In recent weeks, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard has been out defending the network's use of the term "enhanced interrogation" to describe waterboarding and other practices, in place of the accurate term "torture". You see, using "torture" means you're taking sides in the story, but using a euphemism created by the previous administration to cover their actions is not.
Now, NPR apparently has decided that it's really too much effort to keep up even the flimsiest pretense of neutrality. After 8 years of buying any talking point the Bush Adminstration or the Republican Party was spewing, (and selling it to their audience with a nice markup), today they decided it was time for an examination of how politicians use language.
You really need to hear this steaming pile of bullshit for yourself to understand how it completely lays bare the biases in their "news" coverage, but let me give you a good overview in four words: "Mara Liasson" and "Frank Luntz". I'm pretty sure any regular NPR listener already knows where this is going.
The piece starts innocuously enough, with Liasson talking about how those things formerly referred to as "toxic assets" were being described as "legacy assets" by Tim Geithner. Okay, fair point.
But then Mara brings in Frank Luntz, who draws on his years of years of linguistic obfuscation to point out what a swell coinage it is. I'm sure he wished he'd been consulted on the naming process.
She moves on to discussing the health care debate, pointing out that Obama has in some speeches said that they don't want lobbyists and special interests taking control of the legislation, but in different speeches talking about bringing stakeholders together. Lobbyists and special interests = bad, stakeholders = good... look how they're manipulating you! (Bush never used such rhetorical tricks, you know. He was a straight talker.) Likewise, a discussion of Max Baucus and use of the term "shared responsibilities" vs. "mandates". Maybe a worthy discussion, but I wonder why it didn't come up during the days of "Healthy Forest Initiative", the "Patriot Act" and every other bit of message manipulation for 8 years?
It gets worse.
Obama is criticized for dumping the term "War on Terror" which has a "clear meaning" and is "easily understood" for the "more ambiguous" terms "war in Iraq, Afghanistan and other military contingencies". See, "War on Terror" describes the scope of operations very well, whereas "war in Iraq"... well, who knows what the administration is trying to say with that?
There's a little bit of opinionizing about how this shows that Obama's fuzzy and hard to pin down. Oh, but wait! Obama does use one clear unambiguous term: "torture". Which is why they needed to end the piece with Dick Cheney telling us how very bad it is for him to use this word.
So, that's it for me and NPR news shows. I'll still listen to Fresh Air and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I already get most of my news elsewhere anyway; NPR is really just something to have on in the background rather than a primary news source. I'll fill my mornings with music instead.
By the way, if you'd like to write to torture apologist Alicia Shepard, here's the contact page. Just select "Contact the Ombudsman" in the I want to... box.
[Update] - It's a bit late to add this, but... One big reason why I have a beef with this story is because it was not called commentary or analysis - it was labeled as a news story, on the subject of the economy. If it had been run as an opinion piece, I still would have disliked it but it would not been so hack-tastic.