Tag: NPR
What does “member-supported radio” mean? Friends don’t let friends air junk
It is that time again. Twice a year local public radio affiliate KRCC holds a fund drive during which it expects community support for its exclusively corporate programming. By what stretch of the imagination should listeners feel they need to pony up for somebody else's agenda? Of course, bathed in enough misinformation and indoctrination, a community will wallow, and pay for the upkeep of their own barbed wire. Yeah, those fence-sitting fence-keepers are going to be a bitch --and creative I expect, with their sardonic apolitical joie-de-rire. I don't look forward to it, but the next local effort to elevate KRCC begins Saturday. KRCC: Enough with COStupid.
NPR: women berserkers, oil whores, Goebbels Surge, presidential DNA
I accidentally listened to NPR today, what an earful of crap! No wonder Americans are so uninformed, none more than self-identifying progressives, waylaid by Corporate Public shysters. Here's what I overheard: The Defense Department is running short on recruits so they need to draft women into combat roles. Leon Panetta has righted a constitutional injustice apparently and will deploy women into battle. Because women want equality to torture, join kill squads, shoot children, get PTSD, join ranks of homeless or commit suicide. Greatest gender advance since Virginia Slims. NPR interviewed oil workers who shrug off risk like Algerian massacre and speak fondly of their rape of Africa. According to them it's "all about the Benjamins" to pay cash for sports cars and ATVs, and international travel for access to "cheap women". Funny, the interviewees declined to reveal their full names. The energy industry promises jobs, but decent people need not apply. General "All Up In My Snatch" Petraeus is being credited with inventing a counterinsurgency tactic called "the Surge". Yeah, we've heard of it. Formally just a word, the "tactic" is not military, but public relations, attributable to Joseph Goebbels, to minimize an escalation or troop buildup by pretending it's temporary. The Benghazi Kerfuffle,
Restoring honor of USAF General John Lavelle for sake of post-Vietnam war criminals
Air Force general John Lavelle fell from grace in 1971 after overseeing unauthorized bombing raids over North Vietnam. Now his family has allies trying to rehabilitate Lavelle's reputation, obfuscating his "rogue" misdeeds. If today's US air strikes can carpet bomb adversaries and collateral civilian bystanders with precision impunity, you can't blame Lavelle's champions for expecting US impunity to apply retroactively, it's only fair, in American terms.
Choice of NPR vs. FOX is like Obama vs. Bush, difference is only skin deep.
Petition mongers are hoping you'll help pressure the White House Correspondents' Association to assign the front row briefing room seat recently purged of Helen Thomas to the public-serving NPR instead of the right-wing FOX. I favor whoever will unmask the corporate choke hold on the media and government, not who'll perpetuate the facade that policy is guided by public discourse. 19260
Bob Edwards asks “We still Top Dog?”
Longtime neo-liberal shill and NPR war drummer Bob Edwards consults a soothsayer to placate his weekend audience's fears about where their hopeful handbasket appears to be headed. To his question about the USA still being top dog, the economic clairvoyant's answer is YES. Also, America has the psyche and bipolarity of a teenager, leaving us to infer also the same self-unawareness. But the big question was about President Obama's apparent inability to change the course set for him. YEP. The tracks of Bush's trainwreck read like your palm. Nothing to be done.
Success! Afghan trainees mean as US
NPR ran a report praising the Afghan National Army, hoping I suppose to allay US public anticipation that Afghanistan should be conducting its own slaughters and incurring a greater share of soldier casualties. As if not enough ANA are getting caught in the friendly fire of US air strikes. They're skilled fighters, we're assured, especially when they have combat experience in other parts of the country, meaning, they are now being deployed outside their tribal regions, meaning, against other tribes. For every accusation of ANA soldiers mistreating civilians, there are reports apparently of them "eagerly taking up the fight." Those don't sound like contradictory motivations to me. Where their PR for the unpopular ANA means to ameliorate Afghan outcry, the US military trainers seem to be taking credit for inherent tribal hatred.
Healthcare reformist TR Reid visits COS to say universal coverage not possible
COLORADO SPRINGS-- [UPDATED] My question to TR Reid, who speaks tonight at CC's Palmer Hall, is how can voices for health care rights get past the corporate media editors? As Washington Post Denver bureau chief and NPR reporter, Reid's answer will reveal his earnestness, because most clearly his editors have kept the upper hand. The Independent, which is sponsoring tonight's event, has invited two respondents to offer rebuttals, but both represent the health care status quo, there is no one advocating for socialized medicine, automatically framing Reid's centrism as the people's best hope. 15207
US health industry tells Vic to snuff it
Vic Chesnutt took his own life on Christmas Day. By coincidence, he'd just given an upbeat interview to NPR's Fresh Air in spite of an ongoing battle with his health care providers. The segment seemed to pierce the celebrity veil we imagine insulates our talent castes from the worries of everyman. When he died, I reflected on the interview. I was reluctant to mar a eulogy with the villainy of the US medical system -- but then NPR re-aired the piece, en memoriam, minus the damning testimony. They added in its place a remembrance by three colleagues who concluded: "To say poor health care killed Vic Chesnutt would be very reductive." 13225
War on Islam brought home to Ft Hood
Says President Obama of the Fort Hood shooting that claimed 12 US soldiers: “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.” Where does Obama think we are killing our adversaries? On their home soil, actually the majority of them in their own homes, with their family members. 11097
Is NPR blocking health care reform?
If the corporation from which you get your news is NOT TELLING YOU that the US could give its citizens Universal Health Care for less than the cost of today's system, and could do so tomorrow by expanding Medicare offering free medical care to all like every other developed nation, then they are lying to you. How can you expect any reform if the status quo defends itself with the complicity of the corporate media. That includes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, all the more duplicitous for pretending to serve the "public." The CPB's underwriters are big oil, big agra, big pharma, the banks and the insurance villains. Listen closely and you can still hear NPR News pronounce the question mark after "Global Warming." 9252
Ding-Dong, the Liberal Lizard of the Senate is dead… Sing along, Democrats!
As I was heading for work this morning, the imperialist faux liberal, faux public radio, 'National Public Radio' was informing the whole world that 'The Liberal Lion of the Senate' was no more. In Heaven, no doubt... But... if I had been able to tune into Rush's or Dreck's programs there is no doubt, too, that they would have informed me that it was 'The Liberal Liar of the Senate' that had just departed for Hell. Both these delusional camps and their camp followers are wrong though. The truth is that he was neither saint nor devil, but rather something in between. Maybe a lizard? 8500
Does NPR have a hiring impediment?
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO- I can laugh at speech impediments with the best of them. But I'm less comfortable if there's no laugh track. Specifically, when it's a speech-challenged news reporter, I utterly object to being made to decipher from mispronunciation. On the radio, poor diction is as unacceptable as inaudible recording, and disabled- enunciation is as appropriate as a paraplegic delivering your piano. Take NPR's Louisa Lim. 5598
World news and the everyday teenager
There wasn't any conversation to speak of on the drive to school today, so I turned on the news. From the back a teen immediately interjected "Is that completely necessary?" 5118
Palin gets natural lip gloss from NPR
We may all be eagerly awaiting the Thursday VP debate trainwreck, with finally a sense that sanity cannot but otherwise prevail on coverage of the Sarah Palin dunce cap corner. But Americans don't have to look far to see that media bemusement with Palin is not unanimous, in fact NPR is still fawning. Nina Totenberg's recent profile of Palin was as facetious as Palin herself. And the NPR website transcript suggest the staff don't want to leave a record of Totenberg's unbending endorsement. Morning Edition listeners get propaganda, websurfers get something more palatable than pure barf. 4952
This American Life -live it in fear
Did New York City based NPR need to hype fears of an economic collapse to Main Street USA, who's so far not spooked by the bogeyman in Wall Street's closet? NYC called in help from partners in the Chicago, the radio program THIS AMERICAN LIFE. Together they fashioned a monster to scare the heartland. 4914
Mainstream media ignores RNC arrests
(Masked civilian below is a reporter who didn't report what he saw.) RNC protesters in St. Paul are coming up against preemptive arrests and arbitrary detentions. Do you hear about these events? Houses raided, suspects held without Habeas Corpus, a prominent journalist arrested. These are getting no coverage from the mainstream media. TO THROW SALT ON THAT: On Public Radio International's news-lite program THE WORLD, a correspondent lamented the Gustav-upstaged convention and so filed a story decrying his and his fellow international journalists' dearth of news to report! 4599
Obama fields loaded questions from NPR
A public radio listener wrote to criticize the interview of Barack Obama on NPR's All Things Considered. They thought the coverage too favorable, plus there was no equal time given to John McCain. I suspect this is the result when public radio courts the lower denominator of the American media audience. Did they hear the same broadcast as I? All six questions posed to Obama were loaded, disguised in the insufferable sucrose voice-of- concern of Michele Norris. Is she the half-wit she pretends if she composed this soft-pitch spit-ball: Democrats are generally regarded as the 'tax and spend' party. Are you prepared to tell us that tax-n-spend is good for America? 3522
KRCC promoting Amy Goodman and DN!
Most radio listeners are in their cars. That AM stations retain their clout is because for the longest time most cars could only receive the AM signal. Older established technologies present critical links not just older generations but to lower socio-economic populations.
When America wheezes…
"When America sneezes, Asia catches a cold." Or so the adage goes. NPR referred to it as a cliche, and canvassed the foreign press for regional varients. The news being, apparently, that the American economy hiccuped or other such trifle. I cannot help thinking of Chekhov's The Death of a Government Official, adapted for the stage as The Sneeze. 2519
The Cloverfield al-Qaeda Witch Project
Cloverfield is The Blair Witch Terrorist Project where there’s nothing in focus but black unknown, so we’re left to fear what kids do: the dark. Fearing the unknown was for the Dark Age. By exploiting the imagery of a post-democracy America, these filmakers promote our culture of fear by appearing to lampoon it.
Jesus vs. Santa rivalry is nothing new
A holiday detente: As Easter sprung from fertility celebrations befitting the rebirth of spring, so Christmas originated from offerings of the season's greetings to the winter solstice. And while Christians might have taken over the party, they've had to retain the yule tree and other pagan party favors to ensure converts would still RSVP to the festivities. The struggle between Jesus and Santa is nothing new. 2282
Colorado Springs Mack the Knife
The Gazette reported this weekend that Alexander Pring-Wilson, now of Court TV fame, has won a second reprieve against accusations of knifing an Hispanic Boston teen in 2003. Pring-Wilson's legal team has twice successfully confused juries by defaming the victim's poor man's past, detracting from Pring-Wilson's drunken, unprovoked pounce with a knife. In the fawning article about the family's blue blood Wood Avenue heritage, the Gazette oddly shrunk Pring-Wilson's 4-inch-blade Spyderco military jackknife to a "penknife!" We're informed the CC grad will be spending the holidays in Colorado. And will the ex-rugby captain be drinking? I say, won't somebody visit the CSPD and ask if the Colorado College campus hasn't any unsolved closing-time stabbing deaths among its cold cases? 2283
St Patricks Day denoument chronicled
Council must prevent parade pandemonium John Weiss INDY editorial, Dec 6 Largest US Civil Disobedience Movement Underway AfterDowningStreet.org, Dec 6 Ousted protesters unsure of trying luck at St. Patty's parade ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, Dec 1 City attorney says prosecution is 'not in the public interest' CS GAZETTE, Nov 29 2248
To John Weiss, INDY peace ambassador
Dear John, I'm sorry to have let you down in your efforts to negotiate a settlement with the city on the Saint Patrick's Day affair. I have always valued your advice and I remain hopeful that the city will consider a reconciliation over this matter. 2207