The quasi-governmental U.S. national radio network NPR has a long history of egregious propaganda posing as neutral news and analysis. Here are a few of their crimes of the past few days.
There has been a major poisoning of the water supply of Charleston, West Virginia, by a criminally irresponsible company called "Freedom Industries." (The ideological arrogance of the criminals who appropriate words like "freedom" and "liberty" is truly galling.) A deadly chemical that causes burns on contact has contaminated the water for 300,000 people there. The company didn't even realize it was happening- the foul stench of the chemical alerted the local populace. The chemical is so dangerous that people have been warned not to even use it for washing. (Which didn't stop the company from issuing a mendacious statement claiming the chemical was non-hazardous!) [1]
What NPR has done for the past two days (January 13 and 14) is put a happy face on the situation. They have totally ignored the injuries caused by this befoulment of this basic necessity of life, blacking out the facts that two dozen people have been hospitalized, that people have sustained burns on their heads and faces and sores in their throats, that their homes have been filled with the stench of the chemical coming from their tap water (imagine how noxious it must be). Instead of reporting what is actually happening, NPR has put on a parade of braindead locals who aren't at all upset by the situation- at least in the edited portions of what they said to the NPR hacks- as if no one there is angry. (We know this is a lie because the local media there is up in arms, reflecting the popular mood, and Erin Brockovich went there yesterday to address a meeting of the people living there-NPR blacked that out too. Go to democracynow.org for a report on that, January 14th.)
NPR also ignored the criminal history of the company and its boss, as well as the feckless government lack of regulation, a product of the pernicious laissez-faire ideology that dominates U.S. society. (The plant hasn't been inspiected since 1991, over twenty years ago, despite being a storage site for 4 million gallons of dangerous chemical.) In fact NPR barely mentions the company at all. (I sure hope they hit the culprits up for a donation- they sure earned it!)
NPR is not only in effect defending a criminal corporation, (even the local U.S. attorney has launched an investigation), it is protecting the venal and anti-human ideological system in which it operates which allows such criminally negligent and reckless behavior by corporate leeches and government officials by hiding that system from view. NPR does everything it can to promote false consciousness by obfuscating the reality of American life.
These are crimes in a moral sense, based on ordinary human morality. They are also ethical violations of what journalism is supposed to be. Of course, propagandists posing as journalists is a total debasement of journalistic ethics.
1] The chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, is used to wash coal. Of course the coal industry controls West Virginia completely. Virtually every politician, government official, and judge there is a stooge of that industry, which is what is allowing the coal companies to literally destroy the state by "mountain top removal," the literal destruction of mountains and creation of a polluted wasteland in the place of green forests. Rivers are also wrecked in the process. See "West Virginia Democrats Tepid On New Regulations Following Chemical Spill," for a story about the criminal political accomplices to the polluters. Also “John Boehner On West Virginia Chemical Spill: ‘We Have Enough Regulations,‘”both at Huffington Post. [Jan 13 and 14.]
2] The Huffington Post had no trouble finding angry locals. Their story January 14th describes an "angry" man watching out for his elderly neighbors. See "West Virginia Chemical Spill Aftermath Leaves Residents Struggling." In NPR's telling, on the other hand, everyone is taking it in stride.
3] And one of the imprisoned Aljazeera reporters is even a "white" person! Peter Greste, an Australia, won a Peabody Award last year for his reporting from Somalia. And guess who he was working for then? The BBC! Yet the BBC ignores his plight. That magnifies the BBC's shamefulness even more.
There has been a major poisoning of the water supply of Charleston, West Virginia, by a criminally irresponsible company called "Freedom Industries." (The ideological arrogance of the criminals who appropriate words like "freedom" and "liberty" is truly galling.) A deadly chemical that causes burns on contact has contaminated the water for 300,000 people there. The company didn't even realize it was happening- the foul stench of the chemical alerted the local populace. The chemical is so dangerous that people have been warned not to even use it for washing. (Which didn't stop the company from issuing a mendacious statement claiming the chemical was non-hazardous!) [1]
What NPR has done for the past two days (January 13 and 14) is put a happy face on the situation. They have totally ignored the injuries caused by this befoulment of this basic necessity of life, blacking out the facts that two dozen people have been hospitalized, that people have sustained burns on their heads and faces and sores in their throats, that their homes have been filled with the stench of the chemical coming from their tap water (imagine how noxious it must be). Instead of reporting what is actually happening, NPR has put on a parade of braindead locals who aren't at all upset by the situation- at least in the edited portions of what they said to the NPR hacks- as if no one there is angry. (We know this is a lie because the local media there is up in arms, reflecting the popular mood, and Erin Brockovich went there yesterday to address a meeting of the people living there-NPR blacked that out too. Go to democracynow.org for a report on that, January 14th.)
NPR also ignored the criminal history of the company and its boss, as well as the feckless government lack of regulation, a product of the pernicious laissez-faire ideology that dominates U.S. society. (The plant hasn't been inspiected since 1991, over twenty years ago, despite being a storage site for 4 million gallons of dangerous chemical.) In fact NPR barely mentions the company at all. (I sure hope they hit the culprits up for a donation- they sure earned it!)
NPR's "coverage," in sum, consisted of putting on some locals to make anodyne
comments (NPR apparently found no one who's even slightly angry at
the corporation that did it) with NO suggestion of a need for
regulation, or investigation, or punishment. It's covered as if it
was a weather event! No one's to blame, as if it's unavoidable. This in the wake of repeated deadly chemical "leaks" and train derailments in the U.S. [2]
NPR is not only in effect defending a criminal corporation, (even the local U.S. attorney has launched an investigation), it is protecting the venal and anti-human ideological system in which it operates which allows such criminally negligent and reckless behavior by corporate leeches and government officials by hiding that system from view. NPR does everything it can to promote false consciousness by obfuscating the reality of American life.
A second crime: January 14th, 2 pm Washington, D.C. time, National Propaganda Radio at it again. Their “report” on the Egyptian military dictatorship's
Constitutional plebiscite first of all ignores that this document was
custom written for the military. They make it sound like a
legitimate vote. “Egyptians are voting,” is the key phrase,
technically accurate but misleading to the point of deception. NPR
mentions “hundreds of thousands of soldiers” deployed for this
Nazi-style plebiscite. No mention is made of the Muslim Brotherhood, the call
for a boycott (thus guaranteeing a Saddam Hussein-style 99% “victory”
for the generals), and no mention of the following facts that the BBC
brought out yesterday in an interview with ruling class clique member
Amr Musa (a “diplomat,” actually long-time Mubarak henchman and
now serving the new dictatorship); there are big signs outside
polling places telling people to vote yes; the “Constitution”
continues the practice of military “trials” for civilians in
political cases; the military will choose its own “Defense”
Minister, not the figurehead puppet president fronting for the
military dictators. (Musa brushed all that off as fine, fine.) And you know NPR must monitor the BBC. Many of their local stations run the BBC as part of their programming! (This very BBC interview was on NPR's most important station, WNYC in New York.)
So NPR ignores what even the BBC
reports, so determined is NPR to pretty up the dictatorship now that
it seems entrenched and the U.S. continues to funnel billions into
the military's coffers for weapons purchases. (According to John
Mersheimer, Israel guaranteed to the Egyptian generals that they and
their American lobby would prevent a cut-off in aid, thus giving a
green light to mass murder, arrests, and repression by the regime.)
Thus NPR ignores what even the BBC
reports, so determined is NPR to pretty up the dictatorship now that
it seems entrenched and the U.S. continues to funnel billions into
the military's coffers for weapons purchases. (According to John
Mersheimer, Israel guaranteed to the Egyptian generals that they and
their American lobby would prevent a cut-off in aid, thus giving a
green light to mass murder, arrests, and repression by the regime.)
Acting like a PR agency for a major
polluter, legitimizing a tyrant regime's written-to-order
“Constitution-” but NPR's not done. Since December they have
virtually ignored the Egyptian regime's imprisonment of Aljazeera
journalists. What kind of journalists stay silent when other (real)
journalists are imprisoned by a military dictatorship? (The BBC is
guilty of this too in this instance.) And the story was carried, for
instance, in the New York Times on December 30th, the
lodestar for the rest of the U.S. media- but NPR had not a word about
it on that date. [3]
Three strikes and you're out, NPR. Of
course there are a lot more than three strikes against NPR, if we
review their record over the years, which is beyond the purview of
this brief essay.
These are crimes in a moral sense, based on ordinary human morality. They are also ethical violations of what journalism is supposed to be. Of course, propagandists posing as journalists is a total debasement of journalistic ethics.
1] The chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, is used to wash coal. Of course the coal industry controls West Virginia completely. Virtually every politician, government official, and judge there is a stooge of that industry, which is what is allowing the coal companies to literally destroy the state by "mountain top removal," the literal destruction of mountains and creation of a polluted wasteland in the place of green forests. Rivers are also wrecked in the process. See "West Virginia Democrats Tepid On New Regulations Following Chemical Spill," for a story about the criminal political accomplices to the polluters. Also “John Boehner On West Virginia Chemical Spill: ‘We Have Enough Regulations,‘”both at Huffington Post. [Jan 13 and 14.]
2] The Huffington Post had no trouble finding angry locals. Their story January 14th describes an "angry" man watching out for his elderly neighbors. See "West Virginia Chemical Spill Aftermath Leaves Residents Struggling." In NPR's telling, on the other hand, everyone is taking it in stride.
3] And one of the imprisoned Aljazeera reporters is even a "white" person! Peter Greste, an Australia, won a Peabody Award last year for his reporting from Somalia. And guess who he was working for then? The BBC! Yet the BBC ignores his plight. That magnifies the BBC's shamefulness even more.
