I’m feeling bad today for Andrea Seabrook, who quit NPR to start a new project, DecodeDC (via):
And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.
If only she had some form of platform during her 14 years on Capitol Hill, perhaps one that broadcast nationally, which allowed her to report that this kind of lying was going on. Unfortunately she was stifled, just as the rest of the media is about some other lies, those made by the Romney campaign. This is in the context of a bigger point by Ed Kilgore, but it jumped out at me:
[…] the welfare attacks are “new information” because they are just made up, and they are not getting “sustained media attention” because the MSM knows they are based on lies, even if many of them won’t come right out and say so.
I’m sure there are tears on the media pillows over this, but if you take a good look at their faces, you can’t see the tracks of those tears, and you sure as hell can’t tell that they’re upset about those lies, because apparently the best they can do is suffer in silence and pretend that they’re not happening.
RaflW
Seabrook’s comments that you picked seem pathetic. Really, I suppose they would have all just balled up and died if they’d said “the GOP is lying” and then the onslaught of hate and vitriol about the liberal media would have hit them.
Of course, NPR has still been the subject of tons of vitriol about it’s purported liberal bias, so being cowards has accomplished nothing.
beltane
@RaflW: They’re going to be accused of liberal bias no matter what they do, so they might as well do what journalists are supposed to do. Appeasement does not work with Republicans so why bother.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Welcome to the Grand Illusion. This is what happens when the wealthy own the major media outlets. You get a job there and report on the lying as fact or else you leave and find work elsewhere. The ‘reporters’ only care about making money and little else. To do that they have to jump through the hoops their corporate masters are holding up for them.
If anyone drops out then there are thousands of others who are more than willing to step up, take the job and lie to get their paycheck.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
But, but, but if the called the lies, well, lies then people might get mad and not talk to them. Which could mean unemployment for them. Gasp. And the liars would also call them the evil liberal media. Oh, wait…
Schlemizel
TNC had a thread up about how hard it was to generate a Times column twice a week. It was suggested he follow the lead of Brooks, douchehat, Kraphammer and just make shit up, its really easy and it pays very well. (BTW – TNC claims Douchehat is a friend – Jesus wept).
Then yesterday he had one up on the obscene speaking fees Ferguson gets & how his spew in Newsweek will make him more wealthy from those.
But he has not drawn the obvious conclusion. He could be on that gravy train himself if only he would sell is soul to the devil.
Comrade Jake
LOL, no shit. That’s the gist of it, isn’t it?
NPR really isn’t a whole lot better than CNN when it comes to political news. The fact that they’re still relying on Cokie Roberts for conventional wisdom is absolutely maddening.
Villago Delenda Est
Hey, look, those cocktail weenies are not going to eat themselves, you know.
Litlebritdifrnt
Someone was asking the other day about how many more offices etc., Obama has compared to Romney. This is a good article laying it all out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-campaign-is-depending-on-a-strong-ground-game-against-romney/2012/08/23/2649d0f0-ec5e-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_story.html
amk
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yup. Corporates corrupted the public air waves by their usual job security sticks and undeserved pay check carrots.
Good post mm.
geg6
@beltane:
THIS.
Gawd, I’m so ashamed for these asshats. I’ve mentioned this many times, but my mom was a reporter. She was all who, what, when, where, and why. She would never have bought into the idea that she should be afraid to report the facts and to call out lies. Never. I used to be so proud that my mom was a journalist. Now, I never talk about it except for here because it’s a badge of shame. No one today trusts or believes a word out the media’s mouths. And rightfully so.
Shawn in ShowMe
@RaflW:
If Miss Seabrook were forced to say this I’m afraid her head would have exploded. She has lived too long with fantasy to think in such stark terms. Here’s a sample of one of her delusions:
“This is Boehner the rebel: tough, conservative, ideological, uncompromising. He entered the Republican leadership ready to fight for reforms and a smaller government, regardless of the political price.”
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2010/11/rebel-well-just-because.html
Hopefully she will receive the medical attention she needs now that she has left the NPR bubble.
Litlebritdifrnt
Well chalk up another week with a mass shooting. Apparently there has been one at the Empire State Building.
OGLiberal
@Litlebritdifrnt: Looks like police were involved and the one person confirmed dead was wanted and they were after him. Four wounded – not sure if they are cops or civilians or both.
kd bart
But then she wouldn’t had been invited to the best parties. How would’ve she survived without precious access?
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
And speaking of mass shootings, Anders Breivik has been found sane and guilty.
Culture of Truth
19 people were shot in Chicago on Thursday night and early Friday according to police, including 13 in a 30 minute period and 8 on one street
Valdivia
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Great minds! Was just thinking about that. I loved the quote by some republicans saying they don’t need to hire people because they have volunteers. Also–they have so much money, why actually have people on the ground. They also seem to think Obama won the last election without organizing. I hope they keep thinking that.
amk
@Litlebritdifrnt: The authors seem to swoon over mittbot’s money and Obama’s field presence is presented in a skeptical manner with all the rethugs talking heads faithfully stenographed while the dem talking heads are projected as defensive.
Chyron HR
@Culture of Truth:
Did Obama the Gangsta Food Stamp Thug pull the trigger himself, or did he just order the killings?
RaflW
@Comrade Jake:
And to frost the Cokie shit-cake, they serve up the imbecilic Ken Rudin on Talk of the Nation.
That man is the most pedestrian, useless Village idiot ever. And as far as I can tell, he does his political junkie-ism from a third floor walk-up flat in outer Brooklyn with dial-up AOL.
He has never, once, had a new insight or bit of reporting to offer. Ever. He just spews GOP spin with a dash of Chait-esque Democratic unease sprinkled on top.
I’ve pretty much given up on TOTN since Neal Conan took over, and Wednesday is utterly un-listnable with Rudin batting first.
Science Friday is still good. So 20% not shit. Big deal. As a long-time NPR/MPR donor, I struggle to give any more. Its all so lame, and now Car Talk will be rehashes. Ugh.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Valdivia:
I love the snarky repub comments “oh so it takes 3 democrats to do what one republican can do” Yeah right.
@amk:
Yeah but it does give us some insight as to the ground game. Like I said before, there is an OFA office here in my county that went 60/40 to McCain last time. I would bet money that it will go 60/40 to Romney this time but the Obama team have not given up on it, and I think that is smart.
hep kitty
Another shooting, more deaths
Culture of Truth
One confederate soldier is worth 10 damn yankees
Elizabelle
The journalists want to be broadcasters or Sally Quinn in her heyday.
They don’t want to be Seymour Hersh.
Not good when the prom king or cheerleading queen takes up politics and writing seriously about it.
Journalism needs more nerds who don’t care about social invites and status housing.
OGLiberal
NBC reporting that may be a disgruntled employee case. 4-6 wounded, gunman dead. No terrorism, apparently. Whatever the case, this will enable us to have an open a frank conversation about a) arming more citizens so they can stop stuff like this before it happens and b) how Obama’s policies made this guy disgruntled.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Wow, that is such a huge change in the media’s attitude from just two years ago. Amazing to think it’s Mitt Romney, the apex capitalist, would be the one who pushed it to far and broke the Right’s control over the media.
jrg
Well, golly gee, what should we talk about? Climate Change? Healthcare reform? Education? Oh, or maybe Death Panels? Human-animal hybrids? Imaginary tax hikes?
It sounds to me that Seabrook just hopped on another float in the he said/she said clown parade.
gbear
I give to MN public radio. Not much, but as much as it’s worth to me. Every year they contact me about raising my pledge, and I tell them that if they drop All Things Considered and Morning Edition as their prime news programs, I’ll up my pledge. Never going to happen. Those two shows can be incredibly pathetic.
Edit to add Talk of the Nation per RalfW above. Conan is awful.
I’m not familiar with Seabrook’s reporting but it sounds like she’s on to something that needs some daylight. I hope she does a good job at it.
mamayaga
@RaflW:
Then why give at all? It’s totally clear, and has been for a while, that the sweet corporate cash and the C.W. broth the NPR reporters all pickle their brains in have long since outweighed any puny little donations from people like you and me. NPR currently exists to give Repub spin a respectable sheen, quietly pushing the Overton window from the center so that whole areas of public concern are no longer up for discussion in this country.
By the way, there are a lot of independent community radio stations readily available on the web that carry news from Pacifica and other non-centrist sources, and any of them would gladly accept your ears and your donations. My current favorite is KGNU in Boulder, but there are many more out there.
Elizabelle
Seabrook’s right about Red Team, Blue Team.
Because politics does resemble spectator sports. Battle to the last.
Except we don’t expect the Denver Broncos to get up off the field and solve the foreclosure crisis, Medicare, or food safety standards.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Schlemizel:
Every soul is worth selling but not every soul is worth buying. – W.S. Burroughs, paraphrased.
There are many in DC who would sell but it’s a buyer’s market.
mamayaga
@gbear: Have you tried listening to KFAI? If you’re not in the Twin Cities you can hear it on the web. Actually, MN has a whole network of independent, non-NPR, community radio stations that might be alternatives.
gbear
@mamayaga:
I’ll answer that for Minnesota Public Radio. MPR’s local new programming can be incredibly good, and they’ve got a popular music station that attracts listeners (and MPR members) from all corners of the country. I don’t want MPR to disappear.
mamayaga
@gbear: I agree that MN public radio has really good music programming, but it still would be nice if people who are dissatisfied with corporate news and NPR news (increasingly the same thing) would actually support the available alternatives.
gbear
@mamayaga: I don’t listen to KFAI enough to be familiar with their schedule (the guy who sits next to me at work was one of their volunteer DJ’s). The station that I like to stream is KAXE out of northern MN, but they run All Things Considered in the afternoon so I skip that. I do live in St. Paul so I can get KFAI on my car radio. I have it on my presets.
jayjaybear
The tears of clowns…
Triassic Sands
I’m not exactly comfortable defending the MSM, but in the case of the “welfare claims” all of the major fact checkers have awarded those claims their top prizes for dishonesty. Admittedly, that conclusion deserves to be on the front page every day, in every radio and TV report on the subject, and in every campaign discussion between a reporter and a Republican politician, but it isn’t true that the MSM hasn’t “come right out and [said] so.”
On the other hand, I’ve heard reporters challenge Republicans on the welfare issue and the Republicans simply fall back on their most tried and true tactic — they deny reality. Facts don’t matter. Confronted with the facts, they just lie more. As my next door neighbor (a regular Fox News viewer) said to me “Those are your facts.” (She had been claiming that unions had never been richer or more powerful than they are today. I showed her documented refutation of that claim. It did no good at all.)
In his wonderful book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman observes that when confronted with a difficult question, people often simply answer an easier one. If you want to understand how Republicans can ignore reality with such ease, Kahneman’s book may offer some valuable insights.
MikeJ
@Triassic Sands:
There’s a joke to be made here about spherical republicans of uniform density.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@mamayaga:
This, a thousand times this. NPR jumped the shark during the 2000 elections and has gone downhill since helped along by the Bushies stacking the Corp for Public Broadcasting with hacks. The result is a reporter corps that lives in mortal fear of reporting on something then getting smacked down by their editors who in turn were smacked down by the executive editors dealing with the the public-radio equivalent of “suits”.
KOPN, 88.5, in Columbia MO is another of the community radio stations that’s independent of the NPR tote baggers.
Bnad
Meanwhile David Gergen in a CNN professionally-centrist-toned article cites federal spending being very high (24% of GDP) with a link on that 24% figure that links circularly back to the article itself.
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemizel: Well TNC is well on his way to becoming a full fledged Villager, he even compared Obama to Cheney in his last NYT op-ed.
Randy P
OT but there was a mass shooting in NYC this morning and this one is personal for me. Asshole shot up the pedestrians at morning rush. My daughter works in Manhattan. Her fiancee works IN THAT BLOCK! If you know midtown manhattan you can picture how many people there are on the sidewalk at 34th st & 5th ave at rush hour.
Randy P
On topic, I really like my local NPR station in Philly, WHYY. Several excellent shows, including Fresh Air
divF
@MikeJ: No math jokes, please – I, DougJ, and the rest of the small coterie of BJ math geeks will end up trying to hijack the thread.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
I stopped listening to our great local NPR station WDET when they shifted from a music/talk format to talk/music. They say the listeners wanted more call-in programs and interview shows, which I don’t doubt. But it made the whole thing less interesting to me.
Now the radio only comes on to keep the dog company when he’s home alone.
Brachiator
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
When have the wealthy not owned the major media outlets?
@mamayaga:
In Southern California, KPCC (89.3) has some great programs, especially Air Talk wiith Larry Mantle and the Patt Morrison Show. And with Internet streaming, it is easy to find a range of good programming.
KPCC also has an iPhone (and maybe an Android) app.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve been saying that for a long time. He’s working overtime to get some of those delicious cocktail weenies and an invite to Sally and Ben’s.
Berial
“The men American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try and tell them the truth.”
– Henry Louis Mencken
“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
– H. L. Mencken
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
– H. L. Mencken
I think this Mencken guy may have been on to something.
Brachiator
@Berial:
Mencken was a complex guy, capable of great insights, but also strange stumbles.
Fer instince, he loved Huckleberry Finn, but also recommended Ayn Rand’s first novel, We The Living for publication.
Berial
@Brachiator: I think I prefer it that way, because after all, most people are actually complex and we all screw up from time to time.
He does have some wicked great quotes though.
andrewsomething
@schrodinger’s cat:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/the-wages-of-muscular-liberalism/261314/
Cris (without an H)
I’m pleased to see Seabrook getting mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore. It shows there are still minds functioning behind those suppressed media faces.
One of my favorite characterizations of the evolution of the mainstream journalist came from Michael Parenti: first, a reporter asks hard questions and is told by the editor to stop; next time, he thinks of hard questions but decides on his own not to ask; finally, he learns not to even think of the hard questions.
I imagine Andrea Seabrook had reached that stage — all those years as a capitol reporter had trained her not to be so impolite as to question the underlying truths behind the lies she was being told. But look, she finally shook it off. All of us here, at the blog of a guy who finally woke up from the Republican delusion, should appreciate that redemption.
Cris (without an H)
But We The Living was an account of the impacts of the Russian Revolution from a person who had experienced it firsthand. Mencken was justified in thinking it was an important work. It wasn’t until later that Rand let polemic eclipse her storytelling.
catclub
@andrewsomething: At the end TNC says: “I just don’t have enough ideas or, frankly, the skills. It is a really hard job. I actually think the entire form could use some fresh thinking.” about writing 800 words (well) twice a week.
It seems to me that there are lots of people who could write a good 800 words once a month. The Times just has no interest in finding them or promoting them. They prefer a simpler brand.
Brachiator
@Cris (without an H):
RE: Fer instince, he loved Huckleberry Finn, but also recommended Ayn Rand’s first novel, We The Living for publication.
Fair point, even though in correspondence with Mencken, Rand noted that the book was “not at all a story about Russia, but a story of an individual against the masses.” But her Objectivism had perhaps not yet become as hard core and relentless as in her later works.
encephalopath
Pillow biters
gorram
Reminds me of this.
Itinerant pedant
For all the irritation (valid) with NPR for its “appeasing the crazy” ways I continue to give for one salient reason that I have not seen touched by all the snark here: NPR at least acknowledges that there is something more to the world than the US, Isreal, Iraq, Afghanistan, and as it relates to Isreal, Syria.
I give because unlike the purer local stations cited above, they have stringers like Ofavia Quist-Arcton, and acknowledge that there is a fucking CONTINENT south of Europe and are willing and able to spend some resources making sure at least some of us don’t bloody forget that. The next time you smugly assert that some indie news station in Portland is more ideologically pure, I’d like to know if they’re likely to let us know about something going on in Bolivia BEFORE it inconveniences an American tourist.
Maude
Some of the best reporting from Iraq was done by Corey Flintock on NPR. He talked to regular people in Iraq about how they did things, their small businesses and such.
He told the story of a man who had to deliver food to his restaurant across a bridge the US military had blocked off. It was involved and really wonderful.
Kathleen
@Shawn in ShowMe: Dear God.
Cris (without an H)
I was not aware of that. Apparently the Bolsheviks had already destroyed poor Ayn’s sanity by that time, she just hadn’t perfected her invective.
schrodinger's cat
@andrewsomething: Well I am glad he admitted his mistake. So there is still hope for him.