RE: NPR (hey they cover some good stuff now and then)
In my pre-carpool days, I’d listen to NPR to and from work, in “know your enemies” mode. Made an enemy or two when I’d occasionally call in during their pledge drives and explain that I couldn’t contribute because of their liberal bias.
“Students at the University of Kentucky were treated in early April to a fervent anti-war and anti-Bush diatribe by a national left-leaning celebrity. In an accusatory tone, the speaker claimed President George W. Bush had “offered an attractive bribe to Turkey in exchange for permission to use Turkey as a base from which to invade Northern Iraq” and charged that he had “told the rest of the world that the United States is ready to act alone in virtually every field.” The celebrity railed against the press for allegedly not being as tough on Bush as it was on former president Bill Clinton, declaring: “The press didn’t wait until the intern scandal to ask tough questions of Bill Clinton, so why is the incumbent getting a pass?”
The long, rambling speech, which was reprinted in the Louisville Courier-Journal and by the Media Research Center, also bashed radio stations for playing patriotic music as the United States went to war and even for playing the national anthem. Of particular concern to the speaker was the website of Washington’s all-news radio station WTOP, which linked to armed-forces websites and forwarded e-mails to troops.
“Balancing all that were links to two peace groups,” the speaker complained. The speaker then announced that public annoyance with the antimilitary pronunciamentos of celebrities such as the Dixie Chicks was symptomatic of a new McCarthyism.
“Witch burning is an ugly chapter in our history,” he said. “It should not be revived, even if it’s good for business.”
Who was this celebrity? One of the febrile Hollywood left? Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen? No, the author of this rant was none other than newscaster Bob Edwards, host of “Morning Edition” on the “objective” National Public Radio, or NPR.
The speech came after he was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. And Edwards even used the platform to take a dig at his competitor, Clear Channel Communications Inc. He claimed that the Dixie Chicks’ sagging album sales after the group’s lead singer, Natalie Maines, said on foreign soil that she was “ashamed” of President Bush were not the result of listener disgust, but due to a conspiracy by San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel.
“Clear Channel loves George W. Bush,” Edwards said. He offered no evidence for the alleged conspiracy, and Clear Channel repeatedly has denied requesting, directing or ordering its radio stations not to play the Dixie Chicks.
Responding to the NPR anchor’s diatribe, Chris Chandler, a news anchor for Louisville’s WHAS-AM, which is owned by Clear Channel, wrote in a letter to the media website Poynter.org: “Apparently, this brand of liberal reactionism is tolerated – or even expected – at NPR. ... If Edwards can deliver a speech like that and still expect to be taken seriously as an objective observer the next morning, somebody should really give him this message: Those who live in government-subsidized glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones.
( ... ) One area critics say definitely needs improving is the network’s reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When it comes to bias against Israel, “NPR’s probably the worst. Worse than CNN, worse than ABC,” says Alex Safian, associate director of the Boston-based watchdog group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA. A CAMERA study of two months of NPR’s Middle East coverage in the fall of 2000 found that, in 350 interviews, pro-Arab speakers received 77 percent more time than pro-Israeli speakers. The study also found that, for the same period of time, there were almost twice as many segments with only pro-Arab speakers as there were segments in which only Israelis were interviewed, and that the pro-Arab segments were nearly four times as long. Safian adds that even television’s PBS network is less biased than NPR.
And NPR has refused to take responsibility when it falsely reports major facts, Safian says. He points to a story in the fall of 2001 describing the fatal shooting of a Palestinian girl working in an olive field. NPR reported that she was killed by Israeli settlers, when in fact her shooters were unknown and the shooting began when armed Palestinians hiding in the olive field opened fire on Israeli soldiers despite the presence of civilians.
“The New York Times covered it, the AP [Associated Press] covered it, and they all got it right,” Safian says. “NPR got it wrong.”
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33104
NPR sets dial on broadcasting bias
June 16, 2003