustrating because there is a certain mindset in Haiti where they get together to get rid of a bad government, but they are unable to get themselves together to build." Her answer to "fix" Haiti? Got a guess? "We [the international community] should get more involved in agro industry in Haiti and economic growth." Just like the good old days, I guess. (NPR obviously knows just how unbiased [hee, hee] this "marching with the President Aristide's opposition" Jean-Baptiste character is.)
  

If the scale of this assault on memory and historical accuracy weren't such a potent weapon for continuing the US-led predations on countries like Haiti, the nonsense and myth that passes for coverage on NPR would be humorous. But as it is, this kind of aggressive rewriting of the past has consequences that are as deadly and tragic as the natural disaster it is supposedly trying to explain.

It's Not the Peabody, But...

NPR does occasionally throw the intelligent listener a bone, so let's throw them credit where credit is due.

• On Wednesday morning NPR hosted Dean Baker, one of it's most stinging critics (and a damn smart economist, too), to bring a rare perspective on the deficits to NPR.

• Then on Friday afternoon, Robert Siegel talked to Joseph Stiglitz, who brought a fairly progressive analysis of the Wall Street oriented performance of the Obama administration.

Two in one week; that must be a like a record or something!

Update: Unlike most mainstream journalists Baker shows he's not concerned about sucking up to organizations like NPR in order to gain that mystical prize of "access." On Friday morning he turns his telescope on that home of economic idiocy known as Planet Money [which actually has won a Peabody!]

Civilians, Terrorists, and Cold-blooded Killers

(Image by wordle.net - click here for original)

I guess it's a challenge for a CIA-friendly news organization like NPR to decide how to report on an attack on a military base that kills CIA operatives. When the story broke in the evening on Dec. 30th the first reports out of Afghanistan referred to civilians being killed on a military base (which did seem odd). By Thursday morning, the BBC was already reporting that the dead were not "civilians" but CIA operatives. Given the CIA's history of murder and assassination, and its current role in military operations and extrajudicial killings in Af-Pak, you might expect that they would be referred to as paramilitary or irregular forces or simply CIA agent/operatives.

On Thursday morning, NPR's mouthpiece in Afghanistan, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson still hadn't figured out that no civilians were killed in the attack on the military base in Khost. She told Steve Inskeep that the suicide bomber

"ended up killing eight American civilians here, killing one Afghan and wounding up to a half dozen more."

As the day wore on NPR's top-of-the hour (TOTH) news bulletins had stopped calling the dead civilians - but now the lethal suicide-attack inside a heavily fortified military base housing CIA operatives was transformed into...a terrorist attack! Newsreader Lakshmi Singh, at midday was stating,

"The CIA says 7 of its employees were killed and six others wounded in a terrorist attack yesterday in Afghanistan. The officers were working in a base in the southeastern province of Khost."

By Thursday afternoon (Dec. 31), the reporting on the attack had morphed into a somber tribute to the noble CIA and all that sacrifices if has made to keep the world safe. Mary Louise Kelly was given the assignment for ATC and she talked to Robert Siegel about it.

Siegel: "And what kind of work were they doing in Khost province?"

Kelly: "Well, the agency is not confirming any specifics....But it's safe to assume that they were doing what CIA types do in remote areas of the world, which is help identify enemy targets, also help recruit locals who can serve as CIA agents, perhaps what was they were trying to do here." [Silly me, I thought they tortured and killed people, propped up dictators, and helped overthrow democratically elected governments.]

Kelly later goes on to note that seven is a very high number of fatalities for the CIA to have in one day:

"...And it's interesting, you know, you walk into CIA headquarters today, walk into the original headquarters building and on the big wall on the left, as you enter, is a wall of stars. Each star representing one of the CIA officers who gave their life in service - was killed in action. Now on that wall there are 90 stars. Remarkable really when you think about how dangerous that line of work is and how long..." [I'm just guessing that Kelly is very familiar with the inside of CIA headquarters.]

Siegel interrupts, "It's a very small number for all these years."

Kelly responds, "Exactly. They've been doing it for six decades now. So, that helps, I think, give some perspective on how devastating it is to have lost seven in one day." They definitely have been doing it...and if there were one star for every poor soul killed as a result of CIA "service" there wouldn't be a wall big enough to put them all on.

Having Your Yellow Cake and Eating It Too

Itching to repeat the manufacture of phony "evidence" used to engineer the US invasion of Iraq, NPR is working hard to pursue the thinnest bits of "evidence" to get up a war on Iran.

On December 17th Mike Shuster was excitedly pushing documents that supposedly raised "New Concerns." The report was riddled with qualifications of "might be" and "could be" which would be laughable, if the consequences of such fraudulent reporting weren't so dire.

[Renee Montagne] : "The document lays out a series of experiments THAT COULD BE USED to trigger nuclear explosions. IF IT IS GENUINE, some experts believe it could be proof Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon."

[Mike Shuster]: "The document, WHICH APPEARS TO COME from an office in Iran's Defense Ministry..." "the source says the document was written in 2007. IF THAT IS INDEED TRUE, IT COULD BE evidence that Iran is engaged, now, in work on components of a nuclear weapon."

Of course this startling document turned out to be a forgery - though NPR never issued a correction or retraction.

Then - as if completely oblivious to the "Oh My God They're After Yellow Cake"scandal of the Iraq War, on Steve Inskeep was on Dec. 30th's Morning Edition pushing a yellow cake scare story on Iran. The story is based on a single mysterious document that has landed in the hands of one AP reporter. The document has not been subject to any authentication process, but that doesn't stop NPR and Inskeep from hyping it:

[Inskeep]: "The Associated Press obtained a document saying Iran is trying to buy 1,350 tons of uranium ore. Reporter George Jahn has seen the document, and he's on the line."

At the heart of the interview we hear

[Inkseep]: "Now, why would it be important for Iran to get its hands on uranium, and especially this much of it?"

[Jahn]: "Basically, this is the starting block in its enrichment program. Iran needs purified ore, also known as yellow cake or uranium oxide, to enrich, and of course, its enrichment program is the backbone of its nuclear activities, WHICH COULD CREATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS."

In case you tuned in late to the report, Inskeep closes his report with this recap:

[Inskeep]: "George Jahn is a reported for the Associated Press. He has seen a document from the International Atomic Energy Agency that says Iran is close to buying many tons of uranium from Kazakhstan."

Iranian History - the Milani Remix

NPR put history in the blender again - this time regarding Iran. On Sunday, Dec. 27th's ATC NPR's Guy Raz interviewed Abbas Milani in order to obscure and minimize the destructive, anti-democratic role the US has played in Iranian history:

[Raz] : "Let's go back for a moment and talk about, specifically, about the US' role. I mean, the basic narrative is that the United States has always played a key role in Iranian politics. This is the narrative widely accepted among the leadership in Iran and, to some extent, by the foreign policy establishment here in Washington, D.C. What is this information based on? Why is this view so widely accepted?"

[Milani] : "I think it is accepted because, like many myths, it has some base in reality and some base in ignorance. If you, in fact, look at U.S. involvement in Iran, U.S. begins to get involved in Iran after World War II. And the first attempt by FDR, the Roosevelt administration, is, in fact, to create what they call a democratic experiment in Iran. And from Roosevelt to Carter, every administration, with the exception of the Nixon administration, pushed behind the scenes, the shah towards a more democratic, a more open society."

The NPR report is essentially a reprise of Milani's Dec. 8th article in The New Republic. In the article and on NPR Milani points out the truth that Iran's clerics were involved in the 1953 coup against Mossadegh that installed the Shah. He uses this fact to pretend that the US role was minimal and that the US role in the Shah's Iran was to push for democracy. I asked an Iranian friend and scholar - Niloofar Shambayati - if she had any insights into Milani's NPR remarks and she noted that

"The fact is that those of us who have read scholarly works on the subject of 1953 military coup, including Ervand Abrahamian’s books, have known for decades about the controversial role of the clerics in that episode of Iranian politics. We have also known that, without the U.S. planning and full force backing, the idea of a military coup could not have materialized. The fact that occasionally American officials nudged the Shah to loosen his grip on the society and politics in order to ensure the continuation of his rule and U.S. hegemony not only adds nothing to the historical narrative of this period and but confirms the pursuance of imperialist agenda by successive Administrations. "

Arash Norouzi echos this analysis as he dismantles the lies and distortions of Milani in a fine point by point rebuttal. Norouzi writes:

"Milani has chosen to counter the Islamic Republic's disengenuous, hypocritical narrative with his own equally deceptive, revisionist narrative. It's a logically bankrupt essay permeated with misleading, feel-good innuendo, signifying much but saying nothing. Repeatedly, Milani tampers with facts, contradicts his own conclusions, and even betrays his own recent statements."

Needless to add, poor Guy Raz is completely inadequate in challenging Milani. Raz asks one challenging [though qualified] question:

"...declassified documents show that the United States helped the Shah create his feared and hated secret police as well. So the U.S. did have a role that could, I think, fairly be described as a meddlesome one at certain points."

Milani simply co-opts the truth and turns it into a bald lie,

"Oh, absolutely. I don't quarrel over that at all. And the gist of the article is that the notion that the U.S. has been only propping up despots in Iran and that the only purpose Iran served for the U.S. was to buy its weaponry and sell its cheap oil does not get to the core of a much more complicated, much more nuanced relationship."

At this point the hapless Raz simply folds and joins in the narrative that Milani is spinning,

"...in your article, you write: This is a seductive narrative, but what's strange is the group that it has seduced, the very meddlers themselves in Washington. What do you mean by that?"

So there it is. The US, the prime engineer of the Shah's installation and supporter of his dictatorship actually was working for freedom and democracy all along. And the proof of this lie? Simply the fact that the corrupt clerical regime in Iran was also complicit in the overthrow of Mossadegh.

Making Lemonade from Lemons [and Cupcakes from Cat Poo]

According to Rene Montagne on Christmas Eve morning, "One thing that is clear is that the U.S. and China are no longer observers in the international climate debate, but leaders." How's that for objective reporting?

I had to hear NPR's spin on the essentially antidemocratic Copenhagen "deal" orchestrated by Obama behind closed doors with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. The report by Christopher Joyce essentially tries to lay the blame for the Copenhagen Summit's failure to reach a meaningful agreement at the feet of Venezuela and Sudan (seriously!). Here are highlights from NPR's creative take on the imperial arrogance of the US and the irresponsible behavior of rich countries at Copenhagen.

Joyce: "Many delegations did not view the five-nation accord as a step forward....Nonetheless, many in the climate business say it's lemonade from what was a very sour lemon. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, is in the lemonade camp. She says people had pushed the myth that the world was ready to agree on a new binding treaty, and it wasn't...." (Claussen's lemony position is less than unbiased - given that she worked for the US Department of State).

Joyce: "....delegations from countries like Sudan and Venezuela burned up conference time with procedural tactics and, Claussen says, unrealistic demands."

Claussen: "It wasn't clear that anything could get done because some group of countries or some country was trying to hold up everything, which is why I think the approach of just trying to do an accord with a small number of countries was probably the only way to have anything come out of this at all."

Joyce briefly lets Ray Kopp from Resources for the Future [and Member, U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, 1999 - present] note that China is like the US and doesn't want to be pushed around.

Finally Joyce, in typical NPR fashion - after consulting former State Department affiliated opinion - takes a hard right turn so as to use a bit of American Enterprise Institute quackery for concluding remarks. He trots out "climate expert" Dr. Kenneth Green who make these fair and balanced comments:

"Kyoto has been an albatross around the necks of those - of people who are genuinely concerned about climate change. The first thing they have to do is let go of the failed model, because they're pushing for basically two things countries cannot - democracies, especially - cannot do. It's economic suicide and the exporting of massive amounts of their people's wealth to their enemies or competitors." [No mention of planetary ecocide or of just where some of that people's wealth came from...]

Junk in the Air and Junk on the Air

Readers of this blog busted David Kestenbaum (pictured above) for airing crap about climate change during his coverage of the UN Copenhagen Conference. As "doggydaddy" writes,

"This [link to the Tuesday morning story] may help explain my antipathy towards Kestenbaum this AM. Of all the stories one could file from Copenhagen, he gives credence to hack skeptic Lomborg who has been thoroughly discredited. [link to a point by point refutation of Lomborg's "science."] What a doofus and a tool is the Kestenbum."

Given that Bjorn Lomborg has been debunked, refuted and exposed as having only one goal - pushing for "the pressing need to do nothing about global warming" - one can only conclude that Kestenbaum shares this mission. This would explain his 2008 adoring [and shameless] piece on a teen global warming skeptic.

So how does a groovin', Yale-Harvard hipster like Kestenbaum top a scoop interview with Bjorn Lomborg? He does it by using his Thursday morning slot to sneer at and ridicule the attendees at the conference for contributing to carbon pollution by using air travel to get to the conference - how cutting edge! As "Woody" wrote in the comments,

"I nearly went inside the radio this AM, when I heard that lame-ass report on the "carbon footprint" required to host the Climate Summit, and the ever-so-condescending snarkiness of the lazy, smirking, sold-out creeps and asswipes reporting it.

Just once, I'd like to hear some proper context, like what is the size of the carbon footprint of just one day's operations by the USer military in Central Asia."

Ah yes, the footprint of the US military in Central Asia, that would be interesting. In fact would have been great fun to hear Bjorn Lomborg asked about the bloated US military spending that could be used for those humanitarian projects that he supposedly cares so much about.

You Lie!

When I listened to Obama's Nobel Prize war speech and heard him say this

"Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms."

I wanted the blood of the millions of East Timorese, Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Haitians, Chileans and others murdered by the US "strength of arms" to cry out "You Lie!"

Then on Sunday morning I had to hear NPR feature not one, but TWO stories on an assassination carried out under Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. In spite of discussing the dreadful state of repression under Pinochet, neither story made any mention of the strong role played by the United States in instigating and supporting the Chilean nightmare.

This brought me back to Obama's speech. No wonder he can get away with saying something so blatantly and obscenely false. The news coverage of events that would contradict such propaganda disappears down the memory hole again and again.

You Got Punk'd

I had to post this because - to their credit - on Thursday's ATC, NPR had on Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation to give her reaction to Obama's War-You-Can-Believe In rubbish Nobel Peace Prize lecture. Here's what she said:

"President Obama is an ethical realist....a speech grounded in realism with elements of idealism ....could see why the Nobel committee awarded him this prize....had a humility and grace while confronting the paradoxes."

Even Bob Siegel had to ask, "But you seem to be resolving this conflict between the wartime president, who's escalated the U.S. operation in Afghanistan and the peace prize winner, and the speech about peace rather easily. I'm surprised. I'm surprised you're not more stuck on that one." [Yeah, me too!]

Vanden Heuvel simply took another sip o' the Kool-aid and added,

"And I think it is up to the people, not only in the United States, but this world, to push him to live up to the words he spoke in the speech which was a complex speech. It was a, kind of a speech that could be taught in a college course on just war and America's role in the world."

Wowzer! Even the pathetic Juan Williams was more articulate on Saturday's Weekend Edition:
"Well, I think it was a very militaristic speech....how does that relate to eight years of war that was based on weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist? And what does it say to us about dealing with Iran and their difficulties today?....here's a president who is advancing war - two wars at this moment - where is the peace? You know, where is the Martin Luther King? Where is the Mandela? The commitment to non-violence?"

Let's Have a Tea Party

In case you missed it last Wednesday's ATC gave a whopping 12.5 minutes of airtime promoting the sophisticated political maturation of the Tea Party movement - especially in Texas. Bob Siegel was hosting...
(cursor over each frame and click the hyperlinked ones you want to follow - nos. 1,2,3, 10, 13, & 14)