Tuesday, July 22, 2008

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:
- - - - - - - - -
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.

15 comments:

Proud Infidel said...

NPR is as biased to the Left as any in the MSM. What I find amusing is I know a number of libs who always talk about NPR is being better informed and more impartial than the MSM. They are of course perplexed when I start laughing. Once I start telling them why, their eyes glaze over and give me the "how can you be an evil conservative look." Priceless.

Homophobic Horse said...

They concentrate on victimisation because the heart is a powerful.

laine said...

"They concentrate on victimisation because the heart is a powerful."

When the heart is powered by a weak misinformed brain, it ends up hurting the person it supposedly wants to help. Long term handouts make people lazy, fat, more prone to illness, crime and suicide. How is that helping?

I say "supposedly" because Dymphna's observation refutes real concern. When the homeless can be used to bash a conservative government, then there's the pretense of care for them. When Clinton came in, all of a sudden the homeless were on their own again.

Tuan Jim said...

This is a fun thread we had on this same article: http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=535847 includes pictures and tables, etc.

. said...

I'm a regular reader of Gates of Vienna, I'm American, and I DO NOT find National Public Radio to be a National Disgrace. In fact, I find it to be the only listenable news program on the radio. Of course, that's because it doesn't have any real competitors - most of "news" on the radio consists of right-wing nuttery and shilldom, with a dose of left-wing nuttery and shilldom thrown in for spice.

Do I believe everything I hear on NPR? Of course not. Do I listen to it? Of course. Because there is NO alternative.

Morgan said...

The Poster Formerly Known as Gordon, could you explain yourself when you write of NPR as "the only listenable news program on the radio" and "most of 'news' on the radio consists of right-wing nuttery and shilldom"?

spackle said...

It is like my former landlords. They would complain non-stop about the cost of food. Yet everyday all summer long they would do nothing but BBQ and load up on the corn bread and potato salad, chips and beer. And to top it off they were all (6 of them) morbidly obese. I am talking borderline freak show fat. Which drives me nuts. All I have to do is look at BBQ and my digestive system goes nuts. God does look over children, small animals and idiots. Sigh.

Pogria said...

These are the two women NPR was moaning about.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/07/poor-ohio-family-forced-to-scrimp-on.html

ZZMike said...

Sorry, FormerlyGordon, but the alternative to NPR is "everything".

The only thing I can think of to explain your outlook is that to someone sufficiently far Left, even the center seems far right.

I'll agree that it isn't a National disgrace, but it does seem to be our version of the BBC, in whose world there are no terrorists, only "freedom fighters" and "rebels", and in which the hobnailed jackboot of Israel tramples the poor oppressed victims in Palestine.

Even Garrison Kiellor lost his credibility when he followed their lead and turned hard Left. At least Will Shortz is still apolitical (as of the last time I heard him, a few years ago).

Dymphna said...

zzmike--

Keillor was -- still is, I guess -- American Public Radio. A difference without a distinction.

If you'd heard NPR during the night of the 2000 elections, you'd agree it was a national disgrace. No other MSM outlet came close to the sense of shrill desperation those folks exhibited as things deteriorated [i.e., went Republican] during their election vigil.

I maintain that silence is better than NPR's misleading stories. This latest victim report is typical of their dysphoric disinformation -- and you can safely bet that there will be lots of these tear-jerkers, long after the economy improves. NPR only does what it knows how to do.

Heck, I could stand them if they prattled on about good news, but it's all bad, bad, bad. Listen to them long enough and you know America is beyond recovery because of the policies of conservatives and the beliefs of fundies.

Pacifica Radio is closer to the BBC than is NPR. And it has the advantage of not pretending to be even-handed.

NPR wouldn't be so without integrity if they didn't take our tax money, if they stood on their own two feet like everyone else has to do.

I don't listen to right-wing radio, but it does pay its own way. That ought to be the minimum for any business sucking up airwaves. While NPR may cloak itself in a self-righteous brand of service, it's just a business. And a not-very-good one at that.

laine said...

It is actually completely immoral to gouge tax money from everyone but churn out biased news for only one segment of the population, i.e. lefties such as ex-Gordon who are so firmly blinkered that they do not notice the imbalance on NPR and imagine they are hearing the news. He is actually so far left that he's one of the minority still coughing up like a hairball the ridiculous meme that the MSM favors the right! Yeah, it's just disgusting the thousands of "news" stories praising Bush to the skies disguised as likening him to Hitler or a monkey. That's a leftist brain for you - a man who has liberated millions in Iraq from a fascist is just like a fascist who targeted and killed six million civilians while invading every country around him to annex them. Liberals need to work on their pathetic grasp of history and their ludicrous comparisons.

It's only talk radio that is conservative, and the "Fairness" Doctrine created by lefties predictably targets that segment of the media alone. That indicates to anyone but the brain dead that Nancy Pelosi and her ilk are admitting their viewpoint dominates the rest of the media.

I'm not usually so short tempered but I'm sick and tired of leftists like ex-Gordon coming to conservative sites mewling about being objective observers and leaving their packets of far left crap on the porch, expecting conservatives to disbelieve our own eyes, ears and noses for that matter.

Anonymous said...

Keillor was -- still is, I guess -- American Public Radio. A difference without a distinction.

NPR lacks the designated hitter rule.

I used to listen to NPR all the time. The morning after the statue of Saddam Hussein came down in Baghdad, I awoke to an NPR rebroadcast of a BBC program consisting of Brits viciously denouncing President Bush. I changed the channel and never went back.

Zenster said...

Dymphna: Heck, I could stand them if they prattled on about good news, but it's all bad, bad, bad.

As Chuck Tatum (played by Burt Lancaster) said in "The Big Carnival" (AKA, "Ace in the Hole"):

"The only good news is bad news."

Question: Which came first, Tatum's cynical comment or the more famous, "If it bleeds, it leads"?

Answer: It appears as though Billy Wilders and Lesser Samuels beat Armstrong Williams by nearly a decade.

Dymphna said...

lmg--

Sounds like your Basta! moment was as clearly delineated for you as mine was for me. At some point, they step over a line, but it's not one they can see.

NPR is a child of the sixties. A childish child, not a precocious one. I don't like whiney children, especially when they're past middle age.

ZZMike said...

Laine: ".. the ridiculous meme that the MSM favors the right!.."

Only one thing is enough to completely debunk that odd notion: compare the coverage of Obama vs the coverage of McCain.

Case closed.