Steve Inskeep - More Tortured Distortions

On Tuesday Morning Steve Inskeep did an interesting story about a popular Egyptian singer who was recently [after the overthrow of Mubarak] detained and tortured by the Egyptian military. Inskeep's direct and moving reporting on the singer, Essam's, torture prompted The Modest Egotist to post the following comment on NPR:

This part of Modest Egoist's comment -

"But, how come when Inskeep/NPR describes the same treatment of prisoners by American troops at Gitmo and Ab Gruib it's only "harsh interrogation"?

Guess I just don't like my morning coffee with big spoonful of hypocrisy.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.html

Ahem, who has been training the Egyptian military of the past decade?

- drew the following reply from Steve Inskeep:

So Inskeep claims,

"As for the 'Modest Egotist' question about why we don't refer to torture by Americans as torture. Actually, we do, and I have. Not room enough for all the links here, but many examples are searchable at npr.org at any time. Thanks again, Steve."

Sounds like a challenge for the NPR-BS detector to me. I spent a bit of time looking on the NPR site and on this blog, and if I were using the truth-o-meter from Politifact, I'd give Inskeep's claim a "barely true" - and I mean barely. I'll quickly list the evidence I could find:

• Probably the strongest case for Inskeep's claim is in one report in November 2009, which describes extensive waterboarding as torture. Here's his interchange with NPR's Temple-Raston:

  Inskeep: "...this is a man [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] who was waterboarded 183 times. What difficulties are raised by bringing in a man to a civilian court when some of the evidence against him would appear to have been obtained by torture?"

  Temple-Raston: "...No, you are exactly right. And this is one of the really big issues here, although in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he actually admitted, before being tortured, that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So that makes him slightly different than some of these other detainees who have been tortured, who maybe only admitted to something after they were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture."

• Also back in May of 2006 Inskeep gets credit for using the word torture in an interview with Alfred McCoy. He asks McCoy, "Can we set aside a moment, questions of morality, and just talk about practicality. Many people have said that physical torture does not produce good information, that people will say anything to get it over with. What about psychological torture? Has it ever been shown to be useful, whatever you may think of it?" Given that McCoy was talking about the use of brutal isolation, nakedness, sleep deprivation, etc., the fact that Inskeep calls it psychological torture is exceptional for NPR.

Far more common when the word torture is used for US practices, are qualified uses of the term.

• In August of 2009, discussing revised interrogation standards, Inskeep makes this statement about CIA torture of detainees, "In addition to the moral objections to what many would define as torture, is there now a consensus among people who do this work that it also wasn't practical to be abusing prisoners?"

• In "Torture Issue Won't Die Down" from May of 2009 - even though photos showing "nudity, guns being aimed at detainees, people in shackles" are being discussed along with previous photos from Abu Ghraib, there is only ONE reference to torture when Inskeep says "the so-called torture memos."

• In a June 2006 interview with Alan Dershowitz who wants to prescribe and legalize "limited" torture, Inskeep says about Dershowitz - and a doctor who will be the next day's guest, "Yet, the doctor and Dershowitz agree on one thing. They say the United States is, indeed, practicing torture." Again it's distanced and qualified by "they say."

That's about as much evidence as I could find supporting Inskeep's claims. If I missed something significant, I hope someone will email me or post it in the comments section so I can update this post. As you can see, this supporting evidence is pretty thin and is swamped by NPR's and Inskeep's overall tendency to use euphemisms for torture - or to imply that abuse of detainees is not such a bad thing after all. For example

• In June of 2006 Inskeep interviews an Army torturer and NEVER once mentions torture, even when the interrogator describes prisoners who were forced to crawl across gravel being unable to walk afterwards, or when he details subjecting them to hypothermia, dogs and months of complete isolation. In fact this treatment was not apparently brutal enough to intrigue Inskeep's moral instincts and he asks, "Did anybody ever ask you to go beyond the kinds of - well, let's call it abuse, if you don't mind, the kind of abuse that you have described..."

• In February of 2007 Human Rights Watch issued a damning report on US torture of detainees, and Inskeep presented a short blurb on the report which featured more Bush-spin than report - and featured Inskeep noting that in the report is one "Jihadist" who "claims to have been tortured."

• In December of 2008 when a damning Senate Report on US torture of detainees was released not only did NPR not cover it, they had Inskeep conduct an interview with a "good guy" Army interrogator who worked in Iraq. Inskeep never mentioned torture, but did find time to wonder if uncooperative prisoners ever got the interrogator to the point "where you really wanted to hit the guy."

I could go on and on (search this blog's label "torture" for example) about the direct and indirect ways that NPR's coverage or outright censorship of the US torture of detainees has greatly enabled the establishment and legitimization of formal US torture and detainee abuse practices. A record that makes Inskeep's claim all the more hollow, and of course, I've not even touched on the fact that NPR's ombudsman has asserted that calling waterboarding torture reflects bias and that the policy of NPR is to refrain from the use of such language - a fact that Modest Egoist referred and linked to in his original post.

Web Foxes

(click on the picture to Supersize it)

Somebody should start a blog that simply tracks all the utterly stupid things that appear on the NPR web site and the web versions of their stories. Notice that "War on Christmas" is not in quotes - see, there really is a war on Christmas... And in case you were confused by facts and thought that US foreign policy is in complete lockstep with Israel's policy of destroying the Palestinians and rendering any humane solution impossible, the web scribes are there to remind you that Clinton is trying another approach to "peace" in Middle East... Finally, you have to love the Ally Bank ad: "Everyone needs an ally" (hee...hee).

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.

A Safe Port for Wade Goodwyn's Determination

Wade Goodwyn is NPR's point man for covering Tuesday's ceremony at Fort Hood. On Tuesday's ATC, Goodwyn does some creative reporting. In answering Melissa Block's question about what struck him most about the ceremony, Goodwyn reflects on the emotions of the event, offers praise for the stock patriotic sentiments of President Obama's speech, and then states,

"And for the soldiers, I think, renewed determination. They got hit at home and that has made plenty of these men and women angry."

Block asks if he spoke to any of the soldiers attending the ceremony and Goodwyn responds,

"I mean, there used to be a sense that this was a safe port; that's gone now. People here have a feeling that something valuable was stolen from them, like coming home and finding a thief rifling through the house, who has taken some of your most precious possessions."

Finally, Block asks about the issue of the accused shooter's Muslim faith. Goodwyn notes,

"certainly this kind of thing does not help our Muslims in uniform. Who knows what Major Hasan allegedly was trying to achieve with this act, but whatever that might've been, it did the opposite. It seems to me this has just hardened the Army's determination to achieve the missions. The shooting only facilitated the Western character of Muslims as violent extremists...."

Two issues in Goodwyn's comments really stand out. The first is his trumpeting of determination and missions. He claims that the massacre at Fort Hood has produced "renewed determination" in the soldiers. Determination to do what? Continue with the six year old supreme international crime called the Iraq War? Continue waging war and occupation in yet another country that doesn't want our troops there? Goodwyn conveniently never explains what this vague "determination" is for, but he returns to it and amplifies it as "the Army's determination to achieve the missions." Missions? Missions to do what? Are we supposed to believe that our nation's permanent war syndrome actually has some kind of missions (besides enriching the war industry and rotting away whatever liberal democratic principles remain)? Goodwyn's absurd logic would be laughable if it weren't so perverse: after admitting that Hasan's motive is unknown, he then proceeds to conclude that "whatever that might have been, it did just the opposite."

The second issue is Goodwyn's ridiculous assertion that Fort Hood was "a safe port." What planet has Goodwyn been living on? Did he do ANY research about Fort Hood (in Killeen, TX) - which has experienced previous carnage and - like all of the US military - is not a safe port for women. It's not surprising that Goodwyn ignores rape and sexual assault in the US military, since NPR news has not covered it (though the subject was featured on one NPR's Day to Day show in 2007 and found its way to NPR's website via The Nation).

Pierre Tristam, a writer for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, notes that

"The reality is that what Hasan did is a more American act than anything else. Killeen, of all places, has a history of violence, the kind of violence that is more essentially American than Arab or Muslim, just as terrorism's ground zero in the United States, before the World Trade Center, was Oklahoma City."

Tristam's work is what journalists are supposed to do. In contrast Goodwyn (as he did three years ago) does just the opposite: parrots the empty patriotic cliches of the Pentagon and the President, while ignoring relevant history and the underlying issues that really threaten what's left of our democratic principles.

Are We Going to Win This War on Terrorism or Not?

(source of graphic)

Reader Benoit Balz points out, in the Q Tips below, the Pentagon friendly propaganda put out on Sunday morning by that Tea Party-animal himself, Jeff Brady. Brady is covering the recent deaths of 8 soldiers in Afghanistan and its impact at Ft. Carson in Colorado. He reports:

"A few days earlier at a press conference, Major Daniel Chandler said the affected unit over in Afghanistan is keeping its spirits up. He said surviving soldiers know their dead colleagues helped to win that particular battle. [Chandler] 'There were a lot of heroes on that day and they're really rallying around themselves and morale in the 4th brigade combat team is high and it's getting stronger.'"

Later in the story Brady talks to a college student whose father was in the army. Brady tells us, "She chose to focus on the sacrifice the soldiers made. [Student] 'I'm more thankful than anything...I'm thankful that somebody at least went over there and did it.'

Brady raps things up by talking to a priest in the area - the rightwing Father Carmody - who tells Brady, "People around here want to make sure that they didn't die in vain, and what I mean by that is, 'Are we going to win this war on terrorism or not?'"

I realize that it must be difficult for any news organization to cover the issue of US military personnel killed in combat. There is the tragedy of young people being violently killed and there are considerations to make for the feelings of the families and friends of those who have died. But could NPR ever - even just once - not use the trite and empty rhetoric of heroics, sacrifice and gratitude to talk about the war dead? Has NPR ever interviewed surviving family members who denounce the leaders and policies that have squandered the lives of their loved ones? When was the last time you ever heard members of Gold Star Families for Peace or Gold Star Families Speak Out interviewed on NPR? Have you ever heard on NPR from men or women who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and then have become resisters of conscience?

It is worth reading the comments under the story at the NPR site. This one really nails it:

"WE SHOULD NEVER 'QUIETLY MORN' THE SNUFFED OUT LIVES OF EIGHT YOUNG AMERICAN SONS, BROTHERS, FATHERS - WE SHOULD SHOUT OUT OUR RAGE AND FRUSTRATION WITH A WAR WE CAN'T WIN AND A PAST PRESIDENT WE CAN'T INDICT - GET OUT NOW"

Unfortunately, hoping for such an angle from Jeff Brady (or NPR) is pretty hopeless; when covering an antiwar protest of over a thousand people, he gave all the coverage to a tiny contingent of pro-war counter demonstrators.

Creative Assassinations - For NPR's Shapiro It's Elementary

Consider these two screen shots from NPR's website:

From a story on Thursday's Morning Edition:

and from Thursday's All Things Considered

Any grade schooler with a rudimentary understanding of the innocent until proven guilty concept could figure out what is wrong with the titles of these web articles: both refer to TERRORISTS, when what is at issue are detainees of the US government suspected of involvement in terrorism (or guerrilla warfare) who have NEVER faced any semblance of legitimate due process that would justify calling them "terrorists." In fact, someone with just a bit more knowledge of recent US detention policies would suspect that most detainees in the US "war on terror" are probably innocent.

Unfortunately, instead of a grade schooler, NPR's two pieces on US rogue detention are led by "a magna cum laude graduate of Yale," Ari Shapiro. During the Morning Edition piece Shapiro claims that "[d]uring one incident late in the Bush administration, OFFICIALS SAY, a terrorist from Somalia was brought to Afghanistan...." Setting up listeners for his ATC follow-up, Shapiro states, "...the Bush administration used Guantanamo, the United States and Bagram to hold detainees. Because all of those possibilities are problematic, the Obama administration is now thinking more creatively about this issue....and we'll explore those possibilities tonight on All Things Considered.

NPR certainly does explore certain possibilities. Ari's Morning Edition story seems positively innocuous compared to his All Things Considered feature which Melissa Block introduces with the observation that "government lawyers are exploring more creative options." In the piece Shapiro completely embraces the terrorist-until-proven-innocent meme:

• "...virtually everyone interviewed for this story agreed: the United States would rather not be in the terrorist detention business."
  
• "President Obama has said that he will continue - rendition...would continue sending terrorists to foreign countries."
• "...says the Obama State Department is playing a major role in finding places to put terrorists..."

and makes his report an apologia for (US government approved) assassinations/extrajudicial executions:

"So if the US picks up twenty al-Qaeda members tomorrow and they cannot be held...where can they go? [Ken Anderson voiceover] 'To be perfectly blunt, I don't think they'll pick them up at all.' Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution has written about these issues. [Anderson] 'I think we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture.' Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree. It has become so difficult for the US to detain people that in many instances the US government is killing them instead."

It floored me to transcribe reread this. Shapiro and Anderson are blaming the courts (!) because some have actually upheld the law. Well, given those harsh restrictions, when the US suspects people of involvement in terrorism outside the US, what "creative" options does it have - except to kill them. Though appalling, it's not surprising that these NPR stories have such a mafia ethic; consider the sources that Shapiro assembled for his ATC work:

1. "Columbia law professor Matthew Waxman handled detainee affairs at the Pentagon UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH."
2. "CIA SPOKESMAN Paul Gimigliano"
3. "Cardozo law professor Vijay Padmanabhan was an attorney adviser at the State Department IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION."
4. "John Bellinger, who was legal adviser to State UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH."
5. "Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution"
6. "University of Michigan law professor Monica Hakimi worked at the State Department IN THE LAST ADMINISTRATION."

Now that is some creative journalism.

Shilling for Shale, Fronting for Fracking, What a Gas...Naturally

(graphic was featured on NPR's website)

As commenters have noted, Tom Gjelten and Peter Overby brought NPR ME listeners a three part commercial from their sponsor ANGA. It's worthwhile to take a look at the comments beneath each story's web link (Part I, Part II, and Part III) and click on "Most Recommended." Let's just say shale ain't the only thing getting drilled... For example, part II of the series had Gjelten claiming that most of the drilling and fracking is done by "mom and pop" operations. An NPR listener wrote

"Another poorly researched piece. The main companies working the Marcellus Shale in NE Pennsylvania include: Chesapeake (7,600 employees), Hess (13,500 employees), and of course Schlumberger (87,000 employees). Fortuna Energy is a subsidiary of Talisman (2,388 employees). These companies have global reach and oil as well as natural gas interests. Cabot (notorious for environmental violations and fracturing fluid chemical spills around Dimock, PA) has 560 employees - again, no 'mom and pop' operation."

On the infomercial sidebars that accompany the NPR stories you can see the following:

The perversely named American Clean Skies Foundation is a front organization for the same mom and pop Chesapeake Energy corporation mentioned by the listener [if in doubt, click on the "About US" tab on the "Clean Skies" page, and look at the chairman, Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy Corporation!] Oh, and that friendly sounding, Ground Water Council, is the organization of STATE ground water regulators, which are the very organizations that gas drillers want to deal with to get around federal environmental rules!

This gas series began without any critical reservations whatsoever, touting the shale gas reserves as a nearly limitless supply of clean energy, where the only concern is the economic feasibility of fracking it out of the shale rock. Given the firestorm of criticism evidenced in the comments section under each of the stories, NPR obviously tried to run some hasty last minute, "balancing" operations. They expanded the "series" page to include a May 27th piece more critical of fracking and tacked on a web article also. The final report of the series offers this sad little gassy seep of concern:

"Well, remember, Steve, from one our earlier pieces, to get gas out of shale rock you've got to fracture the rock. They do this by blasting water into it. The concern is that that might cause some contamination of drinking water supplies. There are chemicals that are used in that water."

Would have been nice to include some of those concerned stakeholders in this series, like real journalists do. Apparently that would have ruined the three-day, 20-plus minutes of drill baby drill hype that NPR wanted to frack us with.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

(source of graphic and source of post title - enjoy)

If you watch or listen to Democracy Now! you know about the latest study on insurance and mortality in US adults. It's no big deal, just some wacky research indicating that tens of thousands of people (45,000 actually) in the US die every year because they don't have health insurance.

NPR is definitely challenged when it comes to counting, math and timekeeping - though they are the gold standard for tallies that comfort the powerful and celebrate death from the skies. But some numbers are just so confusing and troublesome, why deal with them at all - especially if it might ruffle the death health insurance industry? Consider the old, way-back-then study of 2002 from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) which determined that, in the US, 18,000 people a year die from lack of health insurance, or the Urban Institute 2008 update that raised the mortality estimate to 22,000. And now in the thick of the health insurance reform debates and policy maneuvers, there is a new study doubling the mortality estimate to 45,000.

So how has NPR done on covering these deadly numbers? Lets consult the NPR death panel search engine:

On the 18,000 fatalities:

• Morning Edition - nothing.
• All Things Considered - Dan Schorr mentioned it.
• Weekend Edition Saturday - zilch.
• Weekend Edition Sunday - nada.

On the 22,000 figure:

• Morning Edition - zero.
• All Things Considered - zip.
• Weekend Edition Sunday - nothing
• Weekend Edition Sunday - not a peep.

On the 45,000 figure:

• For all NPR programs. Got a guess? It's less than one, but greater than negative one (sort of).

To be fair to NPR - 45,000 is a pretty puny number compared to that big, scary TRILLION number which does get lots of attention from the journalists at NPR when it comes to health care.

More Warrior Worship at NPR

(photo of a Vietnam era soldier reading a Navy antiwar newspaper - from Sir No Sir site)

In November of 2007 NPR's Allison Keyes trotted out the tired old myth about Vietnam vets being assaulted, harassed and showered with hate on returning from the war. The editors at NPR apparently felt like it was time to drag this corpse of a lie out again - so this afternoon they turned to Blake Farmer of WPLN in Nashville to report on a Vietnam veterans propaganda event being hosted by Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Siegel opens the report by claiming that returning vets "were often greeted with anger about the war," then Farmer takes the baton and is off and running:

• "....and for some the only greeting as they walked off the airplane was from angry war protesters - until now."
• "....says he was lucky, lucky he wasn't tossed into the hostility that awaited other discharged service members."
• "Larry Hamm from West Chester, Pennsylvania recalls angry crowds lining the airport fence, throwing rotten eggs..."

There are a few little problems with Farmer's reporting. To start with, that bit about "until now" overlooks the 200,000 Vietnam Vets and 500,000 adoring spectators who turned out in Chicago in 1986 to honor the vets and pretend that the US military didn't actually slaughter about 4 million Vietnamese. The exaggeration of "crowds lining the airport fence" and "throwing rotten eggs" would be hilarious if it weren't being reported as fact. Jerry Lembcke carefully researched the claims of Vietnam Vet abuse and could find no substantiated evidence of their veracity - not one article, photo, or news broadcast. You probably can guess how interested NPR is in Lembcke's work.

UPDATE:

I posted the following comment Monday afternoon on the NPR site for the story and had it removed as "inappropriate":

What a load of historical erasure this story is. NPR continues to cover up the active role Vietnam Vets played in ending the Vietnam War and their role in the "angry" antiwar movement. Frankly, the people claiming the nonsense about "spitting on vets" have no evidence to back up their claims and - in fact - a Vietnam vet, Jerry Lembcke, exhaustively researched the claims and found no evidence - none.

NPR could do us all a favor and cover the real heroes of US wars - people like Camilo Mejia and Victor Agosto who have shown the true courage of exposing US wars for what they are. Of course that would take some courage on NPR's part - something noticeably lacking these days...

I have no idea what made it "inappropriate," but I went ahead and posted this similar but revised version:

This report is full of hearsay and debunked inaccuracies. First, there was a huge Vietnam Vet welcome parade in Chicago in 1986. Second, many Vietnam Vets played an active role in the "angry" antiwar movement of the 60s and 70s. And third, people claiming the abusive treatment of vets have NO evidence to back up their claims and - in fact - a Vietnam vet, Jerry Lembcke, exhaustively researched these kinds of claims and found no evidence - none.

It would be great if NPR could even once seriously cover the war resisters - people like Camilo Mejia and Victor Agosto who have shown the courage of exposing US wars for what they are. I won't be holding my breath though, since I don't think NPR has the courage to challenge the militarism and worship of war that is so pervasive in the US...

We'll see how it fares.

It's What's On the Table

Back on June 8, 2009 NPR's ombudsman wrote, "I'm a big fan of blogs and of reading listener opinions. I plan on updating my own blog more frequently over the next few months." Alicia Shepard's more frequent posts have been illuminating, to say the least. If you want to get a glimpse into how establishment media (in this case NPR) justifies its subservience to power Shepard's posts are a great place to start:

• In June, there was her attempt (and even worse follow-up attempt) to justify NPR's refusal to call torture torture when carried out by US agents.
• On July 8th, Shepard claims that an insultingly stupid piece about the health care "public plan" was a "laudable attempt."
• By July 14th Shepard touts NPR's excellence based on - not content, accuracy, courage, or depth, but - the perceptions of a listeners survey! For Shepard, it's all about views: "...most listeners who contact us appear to fit into the liberal category, and many complain that NPR's reporting does not mirror their views."
• On July 20th Shepard is praising Cronkite for making Watergate a story when others wouldn't because he "sensed there was something more to the story than a third-rate burglary." It never occurs to Shepard that such praise rings pretty hollow when her employer can't even sense "something more" when the story is right in their face (e.g. fixed intelligence, vote caging, FISA lawbreaking, detainees tortured to death, etc).
  

Finally take a look at Shepard's recent attempt to justify NPR's hostility to the single-payer health option for the United States. Here is the excerpt that explains how the NPR sausage gets made:

"The decision not to devote a lot of attention to single-payer, I'm told, is based on pragmatism.

'This issue is not getting a lot of attention from NPR because it's simply not on the table in Congress,' said Julie Rovner, NPR's lead reporter covering the health care overhaul."

And that brings us to this morning's report from...yep...Julie Rovner about "Providing Better Health Care for Less Money." This is the second major feature (the first was on June 29, 2009) that NPR has devoted to the supposed wonders of providing great Insurance Industry Care for less money. A quick look at the sources for this morning's report shows that the Insurance Industrial Complex definitely knows how to set the table.

Rovner's star expert in the report is Don Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). On NPR's website, you also can see that the other experts for this report were Elliot Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute (him again), Dr. Atul Gawande of Brigham and Women's Hospital (a founding member of the Blue-Cross loving Partners Healthcare - a "non-profit" association whose CEO pulled down a cool $1.37 million in 2007 - from IRS 990 at Guidestar)

Looking into Berwick and the IHI is also eye-opening. Take a look at the lower part of the IHI page describing "donors" to its programs - its 5 million lives campaign received over $5 million from Blue Cross and Blue Shield. IHI has also been pretty good to Don Berwick - to the tune of $637,000 in 2008 - from IRS 990 at Guidestar)

NPR's health care coverage is definitely based on pragmatism - it just all depends what (and how much) is on the table.

Visit Me at NPR

I occasionally comment on NPR stories at the NPR website. Over on the sidebar I have a link that will take you to my page at NPR. From there you can go right down the page to "RECENT ACTIVITY" and see what stories I've posted on. For example, I've most recently commented on yesterday's report from Guy Raz which gave no context to the Pentagon's complaints about the video of the captured US soldier, and then on this morning's Planet Monkey shenanigans in "explaining" wages - apparently to what NPR thinks is an audience of morons.

Shepard Unplugged

Glenn Greenwald updates Alicia Shepard's continued defense of the indefensible - NPR's decision to adopt euphemisms when discussing torture committed by agents of the US government/military. On KUOW's "Conversation" Shepard says the the following:

"I agree with people that when you say 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that is taking the side of particularly the Bush administration and then when you use the word 'torture' you are taking the opposite side." [How's that for intellectual rigor? I bet she could get a job teaching ethics to future journalists with that kind of brilliance.]

Then when she is asked why NPR referred - without qualifications - to a Gambian journalist as being tortured she responds, (brace yourself),

"...these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus these in the United States in the way that it's used these are tactics used to get information."

Hey, not only could she get a teaching gig, I bet she could get a job being an apologist for some media outlet that serves as a mouthpiece for the Pentagon, the White House, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the....

As Greenwald notes, Shepard will be coming out of her rabbit hole to make a public appearance at the Newseum this weekend...wish I could be there.

All Around the Mulberry Bush

If you haven't seen it, be sure to head over to the NPR Ombudsman's page and check out her belated response (she was out of the office for the past week) to the flood of comments that Alicia Shepard ("as a journalist with almost 30 years' experience"!) received for her earlier defense of NPR's use euphemisms for torture authorized and committed by the US government/military.

It has to be read to be believed, but here is the heart of her "argument":

But no matter how many distinguished groups - the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners - say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters obviously believed that waterboarding terrorism suspects was necessary to protect the nation's security.

One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public. So, it is not an open-and-shut case that everyone believes waterboarding to be torture.

And this from the Ombudsman of a "public" radio organization. If you are up for it, be sure to comment, email, call, etc.

BTW - Shepard has refused to be interviewed by Glenn Greenwald.

Addendum 1: Reader Gopol did a little research on Shepard's "professional" past and...

"noticed that she worked for the San Jose Mercury News about the same time as Gary Webb, who's book Dark Alliance I've been reading. So I Google 'Alicia Shepard' and 'Gary Webb' and came up with a Counterpunch article by Alexander Coburn, How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career

It turns out Alicia was instrumental in assassinating Webb's credibility at the News. She even wrote an article about it: Shepard, Alicia. The Web Gary Spun. American Journalism Review, Jan./Feb. 1997."

Great find Gopol!

Addendum 2: Simon Owens of Bloggasm contacted me about an interview he did with Glenn Greenwald regarding Shepard's refusal to be interviewed by Greenwald. You can read it here.

OINK!

I think this little gem of a title from NPR.org (Monday's ATC) gets the corporate wet kiss award. Internet Bandwidth Hogs? I don't think Bewkes could have written it better himself.

Interestingly the feature ends with Siegel stating, "and you can find some links to groups fighting the Time Warner bandwidth cap and other stories on the matter at our website at npr.org/alltech." Somebody help me here. I poked around and seemed to miss those links - anyone see them?

The most obvious link would be to Free Press which is leading the fight against this latest corporate attempt to strangle the Internet. At the link you can sign their petition.

See No Irony

On NPR's "Monkey See" blog the Stewart-Cramer spanking was posted. If you look at the comments section and click on "Most Recommended" in the little "Recent First" drop-down box, you'll see a post put there by NPR's Ombudsman, Alicia Shepard (Lisa). With not a whit of irony (or embarrassment) she wrote:

Jon Stewart is one of the best journalists in America. We can all take a lesson from him. He holds people in power accountable for what they say, he puts it in context and makes it riveting to watch. That's the definition of a good journalist.

Strangely, I fully agree with Shepard's operating definition of a "good journalist" - but could NPR be further from such an ideal?

I couldn't resist adding my own post. Feel free to visit and "recommend" it if you are so inclined - you don't have to register, just click.