NPR and Its Sordid Sponsors: What They Omit

Like most of our American readers, I find National Public Radio a national disgrace. This tax-subsidized operation is shameless.

Known since the 1980’s in our family as “National Palestinian Radio” due to its long history of skewed Poorpali stories - Israel is always the bad guy on NPR - their programming is very difficult to listen to, especially if you’re driving. The morning and evening “news” shows are timed for the usual commuter rush hours, but listening to the blatantly one-sided attacks on anything American gets old no matter what you’re doing.

Silence is preferable to anything on offer at NPR.

Thus, reading Michelle Malkin’s recent post (or rather, a post by see-dubya on her blog) about NPR’s latest “victims” was amusing in a mordant kind of way.

For our European readers, you should know that NPR looooves victims - that is, it loves victims purportedly created by the sheer meanness of conservative policy. You should have heard the endless accounts on the homeless crisis during Bush I’s presidency. Once Clinton was in, homeless people were disappeared, shoved back under the mat.

By the time Bush II came on board I could no longer bear listening to them so I’ve no idea if they ever returned to that subject. Probably not. They had better fish to fry with the ‘fraud’ of the election itself. In fact, I remember the panic in Linda What’s-Her-Name’s voice on election night when she discovered Bush was leading in Florida.

Come to think of it, that was my final NPR moment. Her bias was so blatant that as I turned off the radio, I knew if NPR were the last news outlet on earth I would go without. Basta! Listening to the endless bemoaning of the state of affairs in the US can wear on your sense of reality. No wonder the left is so full of Henny-Pennys. They listen to this biased viewpoint day in and day out with no relief or perspective. It must be like living in a desert.

Which brings me to a recent post on Michelle Malkin’s blog concerning our august national news source. In “Food crisis, global depression worsens” we get NPR’s take on some people who can no longer afford meat. Here’s the snip cee-dubya used:
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So Nunez and her daughter are mostly stuck at home.

The rising cost of food means their money gets them about a third fewer bags of groceries - $100 used to buy about 12 bags of groceries, but now it’s more like seven or eight. So they cut back on expensive items like meat, and they don’t buy extras like ice cream anymore. Instead, they eat a lot of starches like potatoes and noodles.

Does NPR then do a report on subsidized and/or regulated agriculture and how it drives up prices? Heck, no. Not when Archer-Daniels-Midland is one of their big “donors” (being free radio, they don’t have sponsors and icky commercials. Instead, at intervals they prominently and favorably mention conglomerate funders like ADM). Among many other products, ADM manufactures food poisons additives like high fructose corn syrup. Last year, their profits worldwide were $44 billion. Nope, ADM is not on NPR’s list of acceptable news stories.

This connection is germane to the story on Michelle Malkin’s blog. As you know, high fructose corn syrup has been fingered as one of the main villains in the global obesity epidemic. This product is ubiquitous, appearing in most “low-fat” diet foods, in salad dressings, and in the majority of processed foods like dry cereal.

Malkin follows up NPR’s claim by going to their website to see a picture of Nunez and her adult daughter. I strongly urge you to click on the link and take a look at the image capture she has up from NPR. These poor, starving victims - the ones who can’t afford ice cream anymore so they are reduced (so to speak) to consuming potatoes and starches - are morbidly obese by anyone’s scale.

At their current weight, a food crisis is just what the doctor ordered for these two women, who are no doubt Type 2 diabetics with lots of related health problems. If NPR really cared, they’d start a fund for gastric by-pass surgery for these victims…victims of ADM and ignorance, that is.

And if they had any integrity at all, Victim Radio would start their fund collecting by knocking on the door of Archer-Daniels-Midland. Restitution is the least ADM could begin to do.

Fat chance of that happening.