Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.
At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.
It’s in their fucking code of ethics:
9. NPR journalists must get permission from the Vice President for their Division or their designee to appear on TV or other media. It is not necessary to get permission in each instance when the employee is a regular participant on an approved show. Permission for such appearances may be revoked if NPR determines such appearances are harmful to the reputation of NPR or the NPR participant.
10. In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than rather than fact-based analysis.
The wingers won’t be happy until they’re turned NPR into another arm of Murdoch media. If NPR doesn’t know this, they deserve to be defunded even more than I already think they deserve to be defunded.
leinie
This.
Add Juan Williams to the list, too.
And yes, this is why you no longer get my money, NPR station. What little I have goes to PBS for Frontline.
neill
If there is one voice on the radio that makes me want to put a bullet through my brain while i am weeping incessantly, it is the voice of mara liasson…
r€nato
well, I find it hard to disagree with that. It’s just as partisan as ever!
Unless her bosses were alluding to the explicit role FNC played in organizing for the teabagger protests… in any case, good on the NPR bosses.
WereBear
Competing media.
If they can’t wipe them out, they will co-opt them.
dr. bloor
And the consequences of her decision will be….?
Juan Williams, too, also.
And Cokie Roberts, not because she’s partisan but because her analyses are so pickled they need to keep her in a jar between appearances.
IndieTarheel
Fixamundefinified.
Zifnab
First off, I think defunding public radio and television is fucking retarded. You might as well toss the keys to Comcast, Rupert Murdoch, and Wolf Blitzer once you’ve turned out the lights.
This is the same baby-with-the-bathwater mentality that you get from little old ladies at Sarah Palin rallies being asked, “What part of the government budget should be cut?” and giving the response, “All of it!”
NPR did a five day expose on Brazil last week. It focused on politics, economy, culture, and trade with the fast growing country south of the border. Where the hell else am I supposed to get that kind of content on another network?
But even beyond that, you’re complaining that Mara Liasson is being called to the mat, but… what? They’re not showing her the door fast enough? This was the only network I’ve ever seen (short of TDS) even give a silent fart about the partisanship of FOX News and you want to cut their funding because they’re not zealous enough? This is it! This is the peak of anti-FOX zealotry. As good as it gets.
The media is tragically bad enough as it is. No need to let the “meh” be the enemy of the good, when everything else on the air is extremist right wing talk radio or disc jockey ramblings.
Oooo! Edit buttons! THANK YOU!
arguingwithsignposts
Who wants to bet she didn’t even watch anything? It’s hard to see what you’re not looking at.
And, fwiw, why did they tell her to watch the network itself? Why not tell her to check out media matters or any of the other places who’ve been fact-checking FOX “news”?
debit
@neill: And Cokie Roberts. I particularly like the way she starts a condescending sentence with “look” as in “Look, you cretinous dolt…” God, I hate her.
NPR has not had access to my ears or pocketbook for a few years now. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
kid bitzer
sure, she should be fired.
but hasn’t she been punished enough already?
“they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.”
that’s inhumane–i hope her lawyer pled it down to 5-10.
Keith G
There was a time, say, 17 yrs ago, when I actually caught Ms. Liasson in the act of committing actual reporting and looked forward to her segments. I cannot recall any instance since about 2000 when I have learned anything new from her.
Can anyone here point to any original reporting that I may have missed?
Despite her title, she is in essence just another Cokie. NPR needs to trim the staffing redundancies before I give them more money.
Dork
Concerns that it had grown more partisan?
Yes, and I have concerns that I may likewise grow more older to. Just concerns, however. Cant say with any confidence or evidence.
aimai
NPR introduced a boiler plate update on Obama’s copehagen visit by “jokingly” attacking him for failing to combine that trip with his peace prize trip to reduce his “carbon footprint.” What fucking assholes.
aimai
Max
Since when does NPR have ethics?
Punchy
Fixed for the fuckin truth.
Brian J
@neill:
I haven’t watched Fox for more than a few minutes in a long time. (The same goes for the other stations, for the most part.) But I seem to remember finding her irritating because, if she was repeating Republican spin, she seemed reasonable enough, with her “I was a Democrat, then a Republican, now one of those wonderful INDEPENDENTS” mentality, to make it work, unlike Coulter who comes across like a crazy bitch.
geg6
I haven’t and won’t listen or give to NPR any more. Liasson is the least of the problems there. Juan Williams, anyone? And until they issue a mea culpa accompanied by a photo of all NPR correspondents, editorial staff, and executives on their knees begging my forgiveness for their idiocy in regard to the use (or not) of the word torture, they will not be getting my attention or money ever again.
And I have edit in Firefox! Yay!
Shibby
@aimai:
I too was privy to this piece of BS during my morning commute. It was kind of funny because I was thinking what a great piece it was and how I was gonna toss them ten bucks with a message that yes this is how actual reporting is done. But no they couldn’t resist returning to their douchebag ways.
DougJ
But even beyond that, you’re complaining that Mara Liasson is being called to the mat, but… what? They’re not showing her the door fast enough?
Yes.
David
Appear where ever you want but NPR should insist on honesty when appearing on it’s network.
Brian J
I think there’s an awful lot of confusion about what the problem is. I suspect that a lot of people are upset not at bias per se, but at its increasingly propaganda-like nature. “Bias” can mean a skewing of the way the news is presented, but that’s not what is starting to disturb a lot of people. If they simply presented news and commentary that was conservative but honest, I don’t think anyone sensible, anywhere, would really have a problem with anyone’s participation.
It’s an important point to make because it helps make the real damage does a lot clearer.
gbear
I’m in agreement with Zifnab that NPR does some valuable reporting once you get away from the half dozen ‘broadcast personalities’ that are stuck stuck stuck in the village. It wouldn’t bother me a bit if Liasson was sacked (along with the rest of the All Things Considered and Morning Edition crews), but I’m not going to stop funding public radio. It’s way too necessary when you consider the alternatives.
I contribute to Minnesota Public Radio (just enough to get the ‘Live Current’ CD that they offer every year) but I always make it a point to write them a paragraph about how NPR has really dropped the ball when it comes to political reporting.
jwb
@Brian J: Yes, it’s definitely the making-shit-up propaganda quality of Fox that irks me rather than its conservative slant.
akaoni
I agree with Zifnab and gbear here. One must remember that NPR and PBS have just emerged from 8 years of the Bush administration trying to re-make public broadcasting into a clone of their corporate brethren. (Ken Tomlinson anybody?) Unfortunately, to some extent they succeeded.
NPR is one of the few non-profit, corporate news outlets left. Do they have some objectionable commentators? Sure, but denying funding to them is only going to push them closer to the corporate trough. The fact that NPR is questioning their correspondents’ connections to objectionable corporate outlets like Fox is a step in the right direction. They may finally be emerging from the war that the Bush administration waged on their very existence.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Keith G:
Nope. Ain’t been any. She’s become a poster child for what’s wrong with NPR.
And they won’t fire Cokie or Juan the Plaigerizer (it’s why he “left” the WaPo years ago before he was fired) because they’re “commentators” and thus, don’t fall under their rules for reporters.
Not that Liarson’s been a reporter this millenium.
neill
NPR went fluffy several years ago…they’ve not seen a dime from me for years, and i’ve not listened in years except by accident…
…the last was about 2 weeks ago, catching “three narratives” about the Afghanistan war:
they had the Max Boot narrative,
the John Kerry narrative, and
some french fried supposedly lefty narrative…
and, uh, no fourth “get out, get the regional leaders and the afghan honchos dealing, etc. etc non-military (and only viable — as will eventually be seen) solution” narrative at all…
NPR is generally the same “Villager” bull shit with a slightly higher reading comprehension score…
And so, in all vulgarity — and beyond Mara, Cokie and Juan — just fuck NPR…
(and it’s a pity Pacifica has gone so paranoid schizophrenic… i guess Amy Goodman is our last hope)
Kryptik
NPR should’ve asked her to watch it for 30 days for signs of explicit bias, not signs of increased bias.
I’m not sure whether the weasel room in that task was for Ms. Liasson or for themselves, but…
kindness
Morning Edition is already Phaux lite. It drive me crazy they’re so over the top about it but act like they are ‘sensible’.
Screw them. They don’t get any of my money any more. I know when bush43 took over his goons replaced a bunch of the producers and program directors & they are still there.
We really should be every bit as savage as the neocons. Fire the assholes & put in Rachael Maddow types in their place.
Brian J
@akaoni:
That’s possible, but if instead of supporting NPR, you support something else that tries to go beyond the confines of corporate media, isn’t it still as valuable? Sure, some newer non profit may not be as successful, but they’ll never get there unless they receive funding from somewhere.
woody
They diodn’t fiore her for refusing to resign from leadership of a bitterly partisan ‘womens’ club’ in DC during the early years of the Bushevik regime…I doubt they’ll fire her for this…
But, please gawd, take that feculent, gum-flapping, pitiable excuse for a “journalist,” and reliable GOPuke apologist, J. “Wan” Williams, too
Bob In Pacifica
Always like to remind people, Cokie Roberts and her hubby worked for Gloria Steinem’s CIA propaganda shop during those international student festivals back in the fifties or sixties (look it up).
Just remember the model of the town cryer. If the town cryer went around shouting how bad the king was he wouldn’t have a job. NPR has been effectively taken over, just like Steinem infiltrated the National Student Association and then became a symbol of feminism. The facts are as important as how you view the facts, and the Steinems, the Robertses, the Williamses, and Liassons of the media are there to give us all assistance in how to think and feel about the world around us.
woody
I wonder how many of you recall NPR (Never Provoke Republicans) back in the days when they had a weekly segment from Michael Harrington (“The Other America”, 1966?), who at the time was the president of the Democratic Socialists of America???
akaoni
@ brianj
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I support my local Iowa Public Radio annually for all their programming, of which NPR is just a portion. Further, NPR still does some good investigative reporting. Yes, it is unfortunate that Morning Edition and ATC have become to come extent corporate-lite broadcasting, but this trend isn’t irreversible. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I think that their questioning Liasson’s connections with Fox is probably one of the first signs of NPR regaining some of the independence they lost under the Bush Administration (I am hopeful it is this rather than simply running left under Obama Administration pressure).
Personally, I think that public broadcasting is a vital check on corporate media. Is it the only check? Of course not, but as I pointed out earlier supporting both isn’t mutually exclusive.
Brian J
@akaoni:
Yes.
woody
akaoni:
Nothing ever “goes back” to become what it ‘was.”
THeir investigations of the failures of the Army to tend to the psychological wounds or returning troops were brilliant…but nothing approaching them has appeared in two years, and Danny Zwerdling has appatrntly been emasculated…
NPR is totally, irremediably, and irredeemably fucked. Robert Siegal –the program’s editor (making over $250k/yr) will not countenance even the name of Noam Chomsky to be spoken on ATC.
So yes, I am afraid that, for all intents and purposes, NPR is a dead letter…
Three of them, actually
And you can’t spell R E P U B L I C A N without NPR…
Danton
Mara, Juan… yeah yeah yeah. And Kokie, too. The moment Kokie’s asked a question, I think about 95% of the NPR audience knows exactly what her answer will be.
And Bob Edwards. WTF? Why did they get rid of him? Where is he? Bring him back.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Yeah, well, the wingers are no longer running things. If you want to start a movement to return NPR to the independent voice it once was, go for it. But defunding it? What a bonehead idea. Even on it’s worst day, NPR is head-and-shoulders above the MSM.
Taylor
I stopped listening to NPR after Barbara Bradley Hagerty infiltrated them. Is she still shilling for the “Christian nation” agenda?
For those that say it was the Bush years that drove NPR to the dark side, au contraire. I vividly remember Renee Montaine (if memory serves) hosting a focus group during a presidential debate between Gore and Bush. The focus group were all old white men from the South, and all gave the debate to Bush. WTF? How fucking stupid do you think I am?
NPR and PBS have always reflected the essentially conservative DC journalistic conventions. The Newshour since MacNeil left has certainly been unbearable, I haven’t watched in years. Juan Williams is just a whore, I am sure for him the parroting of RW talking points is strictly business.
The bright spots are rebroadcast British news, and Frontline. I suspect the latter will eventually be shut down by a Rovian ratfucking operation. I am sure Lowell Bergman is real careful to dot his i’s and cross his t’s.
Shawn in ShowMe
Based on observation, the road to becoming a “top political correspondent” in broadcast media requires becoming a Villager. It requires cozying up to Washington insiders to ensure continued access.
If you’re going to withhold your dollar from NPR stations please don’t do it based on their “top people” having a Villager mentality. That’s just the cost of doing business. It’s the youngsters and the people that don’t have their own shows that do the heavy lifting there.
They are the ones who produce insightful pieces like the Brazil expose. And it was the youngsters that NPR had on the ground that provided the best mainstream media coverage of the Iranian elections. But they can only do that if they have access to the resources that NPR provides.
uh_clem
You guys are being too hard on NPR. Yes, I agree that Juan Williams and Mara Liasson are stooges in the employ of Fox News who spin GOP talking points whenever possible, and that includes their analysis pieces on NPR.
That said, it’s perfectly reasonable for NPR to provide an outlet for views that may conflict with the views of their listeners. If Williams and Liasson were identified as “Fox New’s Juan Williams” and “Fox New’s Mara Liasson” I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with them. The point is to clue the audience in as to the viewpoint; since Liasson and Williams basically just mouth the party line the listeners should be aware of that. (I’m not sure what to do about Cokie – maybe “Vacuous Washington Cocktail party Maven Cokie Roberts”)
There’s still lot’s of good eggs at NPR: Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep is one of the few interviewers anywhere outside the BBC who’ll press difficult followup questions. Anything by Peter Overby is worth hearing. I think they do try to maintain a down-the-line neutral reporting stance, and the fact that this sometimes results in some “false balance” reportage probably goes with the territory.
Anyway, if you agreed with everything you heard on NPR you should probably tune away because at that point you’ve entered a bias-confirming echo chamber ala Fox.
And please, let’s leave the “ideological purity” thing to the Republicans. Let them drive away anyone who’s not a “true believer”. We don’t need to shrink our tent by attacking NPR as insufficiently liberal.
BigSwami
@jwb: How in the world does anyone defend what conservatism has become without resorting to making shit up?
akaoni
@ Woody
Maybe it won’t go back to what it was before Tomlinson and co took a hacksaw to it. Then what alternative do I have? I live in the middle of Iowa and for radio it’s either Public Radio or Rush and Clearchannel. That’s it! If public radio goes down then the corperate media conglomerates win again. Bottom line, I’ll continue to support public radio with it’s flawed but ultimately positive influence on the radio airwaves in my community. Even if NPR is kind of crappy I still know I’m supporting radio which keeps shows like This American Life broadcasting in my area.
Now if there was an alternative news service I could get my local public radio to sign on for, let me know what it is and I’d be happy to start writing letters apleanty to my local public radio service. But as it is, I think that public radio and NPR is about one hundred times better than the radio alternatives in the area.
ppcli
Appear on Fox news if you want. But please don’t play us for fools. Anyone who could watch Fox news and deny that it is a propaganda arm of the Republican party is either mind-numbingly stupid or is dishonest to a degree that would have shamed Saddam’s spokesman. Either way I don’t want to have to listen to it on the radio. Thank God I’m close enough to the border to pick up CBC radio. At least when rightwing hacks accuse the CBC of being left-leaning, the accusation is more or less true. (Or at least, it used to be in the good old days.)
Persia
@aimai: I caught that this morning. What the fucking fuck.
les
The problem goes beyond Liasson, Cokie and Williams (do NPR reporters/personalities appear regularly anywhere but Fox?); NPR has stopped doing, for the most part, what I used to listen to them for. They just don’t actually tell you the facts of/behind stories, they parrot the village line. During the election, they produced learned panels evaluating the political impact of campaign ads, with never a mention of whether the ad bore any reasonable connection to truth or accuracy. They never can bring themselves to say “torture,” describing acts that are textbook legal torture. Morning Edition has started a new feature to look at the truth of claims about health care reform–but they’ve been reporting those claims forever, with never a word about truth or falsity. Sorry, they’re just not earning my support with the occasional good bit of reporting–the context of their domestic news is pure village, catapulting the propaganda without explanation.
chrome agnomen
fuck mara liasson, and fuck NPR. cowards who capitulated. to say NPR is head and shoulders above msm is like saying hitler is head and shoulders above stalin because he didn’t kill nearly as many people. so what? if i can’t depend on them for unbiased news reporting, they’re dead to me.
Bobby Thomson
NPR became an arm of Murdoch media at least six years ago. Where have you been?
geg6
@chrome agnomen:
I couldn’t agree more. And all those defending NPR must not have a problem with their stated editorial policy to NOT CALL TORTURE WHAT IT IS: TORTURE.
No fucking way this daughter of a journalist who knew what journalism is supposed to be will fund an organization that seems to take its cues from Newspeak.
Eric U.
@leinie: same here. I will not consider giving NPR another dime until Williams and Liasson are gone. I used to give every year, sometimes more than once. Nowadays they still call me and I tell them to forget it until NPR stops letting the republicans lie on air.
JMC in the ATL
Unfortunately, there’s no way to contribute to one’s local station and not contribute to NPR due to the way NPR is funded. And I may be in the minority, but there are plenty of correspondents whom I still love to listen to. Nina Tottenberger, and Silvia Poggioli (I’m sure those are both mispelled). And I like the weekend Morning Edition anchors.
But it is more than that. As much as NPR News may piss me off, shows like Diane Rehm, The Splendid Table, Car Talk, and Fresh Air are favorites of mine. Terry Gross alone is a national treasure, and worth the price of admission.
(And of course I agree about Liasson, Williams, and Roberts)
El Cid
If I’m going to give money to a radio station (as opposed to a particular show or network), it’s going to be KPFA or WBAI, because I actually regularly listen to their public affairs & news broadcasts, whereas for me “NPR” stations are endurable for their entertainment programming — Garrison Keillor or This American Life.
richard wang
@akaoni: Looking around a bit I can see several news organizations that deserve it more. My favorite underfunded group is Al Giordano’s The Field and Narconews. They have done more reporting on the farcical elections in Honduras than anywhere else. Their coverage of Mexico, central and south america is the best I have seen.
I just can’t bring myself to support NPR with money when some of that goes to Cokie, Juan, and Mara. Why fund the opposition villager viewpoint?
uh_clem
@akoni
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
and
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/programs/
BTW, you may recognize some of them and think that they’re NPR (e.g. This American Life, Prarie Home, etc). PRI and APM are a separate organizations. PRI distributes the BBC in the US, so you could ask for that.
One NPR show that I’d highly recommend is On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/) – if your local affiliate doesn’t carry it, you should ask them.
Counterspin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterSpin) is another good choice.
James K. Polk, Esq.
After playing way too much Knights of the Old Republic this weekend, I give you this video-game insight:
What better way to destroy your enemy than to convert them to your side?
The right wing playbook for NPR involves making them enough like the corporate media to make them unpalatable for liberal consumption.
It is working.
The solution is to revise the ethics standards so that anyone caught reporting verifably false information (ala Fox News) is publicly reprimanded and eventually banned from the network. That would provide a powerful incentive for reform in news reporting. No one wants to be thrown off a station for lying (everyone could bring it up when a liar pundit came on the air).
Fox isn’t accountable because they want their analysts to distribute falsehoods. NPR can and should be held to higher standards because they are a “public” institution.
jimBOB
Part of the problem is that in the U.S., public broadcasting of whatever stripe is less and less public and more and more either commercial broadcasting with a slightly modified business model (thus all those ads that precede and follow every show) or a straight appeal to whitebread suburbanites (pledge week at my local PBS station is an endless parade of fossil concerts). Over time the government grants to support supposedly public broadcasting have dwindled and dwindled, leaving the organizations beholden to corporate interests and middlebrow sensibilities.
I think the time has come for us to decide if we really want public broadcasting, and if we do, to cut out the corporate sponsors and make it truly public again. For what we blow on a day occupying the middle east, we could have a really public system, not a mouthpiece for corporate interests/Perry Como jukebox.
Liasson and Williams should been fired long ago. Liasson in particular was already horrid by the late Clinton administration, sneering openly and everything that democrats said.
greennotGreen
My hope is that by diminishing NPR’s financial stream, we can show our displeasure with the course they’ve taken, and they might decide to change. I have no problem cutting them off because our local affiliate has also gone teh suxor. How else can we tell them how seriously we disapprove of their actions?
Elie
I havent sent NPR a dime in years and don’t plan to for exactly this reason…
NPR way back in the 90’s was independent — no more for a long long time
Redshirt
My long held opinion about this Fox-NPR business is that it is win-win for Fox. They get an air of authority and objectivity by employing NPR entertainers, and they can use these entertainer’s opinions for the following formulation: “Even the Liberal NPR thinks….”.
The “Even the Liberal ___________” technique is very effective. TNR’s been using it for years.
Cain
@kindness:
I’m sorry, but I’m going to call bullshit. I’ve listen to Morning Edition regularly and comparing it to Fox is bullshit. There is a lot of good content out there, maybe their political stuff might not be your cup of tea, but there lots of other stuff that is top notch.
You’re general problem is that the atmosphere in Washington is fucked up and that we have a cottage industry of analysts and pundits that are completely fucked up. Much as I would like to fire some of these people (and they should..let the next generation of hungry reporters in) but these things are a reflection there.
You want to change NPR? Donate more and write letters.
cain
LindaH
Of course NPR is no longer independent. I used to listen to it for years on my drive into and from work. Shortly after George W was sworn in, they calmly presented a piece on how the Bush administration was turning the oversight of the federal dollars over to a member of the RNC. Then several of their long term commentators, show runners and reporters were “let go”. After that NPR was pretty well in the position of reporting carefully or having all of its federal funding pulled. I don’t listen much any more (shorter commute), but I do understand their realities, go soft or die. I do wish the current administration would change this, but with the war in Afganistan, the economic meltdown, trying to pass health care, I think who runs NPR is way down on their list of priorities.
bobbo
This is Liasson’s (and Cokie’s, and Juan’s) out – since they sound exactly as loony on NPR as they sound on Fox (or the 50 other places Cokie appears), they pass NPR’s ethics test!!
Mr. Wonderful
Glad this has come up. But WTF is up with “asked her to watch it for thirty days”? And did they also send her to her room and tell her to think about what she’s done?
Once I saw that she was on Fox, I immediately lost all respect for her as a reporter. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Being on Fox–paid, that is, as opposed to being interviewed–is like visiting Chernobyl shortly after the unpleasantness. We’re supposed to think you’re NOT contaminated? Please.
joshers
I don’t get it. You want to de-fund NPR because two of their political commentators appear on Fox (thereby turning NPR into an arm of the Murdoch/villager/beltway/propaganda machine), but at the same time, you consistently link to, and read the f@$king Politico (thereby directly contributing to the Murdoch/villager/beltway/propaganda machine)?! You must recognize the irony here, no?
JK
@El Cid:
The news coverage provided by Pacifica Radio stations such as KPFA and WBAI is 1,000 times better than NPR.
Liasson is a clueless, useless tool.
Xanthippas
What zifnab said.
Mark
I used to be a 50-hour-a-week listener, but they were firmly wedged into the Two Parties = Two Valid Opinions trap by 2003 at the latest. I shut NPR off the day after the 2004 election – any rational analyst should have been able to inform listeners that the re-election of GWB was a disaster. NPR just sucked it up and looked forward to private social security accounts.
Classic Rock was killing me back in August so I switched over to Morning Edition one Friday and the interviewer was badgering Sen. Menendez because “he hadn’t done a good enough job of selling health care reform.”
A real public broadcaster, supported by listeners like me, would make up its own f-ing mind by researching the issue. But NPR sticks to its guns: maybe torture is good or maybe it’s evil and banned by international law; maybe uninsured people deserve to be uninsured or maybe their existence is our nation’s greatest moral failing. As far as NPR is concerned, “Who’s to say who’s right?”
Sure, NPR brings me 94-year-old Daniel Schorr bitching about how kids these days don’t remember what a brilliant politician Alben Barkley was, but if they’re in bed with Tom DeLay and Mitch McConnell and ADM, they don’t need or get my money.
Aside: KPFA doesn’t get anything from me either. Amy Goodman spends all of her time pronouncing people’s names in other languages…Then when a guest corrects her, she says “whatever.” It’s no better than saying “eye-raq.”
JK
@Mark:
This is the most childish criticism of Amy Goodman I have ever seen. It’s also the lamest excuse ever used for not supporting KPFA.
Mark D
Liason is the reason I give to our real community independent station here in KC (KKFI) rather than NPR.
For me, it happened right before the 2006 midterms, right after Kerry’s idiotic joke went awry. NPR had Liason on and, in what was supposed to be a hard-nosed, fact-filled news story, she began it by saying: “John Kerry, that flip-flopping wind surfer who lost the last election, blah blah blah.”
I had never screamed at my radio before, and haven’t since — mainly because I haven’t listened to NPR since then.
Not sure about defunding it entirely, but they sure as hell won’t get any of my money until Mara, Juan and Cookie (yes, misspelled on purpose) are gone. Getting rid of their reliance on David “What Do You Mean Applebee’s Don’t Have Salad Bars?” Brooks would be nice as well.
uh_clem
repost….
@akoni
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
and
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/programs/
BTW, you may recognize some of them and think that they’re NPR (e.g. This American Life, Prarie Home, etc). PRI and APM are a separate organizations. PRI distributes the BBC in the US, so you could ask for that.
One NPR show that I’d highly recommend is On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/) – if your local affiliate doesn’t carry it, you should ask them.
Counterspin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterSpin) is another good choice.
uh_clem
Any idea why the site is eating comments?
Try this again…
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
and
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/programs/
BTW, you may recognize some of them and think that they’re NPR (e.g. This American Life, Prarie Home, etc). PRI and APM are a separate organizations. PRI distributes the BBC in the US, so you could ask for that.
One NPR show that I’d highly recommend is On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/) – if your local affiliate doesn’t carry it, you should ask them.
Counterspin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterSpin) is another good choice.
uh_clem
….try this one again….
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
and
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/programs/
BTW, you may recognize some of them and think that they’re NPR (e.g. This American Life, Prarie Home, etc). PRI and APM are a separate organizations. PRI distributes the BBC in the US, so you could ask for that.
One NPR show that I’d highly recommend is On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/) – if your local affiliate doesn’t carry it, you should ask them.
Counterspin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterSpin) is another good choice.
uh_clem
It seems to be caught in the spam filter…
@akoni
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
and
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/programs/
uh_clem
@akoni
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at
http://www.pri.org/program-list.html
uh_clem
The spam filter here is all fucked up.
Public Radio International (PRI) and American Public Media has several shows that you might want to request. See their program lists at a url that the retarded spam filter won’t let me post.
uh_clem
Wow, the spam filter here is all fucked up.
I can’t post a simple response.
Scooter Magruder
Most of you must not get up early enough on Saturday to hear Scott Simon on NPR, or else you would have been hating on him, because, man, he asks for it. “This is Scott Simon interviewing some famous old jazz guy and telling you all about how Scott Simon loves his music and about how Scott Simon is glad to point out that Scott Simon lives in Chicago, just like the old jazz guy, and that Scott Simon is a big fan, and now I’m going to laugh really uproariously at an off-hand comment that wasn’t that funny. Damn, I’m glad to be Scott Simon.”
Don SinFalta
So, to those of you who think we shouldn’t defund NPR because it would be better for fix it, just how do you suggest we go about doing that? The villagers that infest the news organization can be expected to continue blithely swimming around in the cesspool of DC conventional wisdom without some kind of shock. It’s my impression that threatening their funding stream would be such a shock, but maybe you can think of something else that would motivate them. Just saying let’s fix it is a bit too unspecific for my taste.
I do regret no longer contributing to my local public radio station, since its local programming is excellent, and, yes, so are some of the offerings from NPR (Fresh Air for instance). But money is fungible, and there’s no evidence anyone is paying any attention to my emails decrying the sad state of ATC and Morning Edition. So I just stopped giving at all and made sure to tell them why.
Mark D
Somewhat related: Over at Sadly, No!, El Cid once again steps up with teh funnay—comparing Liason with Star Trek alien Balock. (Note he calls it Blalock, which is wrong.)
I have to say the resemblance is stunning …
Howlin Wolfe
@woody: Yep, I remember, and took it for granted we’d get a balance of views from NPR. How naive was I?
bobbo
Scooter Magruder:
That is Scott Simon to a T. That’s why I can proudly say I used to get up early on Saturday mornings.
gil mann
Everybody bragging about how they stopped pledging to NPR back when Scott Simon was nice to John Bolton or whatever better not let me catch ’em listening to MY radio station.
someguy
Anybody in public broadcasting to the right of the centrist Bill Moyers should be fired, and put in stocks for public mockery and pelting with copies of Going Rogue.
jason
@akaoni, democracy now! is a high-quality daily news magazine
Xanthippas
Also, I don’t know how any idiot could fail to support a radio network that produces this.
Okay, whatever. It bothers me, but the fact that NPR fails this test doesn’t mean I’m going to turn off the radio and get my news of the world from Balloon Juice. In my opinion, it’s this sort of thing that shows a lack of perspective that comes from failing to engage with the world outside of politics.
gil mann
Too true, but don’t forget–everyone who listens to NPR is constantly trying to find excuses not to pledge (I thought I had mine in the bag but then business picked up).
Y’know, people rag on ’em for the torture thing, but NPR devotes whole segments to whether or not they made the right choice by not calling torture torture, so right there they’re more legit than any other outlet in any medium.
Of course, I get WNYC, so this is sort of like defending comic books when all you’ve read is Watchmen.
Ian Monroe
The correct reason to fire Mara Liasson is that she just spews conventional wisdom every Monday morning. No need to find an ethics violation, she just isn’t that great.
IndieTarheel
@Danton: Looks like he wound up on XM.
brantl
NPR sucks for the lack of willingness to tell the actual truth. They’re just as involved in the he said, then his opponent said shit as everyone else is, and they were just as willing to report the unsubstantiated shit as everyone else (except McKlatchey, they deserve credit) in the MSM. Their reporting has sucked.
David
As a mater of clarification, NPR is not funded, at least not in great part, by the govt. The majority of money comes from corporate underwriting (donations) and money from stations that buy NPR content. Little money is made from individual donations.
When you say it needs to be “defunded” I imagine you mean by the govt which makes no sense.
Marc V
So I suppose they will also push anyone from NPR from appearing on Hardball, Countdown, and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC because of their bias too?