Show Your Support for Your Enemies

Irony is Dead

(Update below)

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

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

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

Police Brutality Shielded by NPR

Anthony Bologna - NYPD thug

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Stearns
Associate Program Director
Free Press Action Fund 

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

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

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

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.

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.

Happystan and Memory Holes

(source of the graphic)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indefensible NPR

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Worse than Rosen's were Joel Meares' comments about NPR at the Columbia Journalism Review. After making the point that NPR's actions will not appease its conservative enemies, Meares drifts into the land of pure fantasy, stating that

  "NPR is a legitimate, independent news organization that is consistently strong and tough in its reporting."

  Gad! I hope he'll send me a link to that alternate universe NPR so I can listen to some of that "strong and tough" reporting.

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

"superb news division"

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

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

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

The Unbearable Lightness of Heft and Humanity

After hearing NPR - on Tuesday's ATC - tout Robert Siegel's selection for the 2010 Chancellor Award, I decided to email Columbia University's School of Journalism's Abi Wright (Director of the duPont and Chancellor awards) and Nicholas Lehmann (Dean of the Journalism School and chair of the Chancellor selection committee). I've yet to hear back from either, so I've decided post the letter here (with no changes).

Dear Abi Wright and Nicholas Lehmann,

I'm contacting you to ask how Columbia University's School of Journalism can justify giving the Chancellor award to Robert Siegel. In the award announcement on the School of Journalism web site, Mr. Lehmann states:

"Robert Siegel brings intellectual heft and a profound humanity to his reporting."

I find this disturbing given that I have been closely following NPR reporting and can provide several examples of Mr. Siegel exhibiting an utter lack of intellectual rigor and a rather callous attitude to the sufferings of people when they are victims of US foreign policy. For example:

Siegel was instrumental in selling the phony intelligence that led to the Iraq War

http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2007/02/trip-down-memory-lane.html and continued to parrot unsubstantiated claims about Iran's involvement in Iraq http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2008/04/two-crocks-for-price-of-one.html.

And where is Siegel's "intellectual heft" as he fails to inform listeners about the basic background of Conservapedia's Andy Schlafly or challenge Schlafly's biased statements http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2007/03/wikipedia-v-wackopedia.html. Again, where is "intellectual heft" or "profound humanity" in the long overdue piece Siegel hosted on torture/rendition flights http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2007/12/spoof-news-better-late-than-never-sort.html where he is chuckling during this discussion of one of the most barbarous aspects of the US War on Terror?

It really saddens me that a lackluster newsreader and lightweight apologist for US State Department/Pentagon interests such as Robert Siegel garners a distinguished award from one of our nations premier journalism schools. But perhaps I should not be surprised, since as Chris Hedges so recently pointed out, our liberal establishments refuse to take principled, radical stands - opting instead to "pay homage to the marvels of corporate capitalism [and militarism] even as it disembowels the nation and the planet" http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_origin_of_americas_intellectual_vacuum_20101115/.

Sincerely,

Matthew Murrey

NPR Check

I also cc'd the letter to a few other Columbia School of Journalism faculty members, to the editors of the Columbia Journalism Review, to FAIR, Media Matters and Truthdig. If I receive any responses I will post them if given permission.

Dick and Jane and the Off Button

It's nearly four years since I began my little adventure of monitoring NPR news, and it's been both enlightening and maddening. I must say that it blows my mind that so many people still give NPR positive marks for journalism (e.g. the comments in this recent piece, or the nonsense of this article, and the general praise of this piece) when its coverage - that I have painstakingly documented on this blog - is relentlessly center-right to far right in its perspective, and is unquestioning in its loyalty to US state power - economic, military and otherwise. I can not think of one example where NPR news has challenged the fundamental assumptions underlying the projection of US power at home or abroad - domestic surveillance, torture, military spending, government secrecy, aggressive war, so-called counterinsurgency, predatory corporatism, etc.

Over the course of the last year, the work on this blog has started to have a bit of the Groundhog Day feel to it: I've found myself essentially writing the same articles over and over. The situation changes but the fundamental pattern remains the same: NPR parrots Pentagon press releases; NPR ignores or minimizes the grossest violations of human rights and dignity when committed by the US or its allies; NPR refuses to mention international laws and treaties when they are broken by the US or its allies; NPR provides unchallenged airtime for government, military and corporate spokespersons; etc., etc.

I'm going to leave this blog up and post only very infrequently, if at all. God knows what the future holds with the economy, continuing US/Israeli aggression and genocidal policies toward Palestinians, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tea party extremists, and the possibility of war on Iran. For now I invite anyone to link, borrow or steal from this blog's archives in order to spread the word that NPR news is not liberal, not balanced, not factual, and not worth supporting in any way, shape or form.

Cheers,
Matthew Murrey
Mytwords