Matthews Forgets to Mention O’Keefe in NPR ‘Sting’ and Asks if Network Could be Made More ‘Centrist’
March 13, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media (h/t Heather of VideoCafe ) The Republicans’ assault on public broadcasting touches something near and dear to my heart. Both my television and my car radio are likely to be tuned to a public broadcasting station as anything else. Wanting to defund such treasures as Terry Gross’ Fresh Air or Sesame Street just smacks of the ongoing campaign to dumb down the populace, much like their oh-so-reasonable suggestion to “teach the controversy” of creationism vs. evolution. So I find myself feeling very protective of public broadcasting…especially when Breitbart’s stooge James O’Keefe decided to take his puerile and staged flip cam aim at it. You would think that the Beltway crowd would circle their wagons around one of their own when O’Keefe started up with his antics, especially given his past history. But no, even the damn NPR talent themselves distance themselves . How frickin’ sad that even Glenn Beck’s Blaze blog takes a more skeptical eye than its own employees. No one–not a single person–on Chris Matthews’ program bothers to add this critical little bit of context to discussing NPR’s bias. No one points out that absolutely NOTHING O’Keefe alleges should be taken credibly. Seriously, if he says the sky is blue, one ought to go outside to check. No one points out that PBS and NPR only count federal funding as less than 5% of the whole, but that smaller, rural stations will be greatly affected by the cuts, thereby making Schiller’s statement factually true, if a bit tactless. No one points out that the “explosive” charges O’Keefe are so much less than explosive when looked at in full context . Nope, all that is taken at face value (a measure of respect that should not ever be given to O’Keefe, Breitbart, et al–EVER), and instead the media pushes the ridiculous narrative of PBS being “elitist” and “liberal”. I’m sorry, but any channel that no longer employs Bill Moyers, but continues to give a platform to John McLaughlin & Co can hardly be called “liberal elitists”. Media Matters has compiled a list of conservative commentators and pundits who claim that they consider NPR’s editorial coverage “fair”. Apparently, “fair” is the new “liberal elitist” for Tweety and panel, thus coloring their own editorial slants as something less than that. Transcripts (courtesy of Heather) below the fold MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Talk about rotten timing. Republicans slashed funding for PBS and NPR two weeks ago. Defenders spent the last couple weeks trotting out Bert and Big Bird and calling for viewers and listeners to bombard Congress with protests. Well, and then this week’s disastrous undercover video of a National Public Radio fundraiser, not only did the fundraiser condemn tea partiers as racists; he said public funding isn’t even needed at NPR. Then another sting tape caught an NPR fundraiser claiming she could shield donations if they came from a group connected to terrorists. David (laughing), now, make your case. You’re one of the stars on really a great show, the Newshour, so many people watch and rely on for their hard news. Make the case for public money going to this organization. BROOKS: Well here’s the case. We have a common culture. If we’re going to assimilate people, if we’re going to be one nation, it helps to have a common culture and there are some things that do join us. And the reason and government has some role in help creating those things, or funding the things that join us. We have Smithsonian Museums that do some of that. I think public broadcasting with shows like The American Experience, they give us all something to clue into our history. They join us as a people, they assimilate immigrants and it’s worth the very small amount and you should see my paycheck, the very small amount that we pay to them. MATTHEWS: Well that’s your end. You don’t get much. I certainly accept that. But here, $200,000 to a small state, a small station in Missouri, $8 million to WGBH, a very big state. You would think in Boston they would have some money. They wouldn’t need a subsidy. You cover it. Is there enough votes from the Senate to keep that money flowing to NPR and PBS. O’DONNELL: Well because of the Big Bird affect and… MATTHEWS: There’s ten Republican Senators apparently who like this. O’DONNELL: Well Richard Shelby and Lindsey Graham are not among them. They really think that it’s time, especially government… uh… where government can act and the private sector can come in, that’s sort of the argument many Republicans make. You don’t need it because they can fundraise and they can do those things. But it is, the love’s part of the culture, so you’ve go that tension. It’s not a new argument. Conservatives have always said NPR is tilted. They don’t like that. They don’t want to have their people paying for it, meaning their voters and constituents. So there’s a lot of friction and it’s an easy argument to make, but Bert and Ernie are popular. MATTHEWS: Hey David, objectively, do you think that NPR could be made more centrist, if they make an effort at it? IGNATIUS: I think NPR’s a great news organization. I think its problem is not that it’s too liberal, but that it’s too elitist. In the culture wars, it’s high end, like the New York Times is high end. MATTHEWS: But the good part is… the good part is it covers the world, much better than a lot (crosstalk) KAY: It’s also seen as an elitist… the value of NPR is that it covers, it does have correspondents around the world and that’s very expensive and a lot of news organizations are cutting their funding. There are security arguments to be made that we need more foreign coverage in America. MATTHEWS: Well yes and that’s the best thing about it, because we don’t get that elsewhere. KAY: But it is still seen as an elitist… MATTHEWS: Yeah. KAY: …and a luxury. And I think, I don’t think actually most Republicans object so much to the sum, because as you point out they’re very small. It is the idea that you are funding public broadcasting that they believe has a bias. MATTHEWS: Yeah. KAY: There’s an argument for public broadcasting. You have to make very sure that your news reporting is seen as objective. BROOKS: I think NPR’s done a good job over the last ten years of reducing that bias. I thought it was really biased ten years ago, but now I think it’s pretty straight. And the federal money for NPR doesn’t so much go for the big stations. It goes so it can go out to the rural parts of the country which wouldn’t have those stations otherwise. MATTHEWS: It’s a hard thing to be honest about and I think we’ve had a good discussion on this for everybody.
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Click here to view this media I’m still not sure what’s more pitiful. The fact the CNN along with our other cable news networks decided to largely ignore the fact that we had massive protests going on in Wisconsin this weekend, or that when they finally devoted a few minutes to it as CNN did here in between hours upon hours of chasing the ambulance of the day which is the earthquake in Japan, they didn’t let the public know just how large the crowds were there. I thought if you considered yourself a “news” organization, you were supposed to be capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. CNN along with MSNBC and Fox decided to largely ignore the protests in Wisconsin, and with Fox of course trashing them with the small amount of coverage they got there as well, and instead did almost all wall to wall coverage of the earthquake in Japan. Thankfully for anyone with Internet access that wanted to see what was going on, The Uptake did broadcast the protests. We need to do something about the media consolidation in this country and until these large media conglomerates are broken up, things aren’t going to get any better with our struggles to fight back against the destruction of the labor movement and the middle class that is under assault right now. How and when that happens and what political force it takes to change it is beyond me, but if we aren’t at least pushing our politicians to do something about it, nothing is ever going to change on that front. I guess it was asking too much of CNN to show this picture of just how many turned out to protest during their coverage. Anyone think if this was some teabagger rally which they love to promote, that they would not have been showing the crowd size? Here’s their feedback page if you’d like to let them hear about it. Contact us. h/t The Political Carnival enlarge Credit: The Political Carnival
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Liberal Democrat leader rejects ‘tribalism of left and right’ after party votes to affirm commitment to social democracy Nick Clegg has told Liberal Democrat delegates they are now the party of the “radical centre”, hours after the party voted to commit itself to the traditions and beliefs of social democracy. In his address wrapping up the party’s two-day conference, Clegg pushed ahead in his attempt to redefine the Lib Dems. Clegg’s speech rejected the “tribalism of left and right” and instead cast his pitch to middle-income earners – “alarm clock Britain” – as a uniquely Liberal position. Clegg said: “We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre. We are governing from the middle, for the middle. “Lloyd George’s ‘people’s budget’ to make the wealthy pay their fair share and give a pension to all those who had worked hard. Keynes’s plans to make our economy work for everyone and provide jobs for all. Beveridge’s radical blueprint for a welfare state to give security and dignity to every citizen. They may not have called it alarm clock Britain but they had the same people in mind. “We are not the heirs to Thatcher. We are not the heirs to Blair. We are the heirs to Mill, Lloyd George, Keynes, Beveridge, Grimond. We are the true radicals of British politics.” The two other traditions in British politics had failed middle-income earners, he said. “Failed because both of those political traditions forget about people and place their faith in institutions. For the left, an obsession with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But, as liberals, we place our faith in people.” While he sought to persuade his party that they were now on the centre of British politics, in the morning delegates passed a strategy paper that called for the Lib Dems to fight as a party of social democracy. The motion that was passed said: “The UK Liberal Democrats are based firmly in the historical and global traditions of the liberal and social democratic philosophy and beliefs.” At the opening rally on Friday night, the party president, Tim Farron, said: “In the old days, some people would say the Lib Dems are a party of the centre left. That is the party I still belong to.” And on Sunday morning the party’s deputy leader, Simon Hughes, said: “Our job is to be, yes, an alternative to the Tories. But our job is to replace Labour as the radical alternative to the Tories in Britain.” The public pronouncements by Hughes and Farron are slightly at odds with some ministers who have come to accept they may fight the next election on the centre, and possibly even from the centre-right, against Labour. They believe that some leftwing supporters may not in future come back to the Lib Dems. The motion passed on Sunday morning also called on Lib Dem MPs, peers and ministers to spell out much more clearly “those policies which derive from the Liberal Democrats’ existing and emerging policy platform” and “those aspects of government policy which originated from the Conservative party policy platform”. The motion also said the party would fight the election as an independent party “with no preference for future coalition partners”. In his speech, Clegg said: “The old political establishment, on the left and on the right, hate what’s happening to our politics. The old left screaming betrayal every time politicians work across party lines or make a compromise. The old right simply horrified to see Liberal Democrats in government at all. We are showing that new politics, plural politics, coalition politics, can work for this country. And it terrifies them. There are enemies of reason across the political spectrum.” The concept of “alarm clock Britain” has surprised some who believe it is an odd formulation that requires too much explaining. In his speech, Clegg set out again what he meant by alarm clock Britain: “Everyone who wants to get up and get on. People who, unlike the wealthy, have no choice but to work hard to make ends meet. People who are proud to support themselves but are only ever one pay cheque from their overdraft. People who believe in self-reliance but who don’t want to live in a dog-eat-dog world. Who want everyone who can to work hard but want children, the elderly and the vulnerable to be looked after, too.” Clegg also raised an allegation that Labour-run Manchester council was making deeper cuts than the Lib Dem council in Sheffield and as such the scale of cuts being brought in may be politically motivated. He said: “I cannot tell you how proud I am that not a single Liberal Democrat-led council is closing a single Sure Start children’s centre. Sheffield has had a budget cut of more than 8%. Every lost job is a loss we all feel keenly, but the Liberal Democrat council here has kept compulsory redundancies down to 270. And they have kept open every children’s centre, library and swimming pool. But cross the Pennines into Manchester, a council having to make almost identical savings, you’ll find a Labour council letting nearly 2,000 people go. So don’t let Labour take the moral high ground.” Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrat conference Allegra Stratton Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Police investigate horrific bus crash on New York highway Police were investigating a bus driver’s claim that he was driven off the highway before his bus slid into a sign pole that sheared it end to end, killing 14 people and leaving others injured in a horrific scene of blood, jumbled bodies and shattered glass. Ophadell Williams told police that a lorry clipped his World Wide Tours bus just as it entered New York City on a trip from the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. But state police said witnesses told them Williams was speeding before Saturday morning’s crash on Interstate 95. The 31 passengers were returning to New York’s Chinatown from an overnight trip to the casino. Captain Matthew Galvin of the NYPD’s emergency service unit was one of the first rescuers on the scene. He said officers found “bodies everywhere”.clambered into the wreckage. “People were moaning and screaming for help,” he said Galvin said that in his 22 years on the job, “it’s probably the worst accident I’ve ever seen in terms of the human toll”. Around 20 passengers were treated at hospitals. Eight were in a serious condition. The crash happened at 5.35am on Saturday, while some of the 31 passengers were still asleep. The bus scraped along the highway’s guard rail for 90 metres, then toppled and crashed into the support pole for a highway sign indicating the exit for the Hutchinson Parkway. The pole peeled off the roof of the bus all the way to the back tyres. Most passengers were hurled to the front of the bus on impact, fire department chief Edward Kilduff said. The southbound lanes of the I-95 highway were closed for hours while emergency workers tended to survivors and removed bodies. Major Michael Kopy, of the state police, told news media on Saturday night that the crash was being handled “as if it is a criminal investigation”, adding: “It will take a long period of time to determine what, if any, criminal acts may have occurred here.” Kopy said witnesses reported that the bus driver had been speeding on the I-95 highway, where the limit is 55mph (90kph). He said the driver, Williams, 40, from Brooklyn in New York, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and blood had been drawn for analysis. Kopy said state police were working with authorities in Connecticut and officials at Mohegan Sun to determine what the driver’s activities were before the accident. “At this point it appears that the operator lost control of the vehicle for what is as yet an undetermined reason,” Kopy said. He declined to identify the passengers or to describe their injuries, but added: “The pole did go through the top half of the bus.” Chung Ninh, 59, told the New York Times and NY1 News that he had been asleep, then suddenly found himself hanging upside-down from his seat belt. He described one man bleeding from a severed arm. Ninh said that when he tried to help one bloodied woman, the driver told him to stop, because she was dead. “Help another one,” he said the driver told him. Another passenger, Jose Hernandez, 49, said he also was asleep. “We tried to help people, but there was twisted metal in the way,” he told the Times. The NYPD’s Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on Saturday that the lorry, which did not stop after the crash, was in the lane to the left of the bus, although it was unclear whether the two vehicles touched. Homer Martinez was at the scene moments after the incident and said other drivers ran from their cars to help the injured. State police said they were interviewing the driver of a lorry that was in the area at the time of the crash. They said the trailer had been found on Long Island, New York State, and the tractor was in Westchester County, about 50 miles away. Both were being inspected. The bus, a 1999 Prevost , was being inspected at a New York state police barracks. Video from a camera on the bus had been obtained by authorities, but not yet analysed, Kopy said. He said investigators were trying to determine the speed the bus was travelling at and that a device that can record such information, similar to a flight data recorder, was expected to be examined overnight. “People were saying, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God,’ holding their hands on their heads,” Martinez said. “I saw people telling other people not to go there, ‘You don’t want to see this’.” Christopher Hart, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said an investigation team would be looking at the bus company’s safety programmes, including those involving driver fatigue, as well as highway design and the bus itself. Many of the passengers were from Chinatown, ranging in age from 20 to 50. Fifteen were being treated at Jacobi Medical Centre in the Bronx. A hospital spokeswoman, Barbara DeIorio, said some injuries were serious but she gave no numbers. Five more were taken to St Barnabas hospital where two were breathing with the help of machines. “We’ve had skull fractures, rib fractures … internal bleeding, we’ve had lung contusions,” said Dr Ernest Patti, adding that the bus driver was “awake and conscious”. World Wide Travel of Greater New York, the operator of the bus, said it in a statement that the company was “heartbroken” and co-operating with investigators. “We are a family-owned company and realise words cannot begin to express our sorrow to the families of those who lost their lives or were injured in this tragic accident. Our thoughts and prayers are with them,” it said. Federal records showed that World Wide Travel had at least two other accidents in the past 24 months in which people were injured. The company was also flagged for possible extra scrutiny due to violations involving driver fatigue regulations. The bus was one of scores that travel daily between Chinatown, in Manhattan, and the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos in south-eastern Connecticut. Mohegan Sun, in Uncasville, Connecticut, has estimated 20% of its business comes from Asian spending and caters to Chinese-American gamblers. Its website has a Chinese-language section offering gaming and bus promotions. ___ David Caruso and Cristian Salazar also contributed to this report. New York United States guardian.co.uk
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Hacker hired by senior News of the World executive to intercept emails, BBC documentary says The News of the World phone-hacking scandal is set to reach a new peak of embarrassment for the paper and for Scotland Yard with the naming of the sixth and most senior journalist yet to be implicated in illegal news-gathering. A BBC Panorama programme claims that Alex Marunchak, formerly the paper’s senior executive editor, commissioned a specialist snooper who illegally intercepted email messages from a target’s computer and faxed copies of them to Marunchak’s News of the World office. The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that the target was a former British army intelligence officer who had served in Northern Ireland and was in possession of secrets which were deemed so sensitive that they had been suppressed by a court order. Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which owns the News of the World, has claimed repeatedly that only one of its journalists – the former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman – was involved in illegal news-gathering. When Goodman was jailed in January 2007, Scotland Yard chose not to interview any other journalist or executive on the paper. And Panorama reports that the illegal interception of emails happened in July 2006, when the prime minister’s former media adviser Andy Coulson was editing the paper. Coulson has given evidence to a parliamentary select committee and on oath at a criminal trial, denying that he knew anything of any illegal activity during his seven years at the News of the World. Panorama obtained details of a fax sent to the office of Marunchak on 5 July 2006, apparently containing copies of emails which had been written by Ian Hurst, a former army intelligence officer. Marunchak was then based in the News of the World’s Dublin office, editing the Irish edition. Hurst was believed to be involved in writing a book titled Stakeknife, eventually published under the pseudonym Martin Ingram, which details the alleged involvement of British intelligence in assassinations in Northern Ireland. Hurst had been the subject of court orders obtained by the Ministry of Defence. Panorama traced Hurst and showed him the fax. He confirmed on camera that the emails had come from his computer. “The hairs on the back of my head are up,” he told them. Hurst then contacted a specialist hacker who he suspected was responsible, met him in a local hotel and confronted him, while the BBC secretly filmed the exchange. The hacker – whose name cannot be revealed for separate legal reasons – confessed his role and added: “It weren’t that hard. I sent you an email that you opened, and that’s it … I sent it from a bogus address … Now it’s gone. It shouldn’t even remain on the hard drive … I think I programmed it to stay on for three months.” Hurst then asked the hacker who had commissioned him to do this. The hacker replied: “The faxes would go to Dublin … He was the editor of the News of the World for Ireland. A Slovak-type name. I can’t remember his fucking name. Alex, his name is. Marunchak.” Marunchak declined to answer questions when the BBC confronted him. The BBC claim that Marunchak was introduced to the specialist hacker by Jonathan Rees, the private investigator whose involvement with corrupt police officers was detailed by the Guardian on Saturday. Internal News International records show that Marunchak regularly employed Rees from the late 1990s, and that during 2006, the News of the World paid Rees more than £4,000 for research relating to Stakeknife, the codename for the British intelligence mole inside the IRA whose activities were known to Ian Hurst. Marunchak is the sixth News of the World journalist to be implicated in the affair. Documents published by the Guardian in 2009 include an email containing the transcripts of 35 illegally intercepted voicemail messages, sent by a junior reporter, Ross Hindley, for the chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Paperwork disclosed in court cases suggests that Clive Goodman, Ian Edmondson and Greg Miskiw commissioned phone-hacking. Goodman was jailed; Edmondson has been sacked but not charged with any offence; Miskiw is believed to have been interviewed by police in 2005 but never charged with any offence. Monday’s edition of Panorama includes an interview with Sean Hoare, the News of the World’s former showbusiness writer, who last year told the New York Times that Andy Coulson had actively encouraged him to hack voicemail. Hoare tells the programme that the news desk commissioned private investigators to access targets’ bank accounts, phone records, mortgage accounts and health records. The former deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, Brian Paddick, who believes his own voicemail may have been intercepted on behalf of the News of the World, told the programme “I think that the new investigation should be carried out by an external force and it should be independently supervised. Otherwise, certainly some of the victims of phone-hacking will not be satisfied that the thing has been investigated thoroughly.” In a separate development, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has taken the unusual step of publicly challenging a senior serving police officer, who has been closely involved in the hacking affair. In a letter published in the Guardian, Starmer accuses the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police John Yates of quoting him out of context in attempting to justify evidence which he has given to two parliamentary select committees. In the House of Commons last week, Chris Bryant MP said that Yates had misled the committees by claiming that it is illegal to hack voicemail messages only if they have not already been heard by the intended recipient. This was a key factor in justifying the Yard’s claim that there was only a small number of victims of the News of the World’s activities. Yates wrote to the Guardian defending his position and quoting a sentence from evidence submitted by the DPP’s office to one of the select committees. However, in his letter to the Guardian, Keir Starmer says it was “regrettable” that Yates used this sentence out of context; that the original prosecution did not use this interpretation of the law; and that this interpretation had no bearing on the charges brought or the legal proceedings generally. “The issue simply did not arise,” he writes. News of the World Phone hacking Andy Coulson News Corporation News International Rupert Murdoch Newspapers Nick Davies guardian.co.uk
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WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US files claims first Obama administration scalp as state department spokesman quits The disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified US documents through WikiLeaks has claimed its first scalp within the Obama administration with the reported resignation of PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department. CNN is reporting that Crowley is abruptly stepping down as the public face of US foreign policy because of his remarks to an MIT seminar last week about the treatment of the suspected source of the WikiLeaks documents, Bradley Manning, in a military jail. Crowley said: “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence.” The remarks forced Obama to address the issue of Manning’s regime in the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia for the first time. The president sought to defend the treatment, which includes Manning being held in solitary confinement in his cell for 23 hours a day and being stripped naked at night. Crowley’s comments, which were picked up by a BBC news correspondent Philippa Thomas as part of a journalism fellowship she is taking at Harvard, broke the united front that the US government had previously maintained over WikiLeaks. Several administration figures, including Crowley’s boss Hillary Clinton, had vowed to aggressively hunt down the leaker of the WikiLeaks trove. Crowley’s reported resignation indicates that the administration has been embarrassed by indications of in-fighting over Manning’s handling as he awaits court martial, which some – including the source of the Pentagon papers, Daniel Ellsberg – have likened to torture . Commentators were quick to point out the apparent double standards within the government. Glenn Greenwald, a Salon reporter who has been outspoken about Manning’s detention, tweeted that “detainee abuse is allowed, speaking out against it isn’t”. Last week Manning gave his own personal account of theconditions in which he is being held, saying that it amounted to harsh treatment that was designed to be punitive even before he had been put on trial. He described being stripped naked every night having made a sarcastic comment to guards about the absurdity of the regime he was under. Manning has been charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking to WikiLeaks of thousands of secret US embassy cables, as well as videos and warlogs from Afghanistan and Iraq. He was arrested last May at a US military base outside Baghdad, where he had been working as an intelligence specialist. Bradley Manning WikiLeaks US politics United States Obama administration Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Matthews Takes Us For a Little Trip Down Memory Lane With Bush Yucking it Up Over Libby at Gridiron Dinner
March 13, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Does anyone else think that events like this Gridiron Dinner that Matthews talks about so fondly here is just another example of what’s wrong with our beltway media and their cozy relationship with the politicians in DC? I really could have done without any reminiscing about Bush yucking it up over Scooter Libby staying out of prison back in 2008, but Matthews decided to take us there.
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George Will on Sunday's “This Week” said what likely has been on the minds of right-thinking Americans for many decades. “NPR is run by people who don't like people like me” (video follows with transcript and commentary): JAKE TAPPER, HOST: Cokie, you've been at NPR for almost 40 years. Obviously this institution means a lot to you, but why should we care? COKIE ROBERTS: Look, I should just say that they did then reject that money, and sent internal e-mails basically saying this is totally unacceptable. We have to have tax forms, all of that. So, that should be stated. But, look, we should care because 34 million people listen every week and want to get the news that you get there, that you can't get any place else. NPR’s got seventeen foreign bureaus. That's something you can't say for any other broadcast organization these days. And brings you terrific information, day in and day out, week in and week out. And the reporters who are there on the line, being shot at in North Africa at the moment are being very badly served by the management that’s now gone. TAPPER: George, very quickly. GEORGE WILL: We learned this week redundantly that NPR is run by people who don't like people like me. Which is fine. The problem is there are 14,000 radio stations in this country. The government shouldn’t be subsidizing neither entertainment, certainly not journalism. In fact, this is a solution in search of a problem. ROBERTS: Well, there are not 14,000 radio stations in rural areas, which is where most of the federal funding goes. Most of those stations are the ones that, NPR gets hardly any money from the federal government, and the big stations get hardly any money. But the little, tiny, rural stations that, where there’s nothing else on the air, get a lot of money and they would go dark. I love the fact that Roberts and all the NPR-lovers in the media have the same talking point that in the year 2011, despite the existence of cable, satellites, and the internet, people in rural areas would be totally uninformed without this radio network. It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
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Continue reading …ABC Exploits Japanese Tragedy to Undermine Minor GOP-Proposed Domestic U.S. Budget Reduction
March 13, 2011 No Comment
ABC’s Bill Weir inaccureately lectured Friday night: “Consider Japan's state of the art undersea sensors and tsunami gates, protecting key ports, while just last month, our House of Representatives voted to slash funding for the Hawaiian tsunami warning center that issued last night's alarm.” Then on Saturday’s World News , reporter Clayton Sandell found it newsworthy to highlight how “Democrats accuse Republicans of being irresponsible for proposing budget cuts to NOAA, the federal agency that provides forecasts and early warnings of natural disasters.” Sandell cued up a California Democrat with a loaded question: “NOAA's budget gets cut, are people's lives more at risk?” The Congressman, who represents the state’s northern coast , naturally, agreed: “Absolutely.” In fact, the funding “slash,” which is only proposed and is far from implementation since it hasn’t even passed in the House, is not for any specific program inside NOAA and is for a reduction of just 7 percent , which hardly means all of NOAA’s programs must be shut down since NOAA would still be able to spend 93 percent of what they spent in the previous fiscal year. From the Saturday, March 12 ABC World News with David Muir: CLAYTON SANDELL: The quake has also triggered a tsunami of political bickering in Congress. Democrats accuse Republicans of being irresponsible for proposing budget cuts to NOAA, the federal agency that provides forecasts and early warnings of natural disasters. SANDELL TO THOMPSON: If NOAA's budget gets cut, are people's lives more at risk? U.S. REPRESENTATIVE MIKE THOMPSON (D-CA): Absolutely. This is important stuff. It's public safety. It's an investment in our everyday lives. SANDELL: Republicans counter that it's up to NOAA how it spends its budget, as residents along the coast wonder how bad the next tsunami might be. Clayton Sandell, ABC News, Crescent City, California. From the Friday, March 11 ABC World News with Diane Sawyer: BILL WEIR: And consider Japan's state of the art undersea sensors and tsunami gates, protecting key ports, while just last month, our House of Representatives voted to slash funding for the Hawaiian tsunami warning center that issued last night's alarm. One more reason to look out for yourself…. DIANE SAWYER: And you were telling us they cut the funding for that kind of alert system. Thank you, Bill. — Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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