“I’ve spent the last several days sitting in a crowded, windowless Macy’s classroom undergoing the first phase of elf training. You can be an entrance elf, a water cooler elf, a bridge elf, train elf, maze elf, island elf, magic window elf, usher elf, cash register elf or exit elf.”
— David Sedaris, describing his short tenure as Crumpet the Elf in “The Santaland Diaries,” an essay that he read on Morning Edition in 1992. (via NPR)
Click “Listen” to hear Sedaris read his tale.
Williams says he misses the “informed and influential” audience at NPR ‘big time.’
I take it that Juan is just now figuring out that the Fox News audience, for whom he chose to dance, is the opposite of “informed and influential?”
And then there’s Shep:
source: sandandglass
Because so many of us are tired of the “both sides do it, he said she said” meme in today’s media…
Via: jayrosen –
Actually Governor Romney, what you just said is completely incorrect… This is NPR.
NPR has a new ethics handbook, which came out February 24th. Here’s the key part:
We report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports.
Fair to the truth. Pretty cool. It’s already started to have an effect. This is from an NPR report on Feb. 27th about auto bailouts and the Republican candidates.
NPR REPORTER: Mitt Romney, son of former American Motors CEO George Romney, criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the bailout.
MITT ROMNEY: Instead of going through the normal managed bankruptcy process, he made sure the bankruptcy process ended up with the UAW taking the lion’s share of the equity in the business.
NPR REPORTER: Actually, the U.S. Treasury got most of GM’s equity.
Such a simple word: “Actually….” And now it has a chance to become standard practice at NPR.
For more on this, see my post: NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right
(Photo by Matthew Reichbach. Creative Commons License.)
1) Obama ‘confident’ of keeping to Afghan pullout plan - President Barack Obama said he was “confident” the United States could stick to its Afghan drawdown timetable despite a week of deadly unrest over the burning of the Koran at a US base. “I feel confident that we can stay on a path that by the end of 2014, our troops will be out and will not be in a combat role and Afghans will have capacity, just as Iraqis, to secure their own country,” Obama told ABC News. Obama, criticized by Republican opponents for apologizing to Afghan people after US troops sent copies of the Koran to an incinerator at Bagram airbase, defended his decision, saying it was necessary to try to quell the violence.
2) Obama’s Most Dangerous GOP Opponent: Netanyahu - Some new details on the Israeli prime minister’s recruitment of US senators to push back against their own president and chairman of the JCOS: Netanyahu and his advisers briefed a group of senators and senior congressmen during the past two weeks on the Iranian issue, and asked them to pressure Obama on the matter. Last week, Netanyahu met a group of five senior senators over lunch, headed by Sen. John McCain, who ran four years ago against Obama for president. Netanyahu reportedly told the senators he was not interfering in U.S. politics and expected U.S. officials not to interfere in Israeli politics either. So Netanyahu gets McCain – the president’s last electoral opponent – to make the following public statement: “There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat. Unfortunately there clearly is some.”
3) NPR’s NEW RULES — it says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report - NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute. Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This is spin! (The new policy is already having an effect.)
via: sandandglass4) In case you didn’t believe that Romney will do / say anything and pander shamelessly to the far right for the GOP nomination - One day before a critical Senate vote that could loom large as a 2012 election issue, Mitt Romney came out for a congressional Republican measure designed to roll back the Obama administration’s requirement that employer health plans cover birth control. “Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care for religious institutions and people of faith,” Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul told TPM. The Blunt amendment, which is scheduled for a Senate vote on Thursday, would permit employers to deny coverage of birth control or other services they deem morally objectionable.
via: sandandglass5) China welcomes North Korea nuclear moratorium - North Korea’s key ally China on Thursday welcomed Pyongyang’s announcement that it will suspend its nuclear tests and uranium enrichment programme in return for US food aid. The deal — which came less than three months after the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il — follows talks held in Beijing last week between the United States and North Korean negotiators. [...] “We welcome the improvement in relations between North Korea and the United States and their contributions to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei in a statement. “China is willing to work with relevant parties to continue to push forward the six-party talks process, and play a constructive role to realise long-term peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and north-east Asia.”
6) Twilight Of The RINOs? - It’s kind of pathetic for politicians who have spent decades exploiting the far right for political gain to complain now when those forces are becoming dominant in their party. That’s what you get for playing with fire. James Joyner has expressed the hope in several recent posts here at OTB that the Republican Party will return to sanity at some point. Even if it takes an election cycle or two, I hope he’s right because the one thing this country needs desperately is a strong two-party system populated by opposing parties that at least accept the idea that compromise is necessary. Right now, one of those parties has rejected that idea entirely and the current state of Congress is testament to the results of that attitude. But the blame for the current state of the Republican Party doesn’t just lie with Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum. It lies with the party leaders and conservative pundits who let them get away with what they’ve managed to do over the past five years.
7) We are not quite done yet with GOP “debates” - Mr. Huckabee will host his third presidential forum on Saturday, an executive for the Fox News Channel said on Tuesday. Huckabee, Gasparino and Mrs. Mitch McConnell! I hope those unfortunate “Ohio residents” have their affairs in order, because if a just Judeo-Christian god is ever going to smite those among His followers who have profaned His honor, this event would seem a good place to start.
8) Good thing the issues of birth control, women’s healthcare coverage and abortion never came up this month - Only four women appearied as guests on the Sunday shows. Media Matters with the sad tally: A total of 56 guests were booked on the Sunday programs to discuss national affairs in February. Of those, 52 were men. (The newsmaker tally does not include guests invited to participate in roundtable discussions this month.) And of the four women booked this month, just one, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was associated with the Democratic Party, despite the fact Democrats currently control the White House and the Senate. “We complain about this all the time,” a Democratic aide told Media Matters.
9) YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: GOP lawmaker proposes tax breaks for mustaches - A mustachioed Republican congressman from Maryland is standing up for the rights of the men (and the women) who dare to have hair above their upper lip. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett has introduced the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses Act — or STACHE Act — to give people with mustaches a $250 tax break each year. [...] “He sent it over to Ways and Means [committee] without any recommendation of any kind at all,” Wright told U.S. News and World Report on Tuesday. || Note: This is real. We have nothing at all going on right now, so why not fuck around, right? Doesn’t it cheer your heart to know that we pay the do-nothing GOP-led Congress a federal salary plus benefits – but NOW, better still, we’re paying this guy to actually tie up his time and the Ways and Means committee’s time with something like this? BOTH SIDES DO IT though, right?!?
Tim Dickinson, who wrote How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich, from the November 24, 2011 edition of Rolling Stone, was the guest on NPR’s Fresh Air today. You might want to listen… (audio link)
And here is the article that accompanies the program:
Did U.S. Tax Policies Increase Economic Inequality?
[...] “Almost without exception, every proposal put forth by GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates is intended to preserve or expand tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans,” writes Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson. “Most of their plans, which are presented as commonsense measures that will aid all Americans, would actually result in higher taxes for middle-class taxpayers and the poor.”
On Wednesday’s Fresh Air, Dickinson explains how the tax policies pursued by the Republican Party have changed in the past 14 years — and says those changes have led to greater economic inequality in our country.
He explains that the top 400 taxpayers in the United States have seen their incomes increase threefold since 1997. In that same period, their tax rate has fallen by 40 percent.
“Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays an effective tax rate of about 17 percent,” he says. “That’s about 5 percentage points less than your average worker.”
The income of the wealthiest Americans has also increased. Dickinson writes that “since Republicans began their tax-cut binge in 1997, they have succeeded in making the rich much richer. While the average income for the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers has remained basically flat over the past 15 years, those in the top 0.01 percent have seen their incomes more than double, to $36 million a year.”
Dickinson tells Terry Gross that the revenue going to the wealthiest Americans is increasing.
Read the entire NPR article…
“If you don’t like the nature of what government does — you don’t like that it funds a social safety net, you don’t like Medicare, you don’t like Social Security — it’s actually a good strategy to leave the government in a perilous fiscal situation, because energies will be directed into cutting spending and paring back these programs.” — Tim Dickinson, on the ‘starve the beast’ strategy
It seems almost crazy to NOT be a part of / support the Occupy movement, doesn’t it?
CHARLES JOHNSON ELABORATES on NPR’s recent Fail:
NPR has now totally caved in and stopped carrying [World of Opera] in response to the right wing media’s call for her personal destruction: NPR dumps opera show after host organizes DC protest; NC member station to distribute.
WASHINGTON — NPR will no longer distribute the member station-produced program “World of Opera” to about 60 stations across the country because the show host helped organize an ongoing Washington protest, a network official said Friday evening.
Instead, North Carolina-based classical music station WDAV, which produces the show, said it will distribute the nationally syndicated program on its own beginning Nov. 11. The station said it plans to keep Lisa Simeone as host and has said her involvement in a political protest does not affect her job as a music program host.
NPR is well within its Code of Ethics but as Johnson points out:
[NPR] would normally make exceptions for freelancers who primarily cover the arts — which describes Lisa Simeone to a T.
What’s different about this case? Just one thing: a right wing mob howling for Simeone to be punished. And NPR obliged.
So ‘core audience’ (which is NOT the small percentage of RWNJs who would complain about Simeone and OWS), next time there’s a fundraising drive you might want to point out to NPR that their decision on this issue sucked — and donate accordingly.
UPDATE 10:18 AM MST: I’ve just been told this is a fake photo, and may be from the 2004 demonstrations against the GOP. If you know for sure or have links, please comment. Thanks!
Overhead view of the occupy wall street demonstrators.
How ridiculous that NPR tried to pretend that this protest didn’t “involve large numbers of people”. I’m glad that All Things Considered eventually (begrudgingly, after much arm twisting and angry letter writing) covered this, but the fact that it took so long and the justification for ignoring it was so blatantly untrue is just unacceptable.
(Photo thanks to Kevin Gonzales)
“The idea that people make the same or less today than they made 40 years ago is a stunning historical fact.” — Author Jeff Madrick
NPR: As income gap balloons, is it holding back growth?
“This inequality is destabilizing and undermines the ability of the economy to grow sustainably and efficiently,” [Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin] said. Income inequality, she continued, is “anathema to the social progress that is part and parcel of such growth.”
The income gap in the United States has ballooned: It’s wider than any time since 1928, in the days before the stock market crash triggered the Great Depression.
[...] “In the 1970s, there was an assault on government oversight and regulation,” Madrick tells Raz. “And eventually, the financial community stopped playing by the rules. There was an economic theory that kept justifying what they were doing. And the American public was not fully aware of what was going on.”
The traditional argument for deregulation states that those policies make America richer, and that a rising tide lifts all boats.
But Madrick says that for the typical American worker, the wage tide has gone out since 1969.
“The typical male worker makes less today, discounted for inflation, than the typical median worker made in 1969,” says Madrick. “The idea that people make the same or less today than they made 40 years ago is a stunning historical fact.”
[...] “[Bank failures] peak up in crisis years. They peak in the 1920s,” [David Moss, a professor of economics at Harvard Business School] tells Raz. “But then most striking, after 1933, when we saw the introduction of federal banking and financial regulation, these banking crises disappear almost completely. And then it continues very, very low until the 1980s, then they pick back up again.”
Moss found it striking that banking failures go down after financial regulation and start rising after the introduction of deregulation.
Then, one of Moss’ colleagues showed him a chart of income inequality over the same period. Moss took that curve and plotted it on the same page as his bank failure curve.
“And lo and behold, it was a striking, striking connection,” Moss says.
As bank failures went up in the 1920s, so did income inequality. As inequality came down in the 1930s, bank failures stayed down. They stayed down together until the advent of deregulation in the 1980s.
For Moss, this coincidence raises more questions than it provides answers. He isn’t sure what exactly the correlation between income inequality and financial failure means.
So there’s an historical correlation that financial regulation might be one of the best things that could happen for creating economic growth and closing the income gap? Maybe that’s because government regulation and oversight actually keeps financial institutions more honest and accountable than fictional concepts, such as some “invisible hand” guiding everything or Reagan’s “trickle down” fallacy. Maybe it also helps ensure that individuals in financial institutions won’t gamble away everyone else’s money on things like sub-prime mortgage loans while they walk away with their own fortunes intact.
And I’m not even bringing up the 10.5 years of tax breaks for the job creators wealthy here, or that the wealthy compounded their fortunes during a time of economic loss for everyone else. They work harder than us, right?
It’s almost TOO SIMPLE. That must be why the Tea Party base sides with millionaires like the Koch brothers to protest “big” government and regulation and expiring Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Because they’re morans.
The Republicans have been so busy trying to push teaparty social conservatism on America that they haven’t yet considered real budget issues or felt the need to “negotiate.” Charles Johnson remarks:
When the government stops, it will be because the GOP refused to compromise on defunding Planned Parenthood, defunding NPR, and destroying the Clean Air Act.
[...] You can see this mindset all over the country, where newly elected Republican administrations are pushing social conservative legislation instead of dealing with budget issues.
It’s crazyfail to shut down the government because the Dems won’t agree to defund things that the tea party wants to defund. I guess average Americans now hate clean air and water, but NPR?
Someone remarked that it makes no sense to claim that Democrats love big government and then say it’s the Dems who want to shut it down. The tea party wants it. Why won’t they own it?
Breitbart-O’Keefe know that even if their ‘stings’ are nothing more than creative video cut jobs. But by the time the truth is revealed, the damage they hoped for is already done:
Click to see the entire graph:
Because there has been NO JOBS’ BILL created or even discussed, the House Republicans’ supposed “mandate” last November apparently meant they should spend 3 months on the following cultural / societal issues:
1) Curtailing Abortion Rights
2) Defunding Planned Parenthood
3) Defunding NPR
4) Investigating American Muslims
5) Declaring English As America’s Official Language
6) Reaffirming The “In God We Trust” Motto
It’s true — who cares if you have a job and food as long as English hasn’t yet been declared the official language? All this and maybe a government shutdown too! One could say that House Republicans have their finger DIRECTLY on the pulse of America.
And we’re all waiting for the GOP’s Merry Christmas Bill, where store clerks who say “Happy Holidays” are sent to Gitmo. The War on Christmas will not be ignored!
Bill Moyers argues that stripping public radio of funding will only contribute to the final FoxNews-ification of our country’s corporate owned ‘news’ system. Because journalism is dead:
It’s also typical of the comprehensive and essential journalism that has been a hallmark of NPR since its creation in 1970. Once upon a time, in the early glory days of radio, corporate media took on the challenge of providing Americans with the kind of information critical to citizenship. No longer. Conglomerates long ago bought up the country’s commercial radio stations, closed down the news departments, and auctioned off the airtime to partisan polemicists or pre-packaged content devoid of journalism. Serious news on radio — “the news we need to keep our freedoms,” as the historian and journalist Richard Reeves once put it – has become the province of NPR (Full disclosure: We two have spent most of the last forty years toiling in the vineyards of public broadcasting, although never for NPR.)
[...] Opposing the bill to strip public radio of funding, Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas said, “My constituents turn to [public radio] because they want fact-based, not Fox-based coverage.” The attacks, he continued, are “an ideological crusade against balanced news and educational programs.”
And even Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss told an interviewer, “You know, an awful lot of conservatives listen to NPR. It provides a very valuable service. Should we maybe think about a reduction in that? Again, I think the sacrifice is going to have to be shared by NPR as well as others. But I think total elimination of funding is probably not the wisest thing to do.”
See Anthony Weiner’s remarks on the House floor after the Republican-Teaparty voted to strip NPR of federal funding (the vote was 228 to 192 — all GOP members voted for the cut, and all Dems along with 7 GOP members voted against the cut):
Congressional candidate Jack Davis said in a Republican Party endorsement meeting that Latino farmworkers should be deported and that inner-city African-Americans should be bused to farms to pick crops.
– Good thing Ron Schiller of NPR resigned for being caught on video labeling the Tea Party as racist.
Anthony Weiner is a delight and his dripping sarcasm is a balm to my soul:
“Crisis averted ladies and gentlemen! What a relief. What. A. Relief. I’m glad we got the economy back going. I’m glad we secured our nuclear power plants. I’m so glad the Americans are back to work
We finally found our problem. We discovered a target that we call all agree upon. It’s these guys! This is the problem: it’s Click and clack the Tappet Brothers. We’re FINALLY getting rid of them. THANK GOD we solved this problem for the country.”
And later…
“The Republican Party. No one can say they’re not in touch. They get it. They understand where the American people are. The American people are not concerned about jobs and the economy, what’s going on around the world. They’re staring at their radio, saying, ‘Get rid of Click and Clack.’ Finally my Republican friends are doing it. KUDOS to you”
I ♡ Tony Weiner.
Watch:
