Re: NPR bias

On Sat, 12 Jan 2002 shadowman-IfOL7F/[email protected] wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Jan 2002, Niel M. Bornstein wrote:
> 
> > It irritates me (and this is not just an NPR thing) when they talk about
> > the change in power in Afghanistan being "bloodless".
> 
> A few months ago, I saw a full page ad in a national newspaper (can't
> rememeber which one) that criticized NPR for unbalanced airtime in favor
> of the Palestinian perspective.

Note: that has *nothing* to do with calling the Afghan shift
"bloodless". I assume it's in response to my initial post.

>  I suspect they responded to the
> accusation by going too far the other way.  

That presumes that the ad was correct. It's standard practice for groups
like FLAME to accues the US media for being pro-Palestinian. That just
isn't true.

> At the time, it was true that
> they did have more guests with a pro-Palestinian perspective and I was
> pleased with that.

Really? Overall? I'm *very* skeptical.

The FAIR numbers are hard.

>  I felt that it was necessary in order to balance out
> the heavy pro-Israeli position that permeates most mainstream media.  It
> was one of the main reasons I became an avid listener.

If only they did actually balanced reporting!

It'd be interesting if certain programs (I know Democracy Now, a non-npr
program) had balanced or corrective coverage. But, alas, that doesn't mean
that their straight news reporting is fair. And that's a *much worse*
problem, imho.

> I suspect that NPR is caught in the middle and is trying desperately to
> give both sides equal airtime.

Why is this hard? And what's "desparate" about reporting death tolls
accurately? Or saying that a period of time is "violence free" in a an
area if there are only palistinean deaths? That's not perspective or tilt,
that's *foul lying distortion*.

>  I listen to NPR everyday all day long and
> while I disagree with some of the positions they take and the ways in
> which they characterize the news, I am at a loss to listen to anything
> else that takes a more balanced perspective.  

Just because everyone else is worse doesn't mean they're OK.

Send a letter to the NPR guy. Did you *see* the reportage imablances?

> At least, there's nothing
> better in my local area.  As far as I am concerned, they do as good a job
> reporting the news fairly as anybody.

Well, if that's the standard, then they're ok. After all, Fox News is the
measure.

(It's not *entirely* unknown for a major news org to run a piece critical
of Israel, though they standardly take a *lot* of flak for it. But the
more pervasive problem is things like these casualty reports and calling a
period of great violence "calm" until one Israeli is killed (about a
period where *26* palistineans, mostly *KIDS*, are killed). This conceals
the basic *facts* of the situation! It's morally grotesque! It's
completely racist.)

If you *are* an avid NPR listener, write in. Threaten to stop supporting
them (you can still listen, after all :)).

Cheers,
Bijan.