[cross-posted at NPR Check]

How would you complete the following sentence:

For nearly two years the US economy has been battered by a recession brought on by _________________.

I would guess most semi-informed people would mention the housing bubble and mortgage backed securities (unless you are so completely incompetent as to not know about the $8 trillion dollar housing bubble!). Somewhere in the discussion one would hope to hear about the sub-prime lending spree that hugely profited unscrupulous mortgage brokers and victimized many borrowers. Right?

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Monday meant that there were only 45 shopping days before Christmas, and NPR was in full consumerism mode.

If you were casually listening to Morning Edition, you might have thought NPR was reporting on its own newsreader stars - Montagne, Inskeep, Siegel, Norris, and Block -

"[They]...have names like Mr. Squiggles, Chunk, Pipsqueak....[and] are embedded with a computer chip so they can squeak, chirp and respond"

- and not the $10 MUST HAVE TOY of the season - computerized hamsters:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Is Sorya Sarhaddi Nelson really and truly in Afghanistan? I've heard her interviewed the last day or so regarding the fortunes of of the US debacle in Afghanistan - in light of the non-runoff runoff and the "victory" of Hamid Karzai - and I can't say I've learned anything from it.

Nelson was on ATC Monday talking to Michelle Norris and this exchange occurred:

Norris: "With Hamid Karzai now declared the official winner of the presidential election, to what degree does that now solve the political uncertainty in Afghanistan?"

[cross posted at NPR Check]

On Friday I was staying late at work and before leaving heard this promising start to a story on All Things Considered:

"This week, we've been reading a vivid narrative in the New York Times by the journalist David Rohde. He was held captive for seven months by the Taliban. He was moved frequently from house to house all over remote parts of Pakistan. And one detail in this story made us particularly curious."

Holy cow! I thought, NPR is going to allude to the three rather stunning observations contained in Rohde's articles which Glenn Greenwald so aptly wrote about a few days ago:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

[cross posted at NPR Check]

It kills me how clueless the supposed brightest lights in our nation often are. Yesterday on Morning Edition, Inskeep interviewed Gail Collins about a book (When Everything Changed) she wrote looking at the transformation of American women since 1960. I heard this little exchange and scratched my head.

Inskeep: "I feel like reading this, that you do get a sense of women not necessarily grasping an opportunity, but assuming an economic obligation."

Collins gets around to explaining this as follows:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

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.

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Last Saturday Scott Sermon made this claim about the US war in Afghanistan:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Yesterday, I heard for the first time on NPR about how the public option has "widespread public support." Here's Melissa Block on Tuesday's ATC:

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

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.

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Monday's Morning Edition featured another NPR exclusive on Afghanistan. Mary Louise Kelly was on to explain all about the Two-Clock Theory of War. Opening the report Renee Montagne explains:

"We begin this morning with Afghanistan and a story about two clocks: one ticks in Washington, the other in Kabul. They measure progress in the war. The challenge: they are moving at very different speeds" [notice the bloodless euphemisms - "progress" and "challenge"].

All perspectives in the story are provided by war advocates [Peter Feaver -Bush speech-shaper, warmakers Petraeus, Gates, and Mullen - and Steven Biddle, CFR fellow, who Kelly notes is "part of a team advising General Stanley McChrystal...on his war strategy"].

According to Kelly and all her experts, there are always two clocks in US warmaking: the grown-up, big-boy clock of the presidents, generals, and admirals as they bomb, occupy, kill, and destroy. This serious and mature clock ticks very slowly and takes years to produce progress and - ultimately - victory. Opposed to this is the childish, impatient clock of the American public which whizzes away at double or triple time and leads the uninformed masses to reject the wisdom of the wars that the serious grown-ups are running. Kelly's guest Feaver states that "A longstanding criticism of democracies, but especially the American democracy, is that Americans are impatient. They want to see success sooner than later."

[cross posted at NPR Check]

On Weekend Edition Sunday, Lynn Neary, speaking to NPR's Tom Bowman about the possibility of more US troops being sent to Afghanistan, asks, "Will General McChrystal be asking for more troops?"

In explaining that McChrystal probably will ask for more troops Bowman states,

"The big effort he's making is protecting the population and to do that you need more troops."

And this passes for journalism?

[cross posted at NPR Check]
Part I - School Daze

Mara Liasson - on Tuesday (September 8, 2009) ATC, tries to normalize the wingnut stupidity, insanity and virulence of the Republican-led attacks on Obama's live address to schools. Of his speech she says,

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

NPR achieved quite a feat Thursday morning: without even mentioning the CIA, NPR aired two CIA-friendly stories. First, NPR featured rehabbed heroin addict, author, filmmaker, and macho-schmaltz purveyor Richard Farrell imagining that his son's going to Afghanistan as a soldier is directly related to his own heroin addiction in the 80's:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Fox News makes no bones about endorsing the extreme-right, proud-to-be-stupid Tea Party Express, but NPR is a bit more subtle in its pro-Tea Bagger coverage. Over the last three days it has provided this reactionary tour frequent, uncritical broadcasting time:

On Sunday's Weekend Edition Liane Hansen introduces NPR's Jay Brady who is traveling with this road show. In a completely uncritical report Brady makes these statements:

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

There are many ways you could frame the role of Senator Kent Conrad, one of the gang of six senators who are working very hard to preserve the profitable dominance of private health insurance in the US. A report marvel at why six senators representing less than 3% of the US population is controlling the fate of health insurance reform. A serious report might look at the obscene amounts of campaign cash flowing into these senators coffers from the for-profit health insurance industry and its allies.

Ah, but not on NPR.

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Scott Simon really oozed about Corazon Aquino this morning:

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Certain things often get discussed on NPR that make my skin crawl. On Saturday's ATC Guy Raz talks with Richard Clarke about "probing" Bush-era crimes by ignoring US laws and international obligations and instead holding a "kind of truth and reconciliation commission." Why NPR thinks it's adequate to have a legal no-nothing like Guy Raz interview Clarke on such matters is beyond me, but one part of the interview really jumped out - the endorsement of extrajudicial executions.

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

NPR do luv them some Nagl. John Nagl, Mr. Soup with a Knife genius, has been one of their regular counterinsurgency go-to guys for a while - and they did pick the right horse. Nagl is climbing the rungs of power (to the Defense Policy board along with neo-imperialist Robert Kaplan). You can bet we'll hear a lot from this COIN snake oil soup salesman.

Yesterday on ATC Siegle had a chummy talk with Nagl about our clients in the colony of Iraq. It was the typical "training wheels" talk about whether Iraqis can manage without all the great protection and security the US military has brought to Iraq. Siegel asks Nagl, "How well prepared are the Iraqis to deal with threats to their own security?"