SteveInskeep

SteveInskeep https://www.dailykos.com/news/SteveInskeep News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Mon, 24 Feb 2020 03:32:05 +0000 Mon, 24 Feb 2020 03:32:05 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) NPR has me screaming 'liar' at my radio again today, this time on gun control https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/2/26/1744899/-NPR-has-me-screaming-liar-at-my-radio-again-today-this-time-on-gun-control <div> <div> <div> Hey NPR, I know we've been friends for a very very long time. I've been giving you money since I've had enough money to spare, and I have benefited and believed we as a country are better for your reporting. But lately I've been feeling betrayed by you, old friend, especially the last couple years as you allowed yourselves and your listeners to be brazenly spun by the Republican party and their supporters. Before you get all 'both sides do it', no, they don't. Not to the same degree, and one party is in power and you give them a microphone constantly, unchallenged. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/02/26/588776301/kentucky-lawmakers-propose-schools-have-armed-marshals" target="_blank">Today it was Governor Matt Bevin</a> of Kentucky. I didn't know who it was you were interviewing on Morning Edition at first, I guess I missed the intro. And despite a very reasonable sounding delivery and sing-songy voice, I was instantly attuned to the presence of a truth distortion when Bevin was asked whether there were any laws that could help stop these horrible mass shootings we keep experiencing. His response was a cherry picked statistical period of "the last 10years", saying there was MORE gun regulation in that time period, but that it hasn't stopped gun violence. This led Bevin to pronounce his conclusion that more laws DON'T help. LIAR!!!! His statement may be technically true, but his cherry picked time period amounts to nothing short of a lie, as that's so conveniently outside of the window in which the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire in 2004. Surely, NPR will counter this distortion, but no… it was allowed to pass unchallenged. Steve Inskeep tried to pivot to a different set of statistics, showing the increase in the number of guns in households since the 1968 have doubled. But again, Bevin shifted the timeframe so he could distort his answer, this time instead of the last 10 years or the 60's context of the question, Bevin went all the way back to "50, 100, 200 years" to again vaguely ignore a valid question and point that Inskeep was making, and answer back with the answer he wanted to give. Guns good. Gun regulations bad. Wash, rinse, repeat. Finally, Inskeep tried to get Bevin on the record in support of lifting the ban on federal dollars funding research at the Centers for Disease Control or elsewhere on the public health effects of guns and gun laws which has been banned since the1990s, leaving us in the dark and having "debates" that are essentially uninformed and wishful thinking. Once again, Bevin tried to filibuster his way out of answering the question. Inskeep did ye old "only 20 seconds left" in order to try to elicit a yes or no answer on the research question. Bevin dodged and filibustered more. I never heard an answer. And in the end, the listener is left uninformed. Personally I found myself screaming "Liar" at the radio for most of the interview. So, NPR, if you can't get honest, complete answers, why did you air this interview? Is this access journalism? Did the Koch brothers underwrite this interview too, like some other NPR segments that they fund? More importantly, why are you sticking with this friendly interview format when the subject of the interview is aggressively misinforming your audience, your MEMBERS. We as MEMBERS of NPR deserve better. We need NPR to be warriors for truth, and instead, we get milquetoast "oh would you please answer this reasonable question with a yes or no" and you air their distorted response anyway. NPR reporters and editors, if you cannot get us the truth, you are doing us a disservice with this friendly conversational interview format. It's time to get rid of it. Time to explore alternatives that INFORM your audience and members rather than wasting our time listening to the dodges from the likes of Bevin, Huckabee-Sanders or whichever Republican hack you have on that day. How about you more strategically edit these interviews? Or be really bold and report that you will not be airing an interview because the elected official was not truthful? Bring in one of the school shooting survivors to ask the questions? Or maybe you need to build a tool that enables your audience to provide feedback on your interviews in a very specific level? Or edit the interview such that it is combined with editorial comments about the factual accuracy of the claims being made? There are a dozen ways you could give less air time to the spin doctors and more time to laying a factual foundation. Unfortunately, I already know the response NPR will give me, because I have complained directly to them several times already in 2018 about this very thing. NPR has interviews with"newsmakers", and these interviews are deemed as "news",thus NPR is going to use the audio to boost their narrative they are being fair, but leaving their audience angry and misinformed. Here's their response when I complained about a Trump official's NPR promoted lies: "As the President of the United States, Donald Trump’s views, actions, and statements are of course newsworthy, as are statements made on his behalf. NPR’s journalists will present that news in context – alongside analysis, commentary, and fact-checking – in order to support an informed audience. We also work hard to make sure that the attention devoted to each story is valid and appropriate.We acknowledge that finding the right mix of coverage can be complicated, and we are always grateful for listener perspectives." Thanks "Kelsey, NPR audience liaison", but you are failing. You are being spun. Your format is incapable of dealing with people who ignore ethical guidelines for debate. They're NOT going to be honest. And you are complicit by airing these interviews. So, time to stop these softball interviews. Find a way to inform us and live up to your promise to present things in context. This Bevin interview was NOT put into context one bit, and this is the 3rd time in 2018 already you've frustrated me to the point where I completely tune you out and scream LIAR at the radio for 5 minutes. Sorry, old friend, I don't feel like you have my back anymore. I may remain an NPR member, but I'm sure as hell not going to increase my funding of you. My extra money will go to independent journalists or organizations fighting for truth in media like fair.org or the ACLU. Maybe you could do something to innovate and change my mind, but maybe it's time for radio to just die, whither on the vine. Because clearly your format is insufficient to accurately inform me, and my time, everyone's most valuable asset, will be spent elsewhere. </div> </div> </div> rss@dailykos.com (EagleOfFreedom) 2ndAmendment GunControl GunRights Guns MattBevin MorningEdition NPR Recommended SteveInskeep _1744899 Mon, 26 Feb 2018 17:01:44 +0000 Journalism is pretty much over in the Age of Trump https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/16/1600589/-Journalism-is-pretty-much-over-in-the-Age-of-Trump To state it baldly, there’s no way mainstream media can objectively cover the Trump administration without self-destructing. If you want to skip a lot of reading, go right to the poll. If you thought the media’s coverage of the race for the White House was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There are simply no rules to cover an administration headed by a man who can’t go five minutes without a lie of some kind. The people around him reinforce those lies even as they simultaneously deny them and double down on them. The man’s chief advisor is a determined propagandist; he comes from an enterprise that has honed <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/fbi-takes-a-page-from-breitbart-far-right-clinton-cash-book-used-in-foundation-investigation/" target="_blank" title="">misinformation warfare</a> into an art under his leadership. When conventional journalism comes up against it, it’s not pretty. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/11/16/502274853/critics-come-out-against-trumps-chief-strategist-steve-bannon" target="_blank" title="">NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep interviewed the current senior editor of Breitbart News Joel Pollak</a> about clear evidence that the former head of the organization, Steve Bannon (now Trump’s senior White House advisor) promotes White Supremacy, misogyny, and worse. Pollak’s response: denial and counter attack. <blockquote> INSKEEP: Well, I want to mention, you know, actually putting controversial opinions out there is a perfectly fine idea. We've had David Duke on this program. But we fact check. We try to question. We put in context. This particular article goes on to make a string of statements. There's a reference of - about President Obama and Kenya. There's also a statement - the Confederacy was not a callous conspiracy to enforce slavery, but a patriotic and idealistic cause. A little bit of research would show that Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, declared the cause was slavery. I mean, why put these things out there? POLLAK: I think that we can talk about individual articles out of the tens of thousands at Breitbart. But, you know, NPR is taxpayer-funded and has an entire section of its programming, a regular feature called Code Switch, which from my perspective, is a racist program. I'm looking here at the latest article which aired on NPR calling the election results nostalgia for a whiter America. So NPR has racial and racist programming... INSKEEP: Well, let's just... <div></div> <div> POLLAK: ...That I am required - I am required to pay for as a taxpayer. INSKEEP: Well, let me just mention... </div> </blockquote> emphasis added Inskeep has to leave it hanging as “we’re running short of time” — but it’s clear he had no way to deal with a direct counterattack like that, plus the added charge that NPR racism is funded by taxpayer money! This is an example of what the press is going to be up against in the days to come. The problem with trying to deal in objective facts in proper context and reasoned discourse is that the process breaks down when it involves people who don’t give a crap about either, people who have a vested interest in anything but the truth. (It also takes time.) We’ve been going down this road a long time. It was bad enough <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community" target="_blank" title="">in the days of President W.</a> <blockquote> The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community#cite_note-2" title="">[2]</a> </blockquote> emphasis added It might have made a difference if the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate" target="_blank" title="">Fourth Estate</a> had treated FOX News as a fringe propaganda machine from the start instead of looking at their ratings and wondering “How do we get some of that?” It might have made a difference if they’d pushed back against Right Wing charges that they were biased against conservatives, instead of bending over backwards to avoid pissing off that portion of their audience. (It was safe to come down on liberals, because they respect the press — or used to.) It might have made a difference if they’d not lumped news in with entertainment and sports on the big TV networks. It might have made a difference if they’d figured out how to lure viewers with real information instead of whatever grabs them by the gut. It might have made a difference if they’d put a little more effort into getting facts into context instead of chasing ratings and the scandal of the day they’d been spoon-feed. It might have made a difference if there had been consequences for the people polluting the news stream, instead of rewards. It might have made a difference if there hadn’t been so much media consolidation, with fewer eyes and fewer resources to dig out the stories that need to be told. It might have made a difference if there wasn’t so much money from peddling useful lies as ‘truth’ as a means to power. It might have made a difference if the media would tell us the stories we need to see, instead of the ones that are ‘safe’ and don’t upset the wrong people. It might have made a difference if the media hadn’t let the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window" target="_blank" title="">Overton window</a> get shoved so far away from reality, the only thing they can see through it is Rupert Murdoch, Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, Bannon, et. al. collectively mooning us. <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2016/11/dc-press-corps-already-normalizing-trump" target="_blank">Deviancy has been defined so far downward</a>, we can have a Neo-Nazi sitting in the White House whispering in the ear of the President — and the press hardly dares hint at it. We can have people who should be in jail, an asylum, or at best standing in a park yelling with a bullhorn instead nominated for some of the most critical jobs in government — and the press glosses over who and what they really are. And then they wonder why they are so detested. Charles P. Pierce has a number of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/261867.Charles_P_Pierce" target="_blank" title="">pungent quotes</a> on how we ended up in Idiot America. Here’s a sampling: <blockquote> “Things are in the wrong place. Religion is in the box where science used to be. Politics is on the shelf where you thought you left science the previous afternoon. Entertainment seems to have knocked over and spilled on everything.” ‡ “In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.” ‡ “It’s not that there is less information on television than there once was. In fact, there is so much information that “fact” is now defined as something believed by so many people that television notices their belief, and truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.” ‡ “Cranks are much too important. They are part of the other America—Greil Marcus’s old, weird America. A charlatan is a crank with a book deal and a radio program and a suit in federal court. A charlatan succeeds only in Idiot America.* A charlatan is a crank who succeeds too well. A charlatan is a crank who’s sold out.” ‡ “Idiot America is a strange, disordered place. Everything is on the wrong shelves. The truth of something is defined by how many people will attest to it, and facts are defined by those people’s fervency. Fiction and nonfiction are defined by how well they sell. The best sellers are on one shelf, cheek by jowl, whether what’s contained in them is true or not. People wander blindly, following the Gut into dark corners and aisles that lead nowhere, confusing possibilities with threats, jumping at shadows, stumbling around. They trip over piles of fiction left strewn around the floor of the nonfiction aisles. They fall down. They land on other people, and those other people can get hurt.” emphasis added ― <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/261867.Charles_P_Pierce">Charles P. Pierce</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6193147" title="">Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free</a> * Charlatans are now top of the list for jobs in the Trump administration </blockquote> According to the <a href="https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/" target="_blank" title="">American Press Institute</a>, <blockquote> Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities. Journalism can be distinguished from other activities and products by certain identifiable characteristics and practices. These elements not only separate journalism from other forms of communication, they are what make it indispensable to democratic societies. History reveals that the more democratic a society, the more news and information it tends to have. </blockquote> And what are those <a href="https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/elements-journalism/" target="_blank" title="">elements of journalism</a>? Here’s the first one: <blockquote> <h2>Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth</h2> Good decision-making depends on people having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but in a capacity that is more down to earth. </blockquote> Anybody seen much of that lately in our mainstream media? Doesn’t seem like it lately. Donald Trump could make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf" target="_blank" title="">Baghdad Bob</a> his press secretary (Sean Hannity says he doesn’t want the job) and it would be about right. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) AmericaPressInstitute BaghdadBob Breitbart CharlesPPierce DonaldTrump IdiotAmerica JoelPollak Journalism misinformationwarfare NPR Salon SeanHannity SteveBannon SteveInskeep Truth Truthiness _1600589 Thu, 17 Nov 2016 02:42:16 +0000 Mind Games in Trumplandia https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/6/1592100/-Mind-Games How do people make up their minds? Decide what is true, and what isn’t, and what is still to be decided? Is the idea of an objective reality just a concept with no practical application? Is it possible that <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50320/trump-misinformation-facebook-macedonia/" target="_blank">truth is something determined by how many people believe it</a>, as Charles P. Pierce has phrased it? <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html" target="_blank">Epistemic closure</a> seems to have become a thing, where thought has collapsed into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius" target="_blank">Schwartzchild radius</a> and is disconnected from the rest of the universe. Over at <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com" target="_blank">Josh Marshall’s Place</a>, a reader has sent in a note explaining <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-sensible-people-turn-trumper" target="_blank">how otherwise sensible people persuade themselves to vote for Trump</a>. <blockquote> <div> ...I've witnessed first hand the psychology of accepting Trump. I have close relatives, an aunt and uncle, who are moderate Republicans. It's been frustrating (but also fascinating) to watch their evolution through this election. It really follows Kubler-Ross's stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, finally acceptance. </div> </blockquote> <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-sensible-people-turn-trumper" target="_blank">Read The Whole Thing</a> to see where it goes from there. A random Facebook post showing up in my feed had this interesting take on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megyn_Kelly" target="_blank">Megyn Kelly</a>. It was posted with a picture of Kelly in a pin-up pose wearing nothing but lingerie. (Photoshopped?) The poster was saying he wouldn’t watch her on TV any more, but he had no problems with pictures like that or being accused of objectifying her as a sex object, because “..She did that all by her Bymbo self.” I made a joking comment asking if that was a photo from the job application she used to get hired by <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roger-ailes-accusers-list_us_57a9fa19e4b06e52746db865" target="_blank">Roger Ailes</a>. This was the jaw-dropping response: <blockquote> Yes, Roger Ailes tailored <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/?hc_location=ufi" target="_blank">Fox News</a> to appeal to middle class white men. The info babes had to have a certain "look". They were eye candy spokesmodels with no journalistic bona fides. This was the mechanism he employed to actually get us to listen to the truth about what was happening to our country. It worked. Now that Mr. Ailes is off to this next venture, we have but another hollowed out Liberal Shill Media outlet with a few hold-overs from the glory days. </blockquote> emphasis added Some people have to work to convince themselves to accept things that conflict with their world view, some people have no problem hammering the world to fit their view of it — and then there are professionals who actively work to create a world with little to no connection to reality for their own benefit. Here’s Trump surrogate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Delgado" target="_blank">A. J. Delgado</a> going round and round with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Inskeep" target="_blank">Steve Inskeep</a> on NPR <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5003" target="_blank">Morning Edition</a>, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/11/04/500634432/trump-surrogate-argues-trumps-case-for-latinos" target="_blank">arguing Trump’s case with Latino voters</a>: <blockquote> ...INSKEEP: OK. OK. In Las Vegas yesterday, Secretary Clinton said - and this is a quote - "if Trump wins, we'd have a president who doesn't see you" - Latinos she means - "as American," which is harsh. But Trump did literally say that an American judge of Mexican descent could not do his job as a judge because he's, quote, "Mexican." Is there something to Secretary Clinton's argument here? DELGADO: Well, it's a shame the media's still misreporting that Mr. Trump said that he couldn't do his job because he was Mexican. Mr. Trump expressed concern that the judge may have had some sort of personal animus or concerns about Mr. Trump based on Mr. Trump's plan to build a wall. And sure, I suppose that's related to his being Mexican and the fact that the judge was also a member of an organization that had boycotted Mr. Trump over his views on the wall. So no, he never said it was because of his Mexican heritage. Obviously, he has a Latino adviser, so he does not cast any aspersions on our talents but rather is a firm believer in them. He never has said that in any way, and I'm sad to see that the media's still reporting it that way. </blockquote> emphasis added Inskeep was getting spun aggressively by Delgado all through the interview; you really have to listen to the audio at the link to get the full flavor of her in action. Inskeep was having obvious trouble with a guest who is blatantly lying to his face. The old joke about “reality having a liberal bias”? Some people hate the idea of anything with the label ‘liberal’ attached to it so much, they’ll have nothing to do with it. It’s an old con. Once you get people to buy in to the belief system you’re pushing, you can lead them around by the nose. (Or the balls, as the Megyn Kelly non-fan would put it.) There’s <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50320/trump-misinformation-facebook-macedonia/" target="_blank">money</a> and power to be gained from it, for a time at least. Reality bats last, and it can only be denied so long. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) ajdelgado CharlesPPierce Denial Election Esquire JoshMarshall Kubler-Ross Macedonia MorningEdition NPR Reality SteveInskeep TalkingPointsMemo _1592100 Sun, 06 Nov 2016 18:32:36 +0000 GOP all-in with Trump's racist birtherism. NPR's response: "Both sides!" https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/19/1572046/-GOP-all-in-with-Trump-s-racist-birtherism-NPR-s-response-Both-sides The big political news over the weekend, in case you’ve decided to take a sanity break from following the election, is that Reince Priebus and the GOP have opted to go in all the way in support of Trump’s <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/19/1571836/-Republicans-push-three-blindingly-dishonest-post-birther-talking-points" target="_blank" title="">triple birther lies</a>, which Laura Clausen has succinctly outlined for us: <blockquote> There’s the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/18/1571581/-Republicans-are-pushing-a-whole-new-birther-conspiracy-theory" target="_blank" title="">false claim</a> that Hillary Clinton was the original birther. There’s the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/15/1570733/-Trump-campaign-not-Trump-issues-statement-saying-Trump-is-not-a-birther-they-lie" target="_blank" title="">false claim</a> that Trump stopped pushing birtherism when President Obama released his birth certificate. And <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/19/the-republican-party-is-now-institutionally-defending-donald-trumps-racism/?utm_term=.f0570cde14d5" target="_blank" title="">there’s the claim</a> that Trump “put the issue to rest” or “resolved” the issue. </blockquote> If you’ve read any of our best political commentators, you may have learned, from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/19/the-republican-party-is-now-institutionally-defending-donald-trumps-racism/" target="_blank" title="">WaPo’s Greg Sargent</a>, that: <blockquote> The institutional position of the Republican Party in the great birther controversy roiling the 2016 campaign — a consequential chapter in our political history — is now essentially that Donald Trump did the nation a service by forcing the first African American president to finally show his papers. ... The Trump campaign’s effort to whitewash his birther history — in which he fed racist conspiracy theories for years — is being widely called out as dishonest. And that’s good. But Trump’s new narrative is actually a lot worse than the rendering of it we’ve seen in most media accounts suggests, and now the party has institutionally joined in promoting it. </blockquote> Or this, from <a href="http://prospect.org/article/presidential-campaign-has-descended-madness" target="_blank" title="">Paul Waldman in The American Prospect</a>: <blockquote> On Friday, Donald Trump held an event at which he finally gave up the malignant crusade he has been on for the last five years to convince people that President Obama was not born in the United States. In doing so, however, he told a breathtakingly brazen lie: "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy." There just <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claim-hillary-clinton-/" title="">isn't</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/06/donald-trumps-ridiculous-claim-that-hillary-clinton-started-the-birther-movement/" title="">any</a> <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-on-birtherism-wrong-and-wrong/" title="">debate</a> about this: Neither Clinton nor her campaign ever mentioned the scurrilous rumors about Obama's birthplace in 2008. </blockquote> Or this, from <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/136902/trumps-racist-birther-gaslighting-strategy-taken-gop" target="_blank" title="">Brian Beutler at New Republic</a>: <blockquote> Trump used birtherism and other forms of racist agitation to build a political base for himself, and now that these defining crusades are impeding his pursuit of political power, he is trying to discard them in the most contemptuous and brazen possible way. Rather than disavow and apologize for his birtherism, he fabricated a new history in which Clinton had given life to the birther movement and he had merely settled the issue by forcing Obama to produce his birth certificate. This is top-to-bottom fiction. Whatever ugliness Hillary Clinton lapsed into during the 2008 Democratic primary, she was never a birther, nor were here aides. Trump never once claimed until Friday that Clinton was the inspiration behind his birther campaign. To the contrary, he <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/watch-this-video--2" target="_blank" title="">boasted</a> in 2011 about having given fresh, mainstream life to the birther movement, and continued to suggest Obama might have been born outside the United States until this year. The Trump campaign is making a bet that … he and his surrogates can gaslight media elites and passive news consumers about Trump’s role in coopting the birther movement, and turning it into an intimidating source of right-wing grassroots politics. ... The success or failure of this kind of gaslighting isn’t whether the elites themselves get played for fools, but whether the downstream target audience takes comfort in the existence and durability of the alternate school of thought. It didn’t work on enough Supreme Court justices to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and it hasn’t worked thus far on voters who take racism seriously. But even if the effort fails as it should, it has shown us just how widespread this abusive and contemptuous form of misinformation and racism apologetics has become in Republican politics. </blockquote> Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? But that’s not how it sounded if you got your news from NPR’s Morning Edition! Listeners this morning were treated to host Steve Inskeep chatting about <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/09/19/494538517/this-week-in-politics" target="_blank" title="">“This Week in Politics”</a> with the center-right, Hillary-hating Cokie Roberts and (for balance) the far-right, pro-Trump, Fox News and Daily Caller pseudo-journalist Tucker Carlson, about how, well, both sides, you know: <blockquote> INSKEEP: Here's where we stand on the discredited story that President Obama was born outside the United States. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump dropped that story on Friday after pushing it for five years. Trump then picked up another theory. In a campaign event that was covered on live television, Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton's campaign started this talk when she ran for president back in 2008. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus backed him up on "Face The Nation" yesterday. [Recording of Priebus:] By the preponderance of evidence before us, Hillary Clinton, or her campaign, were definitely involved in this issue. So we can't keep saying it's not true. That's ridiculous. INSKEEP: The Clinton campaign has denied the whole thing. And Hillary Clinton demanded that Trump apologize to President Obama. [Recording of Clinton:] Now, Donald's advisers had the temerity to say he's doing the country a service by pushing these lies. No, he isn't. He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country. INSKEEP: Absolutely no evidence, we can't exactly say that. We cannot say there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton's campaign said something about birtherism because a reporter claims to have heard the birther story from a Hillary Clinton adviser back in 2008. But let me just ask you, Cokie, what difference does it make, since Donald Trump was the person who pushed the story for five years? ROBERTS: It is Donald Trump's story. I mean, he has pushed it and pushed it and pushed it.</blockquote> Wow. Can we just look at that statement one more time? “We cannot say there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton's campaign said something about birtherism.” And why not, Steve Inskeep? “Because a reporter claims to have heard the birther story from a Hillary Clinton adviser back in 2008.” There you go, evidence! And with that single unsubstantiated, unsubstantiable hearsay report from an unnamed “reporter,” regarding something allegedly “heard” from some anonymous, unnamed “Clinton adviser” in 2008 — just try fact-checking that piece of “evidence”! — NPR’s morning host implicitly absolves Trump for all his lies at the birther press conference while also dismissing, as if in passing, the importance of the RNC’s institutional embrace of racism. Problem solved! I do have to give Cokie Roberts this much: she managed to mention the racism of the birther conspiracy theory in passing, though instead of explaining it or expounding on it, since she is Cokie Roberts and can only think in terms of how awful Hillary is, she connects the story instead to her perception of Hillary’s weakness: <blockquote> And the thing that most white people don't understand is how deeply, deeply offensive this is in the African-American community, that it is seen by many African-Americans as profoundly racist, as questioning their citizenship. And it is no surprise that the group that Hillary Clinton was talking to, that we just heard that clip from, was the Congressional Black Caucus, where she needs to gin up a lot of support and get people excited about her candidacy because that's a problem for her. </blockquote> Sure, Hillary pretends to be concerned about racism, but only because she’s trying to pander to a black audience! Oh, that Cokie. Standing by to pour salt into the wound is Tucker Carlson, who comes up with this gem: <blockquote> CARLSON: Trump, despite all of this, is outperforming, pretty significantly, Mitt Romney's numbers among black voters in 2012. Why is that exactly? Maybe because as offensive as this issue is to a lot of people, and I think it is, it's not a core issue in America right now. It's not an economic issue. It doesn't speak to, you know, sort of the basic concerns people have about the direction of the country. </blockquote> At which I thought, WTF? Every poll I had seen or heard of had Trump at historically abysmal ratings among African Americans. Well, it turns out there was a poll over the weekend — just one poll, conducted by the LA Times and USC, a huge outlier of a poll that shows Trump ahead of Clinton nationally by 7 percent (the national polling average has Clinton up by 4) — which claims that African-American support for Trump has suddenly jumped from roughly 1 percent up to 19 percent, almost overnight. If you believe that… you’re probably a consumer of any number of right-wing news sites (NY Post, Daily Caller, Breitbart...) that have been flogging the LAT/USC poll endlessly all weekend. And that’s pretty much the note on which NPR’s coverage of This Week In The News went out. Was Hillary Clinton the original birther? Who knows! He-said-she-said! Both sides! Does it matter? Oh, only to “white liberals” (that’s Carlson again, unchallenged). How has it affected the campaign? Trump has shot up in “the polls” among black voters! Spare me. I guess I know now why NPR removed comments from their web site in August. The outrage at this morning’s sorry performance alone would have sunk their system. rss@dailykos.com (David Michigan) Birtherism Birthers CokieRoberts Elections GOP HillaryClinton MorningEdition NPR SteveInskeep trump _1572046 Mon, 19 Sep 2016 23:07:20 +0000 Banning "The Box" - Good in Theory, Bad in Practice? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/20/1549891/-Banning-The-Box-Good-in-Theory-Bad-in-Practice The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box" target="_blank">Ban the Box</a> movement (BTB) is an international effort to remove a barrier to employment: the box on a job application asking if the person filling out the form has any kind of criminal history. Getting people with a criminal record into gainful employment seems like a pretty basic part of ensuring that they don’t have to return to crime to survive — but if they can’t get a job because of that record, too often they are S-O-L. And so is the society in which they have to live. Employers understandably want to minimize risks, and not hiring someone who has proven that they are capable of criminal acts would seem like a no-brainer. But, the reality is that the war on drugs and the criminal justice system in too many places needs fixing. Some groups are unfairly arrested and convicted at a higher rate than others, especially early in life. That means they are condemned to spend the rest of their lives at a real disadvantage in trying to get a job. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/07/19/486571633/are-ban-the-box-laws-helping-job-applicants-with-criminal-histories" target="_blank">NPR’s Shankar Vedantam</a> recently looked at the problem and the ban’s effect on it. <blockquote> ...This has big effects on ex-felons and disproportionately affects African-American men and other people of color. I was talking to Amanda Agan. She's a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University. She told me that more than 100 jurisdictions in 23 states have passed laws preventing public agencies from asking about criminal history. And nine states and several cities have passed laws preventing private companies from asking about this information. </blockquote> The idea is simple: everyone gets a shot at the initial stages of hiring. Employers can still ask about a criminal record and do background checks; they just can’t do it as a first step. The potential employee gets a chance for that critical first impression, and gets to make a case for employment. So, banning the box would seem to be a good idea? Maybe not. <blockquote> ...Agan and her co-author, Sonja Starr of the University of Michigan, recently ran an experiment, Steve. They sent out 15,000 fictitious applications to companies in New Jersey and New York City before and after those areas passed these ban the box laws. The only difference between the applications is that some had stereotypically white names like Scott and Cody (ph). Others had stereotypically black names like Torrell (ph) or Darnell (ph). Now, given that one important purpose of ban the box laws was to reduce racial disparities in hiring, what Agan found was very surprising. AGAN: The racial gap in callbacks by employers actually increased. White applicants were significantly more likely than black applicants to be called back. And that gap was larger than it was before the policy went into effect. </blockquote> Let’s go right to Agan and Starr’s paper: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2795795" target="_blank">from the abstract:</a> <blockquote> Our results confirm that criminal records are a major barrier to employment, but they also support the concern that BTB policies encourage statistical discrimination on the basis of race. Overall, white applicants received 23% more callbacks than similar black applicants (38% more in New Jersey; 6% more in New York City; we also find that the white advantage is much larger in whiter neighborhoods). Employers that ask about criminal records are 62% more likely to call back an applicant if he has no record (45% in New Jersey; 78% in New York City) — an effect that BTB compliance necessarily eliminates. However, we find that the race gap in callbacks grows dramatically at the BTB-affected companies after the policy goes into effect. Before BTB, white applicants to BTB-affected employers received about 7% more callbacks than similar black applicants, but BTB increases this gap to 45%. </blockquote> emphasis added In the absence of information about a criminal record on the initial application, it looks like employers are resorting to racial stereotyping to screen applicants. Damned if you do, damned even more if you don’t in other words. Let’s sort out some more questions this raises. <blockquote> • Do businesses that never used the box also screen by stereotype? • Ex-felons are at a disadvantage with the box; is the effect greater for those with stereotypically black names? • Does BTB mean more white ex-felons get hired than they would without BTB? • Would employer education help — for example, if they can be shown ex-felons can make better employees, would that help address the hiring problem? • Would it make sense to expunge a criminal record for someone who meets certain conditions or certain classes of crime? • Would it be more effective to create an incentive for hiring ex-felons, i.e.: tax credits, preference on bids, etc.? • If some kind of incentive program is developed, how to deal with resentment from non-felons? • This study focused on the NY-N J jobs market before and after BTB laws went into effect. Can this study be replicated elsewhere to see if the effect holds up? </blockquote> Banning the box looked like an easy way to help ex-felons get employed — but it turns out the easy answer may be a wrong answer. Policy matters. Ideas? Comments? Are you an employer? What do you think about BTB? Do you or does someone you know have a criminal record, and has it affected employment opportunities? rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) amandaagan banthebox btb Discrimination Economics Employment EX-FELON Felons Jobs Labor NewJersey NPR NY PrincetonUniversity Race Racism ShankarVedantam SocialScience sonjastarr Stereotyping SteveInskeep universityofmichiganlawschool _1549891 Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:32:33 +0000 The poisoning of Flint is domestic terrorism* https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/20/1472364/-The-poisoning-of-Flint-is-domestic-terrorism <h4>*-or maybe just callous indifference, neglect and racism</h4> One of the nightmare scenarios often discussed in stories about domestic terrorism is the one in which a terrorist poisons the water supply for an entire city. Untold numbers suffer from the poisoning and, of course, no one can drink the water. If a terrorist actually did such a thing it would be front page news immediately. There would be round-the-clock television news coverage not seen since 9/11. And Republican presidential candidates would be rushing to outdo each other in demands to bomb something. And yet, when it actually happened the response was very different. When the State of Michigan wound up poisoning the water supply in Flint, the response by much of the mainstream media was almost as slow as the response from government. At first, there were only 30-second “tell” stories on the evening news, and those stories repeatedly referred to a decision by “the city” or “city officials” to stop paying for water from Detroit and start using water from the Flint river. That water corroded lead pipes, the lead got into the water and poisoned children. Even when media started looking at the culpability of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, they focused on his failure to respond to the poisoning, not his role in the poisoning of the water in the first place. Michigan Public Radio reporter Rick Pluta <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463550975/amid-calls-to-resign-michigan-govenor-to-deliver-state-of-the-state-address" target="_blank">set the record straight</a> in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep: <blockquote> PLUTA: Flint is a Michigan community that was placed under what's called emergency management. A state-appointed manager was in charge when the decision was made that Flint was going to stop using water from the city of Detroit system, where it was buying it and it was considered too expensive, and start drawing water from the Flint River at least on an interim basis. … INSKEEP: And you're giving us an idea here why it is that people would blame the governor - because the state was in charge of the city, because it faced a fiscal crisis, as some cities in Michigan have, and it was seen as a money-saving measure that the water supply was shifted. PLUTA: Exactly. The complaint is that it was putting bean counting ahead of the public health, while the city of Flint was, basically, under state control. INSKEEP: And so what specific criticisms of Snyder's role are there? PLUTA: Well, there're two. One is the one that it happened in the first place. And then as it turned out, state environmental regulators didn't make sure that the proper protections were in place - that the water was treated properly once they started drawing it from the city of Flint and then denied that there was a problem. And this went on for months and months and months before anyone at the state level acknowledged that it was real. In the meantime, local activists, a pediatrician in Flint and some researchers from out-of-state came in and kept saying, look there's a problem, and finally the state had to acknowledge that it was true. </blockquote> Now, finally, Gov. Snyder says “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/us/obama-set-to-meet-with-mayor-of-flint-about-water-crisis.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">I’m sorry, and I will fix it,</a>” adding: <blockquote> To the families in Flint, it is my responsibility, my commitment to deliver. I give you my commitment that Michigan will not let you down. </blockquote> But of course, the governor - not all of Michigan, but the governor and his appointees - already let Flint down. And part of the tragedy of lead poisoning in children is, once it happens, it can’t be “fixed.” But he’s right about the fact that it’s his responsibility. That’s why, for starters, he needs to resign. Starting at <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/mtp-daily/watch/michael-moore--arrest-michigan-governor-rick-snyder-597892675681">five minutes into this video</a>, Michael Moore suggests the next logical step. Meanwhile, most of the Republican presidential candidates have suddenly lost their voices. (The one tiny silver lining to this horror: If you want Donald Trump to shut up, ask him about Flint.) Did Rick Snyder want the children of Flint to be poisoned by lead-contaminated water? Of course not. But does anybody seriously believe that the state of Michigan ever would have done this in, say, Bloomfield Hills – or any other very, very rich very, very white suburb? This is one more example of just how little Black lives matter. And the poisoning of Flint is domestic terrorism.* rss@dailykos.com (RichardWexler) BlackLivesMatter BloomfieldHills CBSNews DomesticTerrorism DonaldTrump Flint Flintwater FlintWaterCrisis gov.snyder MichaelMoore Michigan michiganpublicradio NPR Republicans rickpluta RickSnyder scottpelley SteveInskeep trump _1472364 Wed, 20 Jan 2016 23:01:24 +0000 NPR interviews the president and asks Obama what he would ask candidates during a debate? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/12/28/1464262/-NPR-interviews-President-Obama-and-asks-what-would-Obama-ask-the-candidates-during-a-debate In a recent <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/12/28/460813963/president-obama-has-a-question-for-his-successor" target="_blank">NPR interview</a>, Steve Inskeep asks President Obama a question that could garner all kinds of responses. The president answers with, what seems to be, a continuous compassion and true love for the people of this country. <div class="center-block dk-editor-embed embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <div class="remove-embed-content">x</div> <a class="iframe_placeholder youtube dk-embed" href="//youtube.com/watch?v=K7cQYkQcgD8" data-height="281" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K7cQYkQcgD8" data-width="500">YouTube Video</a> </div> <div> Here is the video transcript: <blockquote> <div> Steve Inskeep: If you had an opportunity to ask a question to the people who want your job, which maybe you could one of these debates— you could write it on Facebook, to ask your question, what would you ask? President Obama: You know that's a great question Steve, and I might have to give it some thought, but what I can tell you I ask myself every single day is, how can I be useful in creating an America that is more tolerant, more prosperous, provides greater opportunity, is safer... And so I might just ask somebody, “Why do you want to do this?” And I suppose they’d give a cliche answer, cuz that's what candidates do.</div> <div></div> <div></div> <div>But I will tell you as president, if you're interested just because you like the title, or you like the trappings, or you like the power or the fame, the celebrity... that side of it wears off pretty quick, at least it has for me. And what sustains me, what lasts, what makes me happy, proud, frustrated sometimes, is the recognition that if you want this job, then you really need to love this country and have a very clear vision and idea of what it is that you want to do to help make this country work even better. And I don't think this country works best on fear. I don't think this country works best on hate. I don't think this country works best on cynicism. I think this country works best on community, and hope, and optimism, and dynamism, and change. And if you're aspiring to this job, then you need to ask yourself some very serious questions about why you're doing it, cuz that's that's what's going to keep you going on those days that things aren’t going so well. Steve Inskeep: Mr. President, thanks as always, for your time. President Obama: I enjoyed it. Thank you. </div> </blockquote> So many Americans are proud and grateful to be able to live to see a man like Barack Obama lead this country—and lead it for two terms. Will we see another president as great again? Perhaps. If we all vote in 2016, we just might be that fortunate. </div> <div></div> rss@dailykos.com (Leslie Salzillo) BarackObama DailyKos NationalPublicRadio NPR POTUS PresidentialCandidates presidentialinterviews PresidentObama Recommended SteveInskeep _1464262 Mon, 28 Dec 2015 21:06:59 +0000 Diane Ravitch calls this "Best Interview Yet" https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/9/29/1242427/-Diane-Ravitch-calls-this-Best-Interview-Yet I suggest you take just about five minutes to listen to her talk with Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition on NPR take a listen here: <embed src="http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=225748846&m=226716469&t=audio" height="386" wmode="opaque" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" defang_base="http://www.npr.org" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /> and in case the embed does not show up on your computer, try <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/09/27/225748846/diane-ravitch-rebukes-education-activists-reign-of-error"">this link</a> and click on play. and you will understand why 1.  her book has just hit #10 in hardcover non-fiction on the NY Times best seller list 2.  her book is #1 on education on Amazon which is why if you have not read <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/228036/reign-of-error-by-diane-ravitch">Reign of Error</a> you should. Reminder, I reviewed it <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/15/1238892/-Reign-of-Error-the-important-new-book-by-Diane-Ravitch">here</a> rss@dailykos.com (teacherken) DianeRavitch Education MorningEdition NPR SteveInskeep _1242427 Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:44:34 +0000 An Ambassador Talks About Benghazi https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/15/1162173/-An-Ambassador-Talks-About-Benghazi   Ambassador <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Crocker">Ryan Crocker</a> was featured on NPR's morning edition Thursday morning. It was a sober look at what happened in Libya from a career diplomat who is concerned <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/11/15/165186976/we-didnt-know-how-well-al-qaida-was-organized-in-libya">Congress' Benghazi Probe Could Send Wrong Message.</a> It's a clarifying counter to the hysteria the Republicans are deliberately stirring up for no good purpose. You can listen to the audio of Crocker speaking with Steve Inskeep or read the transcript. It will give you a far better appreciation of why our people ran the risks they did, why it's happened before, and probably will happen again. I'll put one small excerpt here, but I strongly urge everyone to check out the entire piece. <blockquote>INSKEEP: Are you saying that a lesson for a layman like me, is that diplomacy is a risk; that if you're doing it properly - as he seemed to do it - you need to be prepared to take risks, and we need to be prepared for the occasional loss of a life? CROCKER: Steve, that's exactly what I'm saying. Look, we're the Foreign Service - foreign because 75 to 80 percent of us are deployed abroad, any given day. And we're a service, just as our brothers and sisters who wear the uniform of the United States. Indeed, we swear the same oath that they do; to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That doesn't mean in the cafes of Paris, and the patisseries of Belgium. </blockquote> emphasis added While the know-nothings who've never stuck their noses farther than their own mud patch blather on, let us all be thankful that we have people willing to put themselves in harms way to advocate for our interests with the tools of words, trust, and personal contact. And let us also be thankful that the fools and scoundrels who are using the sacrifice of our diplomats in Libya as grist for a partisan agenda are NOT currently in charge of our foreign relations. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) ambassador Benghazi ChrisStevens Congress Diplomacy ForeignService Hearings Libya MorningEdition NPR PublicBroadcasting RyanCrocker SteveInskeep _1162173 Fri, 16 Nov 2012 03:49:18 +0000 Want to talk about Healthcare Reform and American Politics? Prepare to talk about Race. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/3/20/1076216/-Want-to-talk-about-Healthcare-Reform-and-American-Politics-Prepare-to-talk-about-Race    This morning <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/20/148946156/how-do-racial-attitudes-affect-opinions-about-the-health-care-overhaul">NPR's Morning Edition</a> reported on a  study which asked How Do Racial Attitudes Affect Opinions About The Health Care Overhaul? Steve Inskeep talked with Shankar Vedantam about a recently published paper by Michael Tesler. The transcript of the discussion is <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=148946156">here</a>. <blockquote>INSKEEP: And we should acknowledge at the beginning we're going into dangerous territory here. People are very emotional about health care. Of course, race can be a very emotionally charged issue as well. And now we're going to mix them all together here. VEDANTAM: That's right. So let me give you a little bit of background. So social scientists have known for a long time that when you ask people their views on policy questions, they are influenced by the identities that they share or don't share with political leaders. So if you're president shares your religion or your gender or race, you're much more likely to find the president's policies something that you can support. If you don't share the identity of your president, then you're much more likely to find yourself in opposition to the president. INSKEEP: Which is understandable. People may say I don't understand all the details here, but I identify with this guy or this woman. And if they don't identify with the guy, it's going to be a different situation. VEDANTAM: Right. And this is especially true for policies that have something to do with race. So for example, it isn't surprising that our attitudes about race would say something about our policy views on affirmative action. But the interesting question is, does the same thing happen in policy domains that have nothing to do with race? </blockquote>         More below the Orange Omnilepticon. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) AmericanJournalofPoliticalScience Barack Obama BarackObama Bill Clinton BillClinton DavidGreene Health Care HealthCare Healthcare Reform HealthCareReform MichaelTesler NPR Race ShankarVedantam SteveInskeep Stimulus _1076216 Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:54:16 +0000 NPR spouts right wing talking points on Napolitano https://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/29/820113/-NPR-spouts-right-wing-talking-points-on-Napolitano Dina Temple-Raston, NPR's counterterrorism correspondent, and Steve Inskeep got their talking points down, stating that Janet Napolitano claimed "the system worked" because the attack failed and the bomb did not go off. That's just plain false. Transcripts follow: rss@dailykos.com (tcorse) DinaTemple-Raston JanetNapolitano MorningEdition NorthwestFlight253 NPR SteveInskeep Terrorism _820113 Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:07:51 +0000 Morning Steele Humor https://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/27/773107/-Morning-Steele-Humor You Must Listen to this interview with Michael Steele on Morning Edition. The host (Steve Inskeep) has Michael Steele for breakfast. << warning>> do not listen to the interview if you are eating cereal with milk. You will not be able to keep the cereal off the table. Click <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112281170">here</a> for the link to the interview. Click <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/rncs_michael_steele_tangles_wi.html">here</a> for a write-up of the story, if you can't listen to it right now. Some quotes below the fold. rss@dailykos.com (mattinjersey) Michael Steele MichaelSteele NPR SteveInskeep _773107 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:13:45 +0000 2 Quick NPR Health Care Reform Pieces for a Saturday Morning https://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/22/770846/-2-Quick-NPR-Health-Care-Reform-Pieces-for-a-Saturday-Morning      NPR has been doing some killer reporting on the Health Care debate, reporting that the traditional media is largely not doing (although they have been getting slightly better on rare occasions.) If you've been discouraged by <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/21/obama/index.html">Glenn Greenwald's analysis</a> that the White House is delliberately crafting Health Care Reform strategy to lose the public option and sell out to the insurance companies in exchange for the money they'd otherwise send to the GOP, here's a couple of refreshing items from NPR below the fold. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) AllThingsConsidered BritishNHS Glenn Greenwald GlennGreenwald HealthCareReform HowardDean LordAraDarzi MorningEdition NPR Public Option PublicOption RobertSiegel SteveInskeep _770846 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:50:26 +0000 Is NPR's Morning Edition Slip-Sliding to the Right? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/9/706266/-Is-NPR-s-Morning-Edition-Slip-Sliding-to-the-Right At first I thought I was imagining this, or listening too sporadically as I rushed to get my son to school in the morning.  But more than once over the past several weeks, my usual morning staple--NPR's Morning Edition during morning drive time--seemed to be taking a noticeable Republican and faux-bipartisan turn.  At first I thought the problem was isolated to anchor Steve Inskeep, who would do his morning newscasts with a daily spin on "Day 45 of the Obama Presidency, the Dow dropped another 11 points yesterday, and the economy still isn't fixed; is the Obama Administration in trouble?".  Add to this a regular check-in with a Wall Street Journal economics reporter, some regular political hackery from Cokie Roberts, whose only observations sometimes  seem to be "things are a mess in Washington", and I was beginning to wonder.  Was it always this way and was I just being unfairly partisan?  Where they never that good, just refreshing because their actual reporting was good and they were to the left of the Bush administration? But lately, the trend seemed to be spilling into the actual NPR reporting as well.   rss@dailykos.com (steve234) Congress DCVotingRights EleanorHolmesNorton Gun Control GunControl Lobbying MorningEdition NPR NRA SteveInskeep _706266 Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:07:03 +0000 Let the witch hunt begin. Are you now or have you ever been an illegal immigrant? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/8/419401/-Let-the-witch-hunt-begin-Are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-an-illegal-immigrant That line is immediately followed by <blockquote> Are any of your friends illegal? Relatives? </blockquote>    They are the beginning of a fantastic column in this morning's New York Times entitled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/opinion/08herbert.html?ref=opinion">Spies Like You and Me</a>.  Extracting cannot hope to do it justice.   I do urge you to read the entire piece.  But excerpt it I will.  And even though I am not in Bob Herbert's league as a writer, I will also, per my custom, offer a few comments of my own. So you are welcome to keep reading, and then to add your thoughts on the thread.  Or you can simply use the link above and go read Herbert.  If you do even that, this diary will have served its primary purpose. And now for more. rss@dailykos.com (teacherken) 2008 elections 2008elections AlienandSeditionActs BobHerbert Debate Essay Hillary Clinton HillaryClinton Immigration japaneseinternment John Adams JohnAdams JosephMcCarthy MichaelSavage Mitt Romney MittRomney NPR PalmerRedRaids PatrickBuchanan Personal President Primaries Recommended SteveInskeep _419401 Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:13:43 +0000 It's time to Take Back NPR https://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/30/340929/-It-s-time-to-Take-Back-NPR I don't know about everybody else, but with the exception of this idiotic war, loss of choice, loss of the fourth amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, the gutting of our environmental laws, the firing of federal prosecutors who weren't loyal to Caligula, the outing of CIA agents purely for revenge, the villification of dissenters and of the destruction of the middle class  nothing has distressed me more about this administration than the destruction of the wall separating NPR from right wing influence.  The most aggredious example is the sacking of Bob Edwards last year and then replacing him with Steve Inskeep. Inskeep is the most slanted, smug and reactionary "straight" news personality on the radio.  He is truly dismissive and downright disdainful of anything that isn't the administration line.  He is the admiral directing the rightward drift of NPR. rss@dailykos.com (Chilipalmer) CPB Media MediaBias NPR Rightwardshift SteveInskeep _340929 Wed, 30 May 2007 18:55:43 +0000 NPR Bad Journalism du Jour (with Poll) https://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/8/332339/-NPR-Bad-Journalism-du-Jour-with-Poll Jeez, this is beginning to be a regular feature these days.  There were two egregious examples of bad journalism on NPR this morning and then, Steve Inskeep outdid himself in sheer chutzpuh.   Let us begin: rss@dailykos.com (goldberry) NPR SteveInskeep _332339 Tue, 08 May 2007 15:41:24 +0000 NPR's Inskeep Cowers before Feith? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/19/325271/-NPR-s-Inskeep-Cowers-before-Feith Steve Inskeep did a story on Doug Feith today on NPR's Morning Edition that really rubbed me the wrong way, and I wanted to see if anyone else reacted this way as well. The main hook was about how nicely Feith seems to have settled in to his new teaching gig at Georgetown. The story did include various references to Feith's controversial role in the Iraq war. But when Inskeep actually interviewed Feith, he did not press him on the particulars of how Feith's entire operation at the Pentagon distorted intelligence, and also how angry people even in the administration are to this day with him for simply bailing on Iraq once the going got tough ("Feith should be drawn, quartered, and hung" is how Reid's book Fiasco quotes one such official. Inskeep seemed cowed by Feith's aggressive defense of the overall basis for war, which I found especially irritating in light of how agressive Inskeep has been himself in the past when interviewing folks like Howard Dean and Rahm Emmanuel. more on flip. rss@dailykos.com (pedestrian xing) DouglasFeith Iraq MorningEdition NPR SteveInskeep _325271 Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:04:54 +0000 Steve Inskeep: Another-Journalist-Who-Doesn't-Do-His-Homework https://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/17/258216/-Steve-Inskeep-Another-Journalist-Who-Doesn-t-Do-His-Homework Before I start, I'd like to say that I support NPR.  Or rather, I support WNYC with a sustaining membership.  And I will continue to do so.  I have been a loyal NPR listener for 20 years and I don't intend to give up now just because some Morning Edition hosts have become the Mouths of Sauron.   Ooops, forgive me for sounding angry.   Please give generously to your local stations.  They aren't responsible for this tripe.   Anyway, I listened to the Rahm Emanuel interview with Steve Inskeep and I have a few comments and corrections for Steve.  By the way, Rahm, you did great!  You should be half asleep for more of your interviews.  You let your guard down a bit and I could hear your committment and the disbelief in your voice.  Your responses were excellent.  Steve, on the other hand... More on the flip. rss@dailykos.com (goldberry) NPR RahmEmanuel SteveInskeep _258216 Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:48:41 +0000 National Public Radio Was Exposed This Morning https://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/11/226271/-National-Public-Radio-Was-Exposed-This-Morning I want to share an awakening I had this morning. rss@dailykos.com (mrcoder) MorningEdition NationalPublicRadio NPR PatrickLeahy SteveInskeep Talking Points TalkingPoints _226271 Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:04:22 +0000