NPR Check

Q Tips

2009-07-14T01:00:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

The Linguistically and Legally Challenged at NPR

2009-07-13T17:18:00.007-05:00

(click picture for partial source)

There are times when I read my transcription of a report on NPR and I ask myself, "Did they really say that?" This morning was one of those cases. Mary Louise Kelly was "reporting" on the CIA program that Panetta cancelled - and which was so secret that even the few members of Congress required by federal law (see short PDF file here) to be informed of such things - were told nothing.

Kelly describes the secrecy of the program and - referring to a New York Times report - notes that "the reason the CIA didn't brief this to Congress sooner was because Dick Cheney told them not to." Inskeep then asks Kelly a reasonable question: "Was anybody at the CIA actually legally required to tell Congress about this?" And this is where things get really strange. Kelly replies,

"It's actually not 100% clear. The law that governs this is called the National Security Act of 1947 and it's been amended many times since then, but the relevant portion is this: 'Congress must be notified about all significant intelligence activities; also' - and this is important - 'all significant, anticipated intelligence activities.' So the question becomes What is significant?, Who gets to decide?, and clearly in the case of this particular program, people came out with very different views about whether it met the standard."

Ah yes, like that wily word torture, significant is such a relative term - open to so many shades of interpretation. Hmmm....just what could significant mean? Funny thing is that Kelly opened the story noting that "what we do know is this: it was a covert program, clearly began back in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. It continued in an on-again-off-again fashion up until last year." She also noted that "there is a lot of speculation that it had to do with a presidential authorization after 9/11 to capture or kill al-Qaeda leaders, so we're talking about using lethal force..." Ah yes, but whether a SEVEN YEAR covert program (and one that likely meant killing people) is significant is just so hard to really figure out.

Frankly the focus on "significant" is a red herring since the law amending the Security Act (P.L. 102-88 - go to page 13 of the PDF file here) clearly states "The President shall ensure that the intelligence committees are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, [kind of looks "100% clear" to me], including any significant anticipated intelligence activities as required by this title."

Kelly's not done yet. If nothing else she's determined. Not only is she playing the torture the English language game, but she closes up by advocating for criminal behavior by the executive branch. Even if the federal law was broken, Kelly notes that

"one former intelligence official I spoke to said, 'Look, the CIA didn't tell Congress about this because they didn't want it to leak' so they kept it to themselves and it didn't leak for EIGHT years. Last month it was briefed to Congress and now hear we are talking about it. So they've made a pretty compelling case for why the CIA might not want to tell Congress."

If only I were making this stuff up. Yep, that is one compelling case for breaking federal laws meant to maintain checks and balances. Apparently, Kelly didn't actually read the law because it also states on page 13 of the PDF copy of P.L 102-88 that

"Nothing in this Act shall be construed as authority to withhold information from the intelligence committees on the grounds that providing the information to the intelligence committees would constitute the unauthorized disclosure of classified information...."

So much for that compelling case. Given her masterful legal interpretations, I'd say Mary Louise Kelly missed her opportunity to work for the Bush-Cheney OLC....hey there's always the CIA, unless she's already....one can only wonder.

Q Tips

2009-07-12T01:57:00.001-05:00

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Shepard Spottings?

2009-07-12T01:51:00.004-05:00

Did anyone get a chance to attend Shepard's presentation at the Newseum? Please contact me if so. BTW, you can watch Shepard in action with some US and international high school students as she explains/complains about her torturous torture contortions.

The BS Side of the Story

2009-07-12T01:15:00.005-05:00

Gad! Greg Allen was in Miami and figured he'd just turn on the microphone and let the sons and daughters of the Honduran oligarchy have a go at it. All opinions aired were pro-coup and anti-Zelaya. Here are a sample:

"What happened in Honduras was not a coup."
"...it was not a coup; it was a constitutional action to prevent the president from trying to seek reelection indefinitely like other presidents in Latin America."
"we obey the law and we can not allow the international community to tell Hondurans what to do - imposing the return of former president Zelaya."
"...the only people that actually know what the internal problems of the country are are those people who know. This president [Zelaya, not Bush] is a criminal, has been a criminal, and has only made bad things to our country and government."

To put a professional sheen on this rant-fest Allen turned to Marifeli Pérez-Stable of Florida International University (and the Miami Herald). She made sure to ignore the legal issues of the coup and instead hammered on merging Zelaya with Chavez of Venezuela:

"In Honduras the Chavez model has been stopped. I really think that it has been stopped. It's not going to fly."

The problem with this piece by Allen is not that he talked with and even aired some of the rather contorted viewpoints of these Hondurans in Miami - but there was no informative context whatsoever. I kept wondering about the class makeup of the people in this interview and wondering how many of them (or their parents) were active in the right-wing human rights abuses of the 1980s. I assumed they were connected to the very rich in Honduras, but Allen's report never spelled this out.

Rumors

2009-07-12T00:53:00.004-05:00

I thought that NPR's spring 2007 campaign to convince listeners that Iran was running and supplying the Iraqi insurgency (April 11, 2007 and May 26, 2007 for example) was a thing of the past. But dang, on Friday's ATC Quil Lawrence is in Iraq talking up the dangers of the small, lethal shaped-charge RKG-3 grenades, which have been used against US forces for years (this from 2006), as if they were something new - and he casually slips in the following:

"Some of these grenades are rumored to be coming in from Iran..."

I guess it's important to keep all rumors "on the table."

Q Tips

2009-07-11T09:00:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Good and Bad I Define These Terms Quite Clear No Doubt Somehow

2009-07-10T21:44:00.013-05:00

(BTW, title comes from Bob Dylan)

If you've been following events recently, you know that NPR listeners are a bit pissed off at the assist NPR and its ombudsman have given to US torturers by refusing to call their actions that cause "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" torture. In her bumbling explanation of why torture is not torture, Ombudsman Shepard stated that she was against "using loaded language."

Of late I've noticed a descriptor that has become part of the working vocabulary of NPR staff. Can you spot it in these recent stories?

Morning Edition, June 19, 2009 NPR's macho war guy, Tom Bowman is interviewing Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of nearly 90,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, says, "Your experience is in the area of special operations. You're basically a hunter-killer. You've hunted down bad guys like Saddam Hussein...."

Weekend Edition Sunday, July 5, 2009 Liane Hansen is interviewing RAND "expert" Christine Fair about the US Marine offensive in Afghanistan. Fair is talking about all the players involved in the poppy/narcotics trafficking and says "so you've got quite a mix of bad guys in this part of Afghanistan....a counterinsurgency approach is really not about killing the bad guys as much as it is about securing the population...."

Morning Edition, July 6, 2009 Tom Gjelten is reporting on the CIA's recruitment of Wall Street "pros" and hands the microphone to a recent recruit whose pseudonym is Alex. With no irony - and of course no comment from Gjelten - Alex brags, "There's no question that an understanding of the global financial system and how money moves from place to place and sort of the economic motivations of the bad guys that we look at are all important skills that I've been able to transfer from investment banking."

I realize in comic strip superhero world it's often a simple case of good guys versus bad guys, such as, well, Uncle Sam and his All Star Squadron saving the world -

or Captain America against the commies -

or Captain America, leader of US warnography in general

but, I think we all know where this stupid good guy versus bad guy crap leads, don't we [hurl alert!]-

After all just who are the "good guys" when it comes to handing over the Treasury to Goldman Sachs and friends, or to pulverizing Afghan civilians, or to the CIA and US military working some of its non-torture "harsh interrogation" magic on detainees?

I have a modest suggestion for NPR: every time one of its reporters or newsreaders uses the phrase "bad guys" or features a guest using it without any comment from the reporter, that person gets fined $1000 and has to give it to either Amnesty International, the ACLU, the Center For Constitutional Rights - or some other bunch of [hee, hee] good guys...

Q Tips

2009-07-09T06:35:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Shepard Unplugged

2009-07-08T17:13:00.002-05:00

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.

Q Tips

2009-07-08T06:19:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

3,000,000 + 58,000 = 58,000

2009-07-07T14:34:00.008-05:00

One of history's great villains died yesterday, and NPR was on-call to provide its special math for the occasion . Robert Strange McNamara died yesterday and Monday's ATC featured three segments on his life and legacy - one by Daniel Schorr, the second by Mary Louise Kelly, and the last being Robert Siegel interviewing Errol Morris, McNamara filmmaker and documentarian.

Here's a challenge: listen to all three reports and see if you can find mention of the millions (2 to 4 is the usual estimate) of civilians killed by the United States in the Vietnam war. At least twice, you'll hear of the 58,000 US service people killed in Vietnam. Siegel safely mentions something that McNamara has already admitted to - 100,000 Japanese civilians burned alive in one night of bombing he helped engineer during WWII - but those millions of Vietnamese dead somehow just vanish.

In addition to disappearing millions of civilian victims - there are other distortions in the reports. Daniel Schorr describes McNamara's killing spree as "his stewardship of the Vietnam War." Also McNamara's presidency of the World Bank - where he lavished money on the torture states of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Romania - is described by Mary Louise Kelly as "a successful tenure" and by Schorr as "helping underdeveloped countries." Schorr goes even further and sees it as McNamara's "way of working out a sense of guilt."

Siegel's interview with Morris offers a telling bit of analysis from Siegel himself. Citing critics who have complained that if McNamara had admitted to some of his mistakes sooner it might have made an actual difference, he surmises "but that might have required his exile from the Washington establishment." Well, Mr. Siegel, turn that judgement on yourself and NPR: to investigate and report the news truthfully would put you and NPR on the outs with those who wield economic, military and political power - and might just lead to NPR's "exile from the Washington establishment." And that just wouldn't do...would it?

Q Tips

2009-07-06T16:48:00.000-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Agent Gjelten Recruiting

2009-07-06T11:24:00.018-05:00

For your reading pleasure - they're fortified with hyperlinks, too!

Agent Forero Checks In

2009-07-06T10:55:00.004-05:00

On Independence Day Guy Raz asked Juan Forero why Honduran President Zelaya was overthrown in a coup. Forero answered,

[His] "term is supposed to end in January, but Zelaya is allied with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other left leaning leaders in Latin America that have found ways to change their constitutions to stay in power...."

By "found ways", I think Forero means that evil, leftist ploy of free and fair elections.

This morning was even worse. Ignoring the coup government's shooting of unarmed demonstrators (no Neda here), ignoring Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports of School of Americas™ style repression, Forero spends almost the entire Monday morning broadcast featuring apologists and supporters of the coup. Here is a sample of statements that Forero made this morning:

"...here though, rallies, complete with vendors and folk music, celebrate the ouster."
"...foes justify the coup by pointing to what had been his increasingly friendly alliance with leftists Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. To them it signaled a dark turn."
"...he says Zelaya would have practically handed over his rule to Chavez."
"...an almost irrational fear of Chavez had gripped the country and that was what drove lawmakers, the courts, and the military to conspire against Zelaya."
"...the last straw came late in June."
"...the first step toward a power grab" [of Zelaya not the coup leaders].

Q Tips

2009-07-02T22:32:00.002-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Putting Out Reliable Information

2009-07-02T09:06:00.004-05:00

On her blog Alicia Shepard recently made an enhanced response to her initial harsh defense of not using "coded language" like the word torture, Alicia Shepard makes the following bold claim:

"But I am shilling for strong, credible journalism that is as objective as humanly possible. I am shilling for NPR to practice journalism based on putting out reliable information, to the best of its ability -- without taking sides -- so the public can make its own informed decisions."

Hey that's a noble thing to shill for, eh? Let's see how her employer's doing in "putting out reliable information" about some major news stories of the past week.

On June 24, 2009 the BBC released a damning report on the torture and abuse of detainees at the US-run Bagram airbase from 2002-2008.
On June 29, 2009 the International Committee of the Red Cross released a report detailing the Israeli imposed poverty, despair, economic collapse, infrastructure failures, etc. being imposed on the population of the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, the Israeli Defense Forces ~~hijacked~~ used enhanced boarding techniques to commandeer a boatload of humanitarian supplies in international waters, ~~kidnapped~~ used harsh removal tactics against its crew - including a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a former (not lifetime) US Representative - and placed them in detention in Israel.
Today, Amnesty International released a report documenting multiple war crimes committed by Israel in its December assault on Gaza (and denounced the war crimes of rocket fire by Hamas).

How did NPR do?

On the BBC detainee abuse story, CBS picked it up...but NOT NPR.
On the Red Cross humanitarian disaster in Gaza, Voice of America got it...but NOT NPR.
On the Israeli seizure of humanitarian supplies on the high seas, the Salem-News got it...but NOT NPR.
On the Amnesty war crimes report, CBS again...but NOT NPR.

How's that for "strong, credible journalism"? My math might be a bit weak, but I'd say that's 0-for-4. At least Shepard was right about the shilling part.

Q Tips

2009-07-01T09:10:00.000-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

All Around the Mulberry Bush

2009-07-01T06:41:00.007-05:00

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.

Q Tips

2009-06-29T11:45:00.001-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

Between Fred Thompson and the American Enterprise Intstitute

2009-06-29T11:06:00.002-05:00

Reporting this morning for the private health insurance lobby, NPR's Julie Rovner gets very, very basic:

"The health care cost debate pretty much comes down to this: 'You can't cut costs without hurting someone.'"

How's that for analysis. And to back it up we get a little Meet the Press sound-bite from Fred Thompson (yes him): "The only way to really save cost is to have rationing or it can be done by a cram down by the government and take it out of the hides of doctors hospitals."

Rovner's report mainly serves to highlight and promote the research of Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute. The big deal is that Fisher has found that some areas in the US with lower cost prices for health care have better outcomes. Funny thing is that on June 11, 2009 NPR featured this exact research. An interesting thing not mentioned on NPR is the chief "partners" of the Dartmouth Institute. On the list are

Wellpoint Foundation
Aetna Foundation
United Health Foundation

I do smell a conflict of interest, eh?

Rovner fills out the report by going to a solid centrist - Len Nichols (no single payer, he) - of the New America Foundation (as far left as NPR dare venture) , and then the wrap up is provided by Joe Antos of the far right AEI who concludes that real change to health care is a cultural/behavioral issue more than a cost issue.

On the DL

2009-06-26T13:26:00.002-05:00

Hello all. I want to let readers know that I'll be posting infrequently for the next week or so - and any posts will be very brief. Lately, my hands have been starting to show signs of carpal tunnel syndrome and so I'm going to take a bit of a break/summer vacation from the computer.

Q Tips

2009-06-26T13:25:00.000-05:00

NPR related comments welcomed.

NPR and the Pragmatic Police State

2009-06-26T10:00:00.012-05:00

This morning NPR features "an exclusive first look at a legal proposal....a detailed plan for holding terrorism suspects without trial, and it comes from two experts outside of the government." Inspite of the two "experts" mentioned by David Greene, Ari Shapiro only interviews one of them, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution.

According to Shapiro "Wittes occupies a relatively unique position in national security. He has studied and written books on pragmatic approaches to fighting terrorism." [Actually he has written only one book on terrorism - Law and the Long War.]

I don't have any problem with NPR interviewing Wittes. Unfortunately, he is an important fish in circles of state power in Washington, DC, though - not surprisingly - his ideas are not particularly fresh or inspiring, and he heartily supports for projections of US military and foreign policy hegemony. Consider the Publisher's Weekly and Booklist reviews of his book:

PW: "Both a defense and critique of the Bush administration, the book argues in favor of many of the measures taken by the executive branch while condemning its failure to secure congressional cooperation and the necessary legal architecture to back policies that were bound to be unpopular."
Booklist: "Wittes remains highly sympathetic to the administration’s aims, giving them the benefit of the doubt on matters that other critics of the administration have not. Ultimately, his hope is that innovative legal structures will be forthcoming and seen as legitimate in a way that current efforts are not."

As Wittes himself states in an article on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "we have no choice but to continue the war on terror in some form."

My problem with NPR's coverage of Wittes is that it is an endorsement of Wittes' viewpoint. In spite of his utter lack of credentials in the area of human rights, international, or Constitutional law and his rather conventional apologist approach to torture, he is a "expert" with "pragmatic approaches." As Glenn Greewald notes, Wittes can't even get the most basic Constitutional points correct when he argues for "legal" dictatorial powers for the President.

And what is the thinking behind Wittes' expert, pragmatic approaches? Consider this excerpt of the report:

(Shapiro) "So why push for indefinite detention at all? Well, Wittes says we already have it. People have been at Guantanamo for years. There are thousands more in Afghanistan...." (Wittes) "And so there's no question that we're detaining people outside of the criminal justice system. The question is what the rules are for those detentions and who makes those rules."

Look closely at the logic of this.

So why push to codify and legalize practice __________?
Because __________ is already being done!

All you have to do is put any debased government abuse of power in the blank - torture, rape, murder, rendition, illegal surveillance, etc. to see where this can lead. In Wittes' world (and NPR's by extension) the problem is not with the practice itself and a craven and complicit Congress that refuses its constitutional role of holding the executive office perpetrators accountable. Instead, the problem is that Congress has been slow to enact legislation to codify the practices. And according to Wittes, this reluctance to legislate away basic Constitutional values - and this is where he becomes a hero of the Weekly Standard security state devotees - opens up the possibilty of serious judicial oversight -OMG!

As Grumpy Demo points out on his blog - this is the kind of logic would please anyone who is hoping that our three branches of government would get "pragmatic" and realize that what we really need in the "war on terror" is a Unitary Benevolent Authoritarian Strong Man in the mold of Pinochet, Peron, or Castro.

Impromptu Shoulder Rub...Oooh La La!

2009-06-26T09:50:00.004-05:00

(graphic from Truthdig)

According to Eric Westervelt:

"During the George W. Bush years Chancellor Merkl was often seen smiling and friendly with the president even when he surprised Merkl by giving her an impromtu shoulder rub....by all accounts the two leaders liked each other...there's been no such personal chumminess thus far between Merkl and President Obama."

This does say a lot about Westervelt's feelings for the "George W. Bush years."