NPR
NPR’s standards editor & ombudsman minimize and/or ignore NPR ethics requirements regarding David Brooks
By Alison Weir | October 15, 2014 In recent weeks I’ve phoned and emailed the NPR ombudsman’s office several times about commentator David Brooks’ conflict of interest – Brooks’ son has been serving in the Israeli military while Brooks has been commenting on Israel without divulging that his son was in the Israeli army. Ombudsmen […]
NPR covers for David Brooks
By Alison Weir | October 10, 2014 Not surprisingly, NPR’s ombudsman goes with the flow that will neither interfere with his current employment nor injure his future prospects in American journalism. Following is an email to me from the Office of the Ombudsman, and my response to NPR: Dear Alison, Thank you for contacting the […]
Carl Kassell says "I've got to do something" now that he's retired from "Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!"
Not to worry -- just because (longtime but now-retired Morning Edition anchor) Carl Kassell at 80 is retiring from NPR's Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me! doesn't mean he won't continue recording voice-mail greetings for show winners."Carl is now officially Wait Wait's Scorekeeper Emeritus, but will continue to record voice mail greetings for winners on the show.
Forty is the New 65 – And Stick that in Your 401(k)
Tax day in America — My Ass!
I’ve been meaning to fix up the bio-sketch below. Certainly, fix the age 56, since I hit 57 two months ago. Born in 1957, now 57 witnessing another lunar eclipse, and the great eclipsing of humanity by algorithmic putzes and their masters: too-big-to-fail multinationals and transfinancials and a media that are so whore-fied, that, well, the new Black is Orange.
Shanty Town USA — When We Finally Agree Capitalism is About Being Poor
It’s that Ebeneezer and Grinch time of year. Hooverville. The great American fat crocodile tear with stories of legless troops getting a bag of groceries and free big screen TV and compact car. All those bags under our collective eyes watching brute felon sports professionals (sic) run by their brutish Mafiosa coaches and owners. We are ready for that extra 15 pounds, those romps in those wonderlands of Consumopithecus Anthropocene union-busting box stores, those nanoseconds looking at the homeless, pennies for their crimes. We will feel good about Tis the Season.
Good News For Public Radio
An alternative to thisMany people-- other than folks in rural areas and hipsters in a few big cities-- think of "public broadcasting" as "college radio." That started changing in the 1940s and the whole genre took a great leap forward with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the subsequent founding of National Public Radio (NPR) in 1970.
Holder Can’t Even Count How Often DOJ Spies on Journalists
Via NPR, Holder said yesterday in a news conference that he’s not sure how many times he’s signed off on Justice Department requests to spy on journalists:
“I’m not sure how many of those cases…I have actually signed off on,” Holder said. “I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications.