Radio Survivor » NPR

NPR: we are not an ad agency for domestic drones

Matthew Lasar — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:08:59 +0000

NPR isn’t going to sit idly by while critics call a news story on domestic drone use “much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.”

“Just because you don’t like the subject of a story doesn’t mean that the story was wrong,” responds NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos to Glen Greenwald’s Salon takedown of Brian Naylor’s report on police drones.

The December 5 All Things Considered piece was titled “Look, Up In The Sky! It’s A Drone, Looking At You.” Naylor reviewed industry videos that push drones as a way to pursue crime suspects or search for missing persons.

One company, AeroVironment, brands its unmanned air device The Qube, “and while it may look like something kids would look for under the Christmas tree, it’s no toy,” Naylor’s report observed.

The story did quote someone from the Center for Democracy and Technology expressing privacy worries, and mentioned that the Federal Aviation Administration will have to establish flight standards for the gadgets.

All these devices “have some people a little wary,” Naylor noted.

None of this assuaged Greenwald’s concerns:

So NPR listeners heard for 4 1/2 minutes about the wonderful, exciting uses of drones from an executive of a drone corporation, an official with the drone industry, and a sheriff’s spokesman using drones, and then for about 10 seconds at the end from someone who is “a little wary.” If the drone industry had purchased commercial time on NPR, how would this report have been any different?

Some NPR listeners have also protested the story. Naylor has posted his own response. “I was surprised at the amount of criticism this story drew on the blogosphere,” he says:

I think much of it is because it didn’t reflect the view, apparently held by those who found fault with the story, that civilian drone use poses an existential threat to our liberties. I don’t know if that’s the case, and I don’t know if anyone does, since relatively few (less than 300) are in actual use.

The idea behind the piece was this; while we’ve all been made aware of the growing use of drones by the military and CIA overseas, drone use is something relatively new within the US. (By the way, these are small, maybe a bit bigger than model aircraft, and only weigh a couple of pounds, a fraction of the size of those used by the military…which I pointed out in the story, but I’m not sure if our photo corresponded.)

So I thought it would be informative to detail how those in the industry see their potential use. I was surprised, as I venture most of our listeners were, just how many potential applications there are for these things, everything from crop dusting to pipeline inspecting to search and rescue uses.

Of course I interviewed someone, in law enforcement, who has had firsthand experience operating one. And I then raised the concerns about the privacy questions regarding widespread use of drones. I reject that the issue was somehow glossed over. There were two, admittedly short, sound bites, which touched on how drones could be used in all manner of potentially troublesome ways. That those concerns came at the end of the story doesn’t mean they were an afterthought. In fact, in radio, what comes at the end of the story is often what listeners most remember.

So I reject the idea that this was a long commercial for the industry. In my mind it was an objective, informational piece about an issue most of our listeners were probably unaware of, presenting the facts, and raising important questions. Just what we aim to do here at NPR.

But Greenwald clearly sees NPR’s mission differently.

“While one can certainly envision how drones could perform legitimate police functions,” his commentary concludes, “the importation of instruments like drone technology into domestic police activities raises a slew of profound questions, and there is one thing we can be certain of: establishment media outlets like NPR will do their best to obscure and belittle those questions while glorifying these weapons. That’s what it means to be the ‘establishment media’.”

NPR’s top ten jazz songs (and mine)

Bob Mason — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:00:48 +0000

John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis, Bill Evans; (Photo by Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images)

NPR asked its jazz listeners to rate their favorite songs, and gleaned from those responses a list of the top ten Jazz songs of all time[1]. What is interesting about the lists is not that they can establish what is “best,” whatever that might mean, or what is most popular (sales records, etcetera, show that). Looking at the lists causes people to discover or rediscover great music to listen to – that is of course what matters most. It also can prompt us to think about what we love and why. Below is NPR’s list, then mine, then some discoveries that I made, in the process of choosing songs, about how I think about jazz – questions about what is a jazz song, and whose song is it.

Also, because he is so central, I try to explain my complicated feelings about John Coltrane’s work, and then finish with a short note about each item in my list.

NPR’s List:

Dave Brubeck, “Take Five”
Miles Davis, “So What”
Duke Ellington, “Take The A Train”
Thelonious Monk, “Round Midnight”
John Coltrane, “My Favorite Things”
John Coltrane, “A Love Supreme (Acknowledgment)”
Miles Davis, “All Blues”
Weather Report, “Birdland”
Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto, “The Girl From Ipanema”
Benny Goodman, “Sing, Sing, Sing”

Here’s my list:

Miles Davis/John Coltrane/Bill Evans, “So What”
Thelonious Monk, “Round Midnight”
Billie Holiday/Lester Young/Ben Webster, “Fine and Mellow”
Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”
John Coltrane, “Naima”
John Coltrane, “Alabama”
Thelonious Monk, “Tea for Two”
Lester Young, “Tea for Two”
Duke Ellington, “Solitude”
Miles Davis/John Coltrane, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”
Bud Powell/Charlie Parker, “Ornithology”

The criterion I used in picking mine was to ask myself, What music could I not live without? What music, if subtracted from my world, would leave me feeling bereft and forlorn? So if my list of ten has eleven in it, that’s why.

Now for the discoveries:

Gershwin, Kerns, Monk and Coltrane: What is a jazz song, and who is it by?

The first thing I noticed working on my list is that I wasn’t sure what a jazz song is. Not in the sense of “is it jazz or is it rock or pop or whatever,” but because a jazz song is not simply a tune with a name and an author. Many jazz pieces, including the very best, began life as tunes written by songwriters who were not ‘jazz’ songwriters or musicians. Later, a jazz musician (or just as often a jazz group) picks it up, plays with it, works their imagination on it, thereby creating something new. This is not an accident of history, but fundamental to what jazz is – music rooted in improvisation, hungry for ideas from the wider culture around it, from the past and from the wider world. For example, “Tea for Two” began as a song written in 1925 for the musical “No, No, Nanette”, but it is on my list (twice!) in the completely reworked versions by Lester Young and by Thelonious Monk. So I found myself thinking of items for my list as particular great jazz performances, particular recordings or renderings, not an abstract/concrete copyrighted object.

Individual and Collective jazz performance

My list favors ensemble performances where we think of more than one performer as leading the song: so “Fine and Mellow” is by Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Ben Webster and more; the performance of “Ornithology” on my list is by Bud Powell and Charlie Parker, equally. While I dropped it off the list, the cut of “Embraceable You” that I love is not one of Charlie Parker’s 3-4 minute takes, but the ten minute version consisting of five great horn players succeeding and comparing each others version: Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Tommy Turk, Parker, Flip Phillips. This also is not an accident: the live communication between performers is part of what makes jazz jazz. Reaching into the past for tunes with unexplored possibilities, and connecting one performer to another in the live creative moment, are of the essence in jazz.

John Coltrane’s Sound and Fury, On and Off These Lists

John Coltrane’s name stands out in both lists, as writer, lead performer, as well as ensemble member. But whereas NPR’s highlights him for “My Favorite Things” and “A Love Supreme,” he’s on my list “Naima”, “Alabama”, and (with Miles Davis) “Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” This divergence is the only one I want to talk about. As it happens, in both cases I’m talking about pieces that I once revered but now have come to question.

It is an understatement to say that Coltrane’s ballads are the most beautiful ever recorded. I could have chosen “You Don’t Know What Love Is”, or “After the Rain”, or many others, instead of or along with “Naima” and “Alabama”. In the sixties Coltrane moved from hard bebop to abstract ‘out-of-the-box’ compositions, showing amazing virtuosity in this avant-garde “New Thing”. Though many brilliant pieces of music came out of this style, so did some unfortunate consequences: young saxophone players learned how to play extravagant solo riffs a la Coltrane and impressionistic compositions, and neglected rhythm and melody and traditional notions of sonorous beauty. Much of jazz drifted in that direction. Therefore, although Coltrane is as great a horn player as ever walked the earth – only Charlie Parker, in my opinion, is his equal – I think that his legacy, particularly as composer, is mixed. The two Coltrane pieces on NPR’s list exemplify this perfectly, as follows.

The Many Contradictions of “My Favorite Things”

Coltrane’s version of this originally super-sweet Mary Martin/Julie Andrews tune from “The Sound of Music” might seem the ultimate example of jazzman-reworks-pop-tune-into-jazz. The song became Coltrane’s signature tune as he toured the world. He ingeniously releases the melody from its original context, and demonstrates its intriguing power. But everything else is changed as well – not just the pure-as-the-driven-snow words, but the feel, mood and the meaning of the song. As he reprised it over the years it moved away from the original sentiment of gratitude and pleasure into one of pained searching, and in the end one with an ominous, perhaps angry tone[12]. It became an assault on the original song, disguised as a reworking of it. I think it expresses Coltrane’s attempt to bring together the more gentle, soulful side of his work with his later cacophonous saxophone exploits. I loved this song for a decade or so after it came out, but now when I listen to it I feel a sadness. I think that’s because I sense that no one’s favorite things are truly expressed here; I imagine that I hear Trane looking for them, but not finding them.

Jazz, Spirituality, and “A Love Supreme”

“A Love Supreme” changed the course of jazz music, and was a watershed experience for those of us listening in the sixties. It’s a masterful and beautiful piece, and its four movement structure successfully makes a bold classical statement. But for me it is flawed by its emphatic religiosity. Late in his life Coltrane, along with a number of other jazz musicians of the time (notably, his wife, Alice Coltrane) became involved with a sort of pan-religious sentiment, ascribing to the popular notion that all the “world’s great religions” “teach the same thing.” He supposedly said that “I believe in all religions.” He joined Alice, Pharaoh Sanders and others in apparently believing that Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Ancient African/Egyptian religious traditions are all reconcilable and worship the same God.

I guess this kind of straining after God was (and remains) very compelling to some people. But I find it emotionally and intellectually discordant. I hear the chanting of ‘A love supreme, A love supreme’ as the low point, not the zenith, of this piece. I suspect that many who praise this piece are engaging in a kind of Musical/Spiritual Correctness – i.e. “If Coltrane was into it, it must be profound,” or, even worse, “White people shouldn’t criticize the intense mystical beliefs of this holy African-American artistic genius.” On the contrary, I think the powerful, angry, brave, beautiful and secular free-thinking tradition which jazz is a part of – the yearnings expressed by Miles, Monk, Ellington, Parker, Lester Young, Mingus and Coltrane at his best – these very human expressions of truth, beauty and courage are more bold, compelling and therefore spiritual than the self-conscious mysticism of “A Love Supreme.”

Notes on my favorite songs

Miles Davis/John Coltrane/Bill Evans, “So What”
Also on NPR’s list, this opening song on Kind of Blue is eternally fresh and astonishing.

Thelonious Monk, “Round Midnight” [2]
Has a special and exalted place in the jazz repertoire. Almost everyone has a stab at recording it, but no one displaces Monk as the master of this masterpiece.

Lester Young/Billie Holiday/Ben Webster “Fine and Mellow” [3]
Made famous by being captured on film by CBS, this performance has a glorious depth to it and gives us a sense of the connection between the members of this ensemble: Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, and Vic Dickinson are soloists, along with Young, Holiday and Webster.

Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” [4]
An loving elegy for Lester Young so lovely as to be worthy of the man.

John Coltrane, “Naima” [5]
One of Coltrane’s many extraordinary ballads, a love song to his first wife.

John Coltrane, “Alabama” [6]
The most beautiful protest song ever. A response to the bombing of a black church in Birmingham that killed 4 young girls; an elegy like no other.

Duke Ellington, “Solitude”
This tremendous composition, like Round Midnight, became a platform on which a never-ending stream of musicians could build their versions: Duke’s big band arrangement[7], his trio with Max Roach and Mingus[7b], Sonny Rollins’ astonishing 8 minute solo version[7c], as well as versions by Louis Armstrong alone[7d], or in combination with Ellington[7e].

Lester Young, “Tea for Two” [8]
Young’s take is different from Monk’s but has a magnificent sense of width, of openness: as if his horn is ready to express anything he finds in the world.

Thelonious Monk, “Tea for Two” [9]
The 17 note ending that Monk plays here is stunning, perfect, elegant,
beautiful and unforgettable.

Miles Davis/John Coltrane, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” [10]
A perfect piece: spare, acute, pure, lovely. For me, this is the most remarkable transfiguration of a show tune (Oklahoma!) into high art. Davis etches a magnificent and brilliant outline, and Coltrane fills it in such rich sound.

Bud Powell and Charlie Parker, “Ornithology”[11].
The two great geniuses of jazz in the fifties showcase what can be done with an alto and a piano playing off each other.

NPR: our listeners are not “self-importantly insufferable snobs”

Matthew Lasar — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:07:06 +0000

NPR has finally gotten around to responding to a column in Slate describing the network’s army of listener e-mail and letter writers as “snoots.” In March, Farhad Manjoo went medieval on NPR listeners who protest various items on popular culture aired on All Things Considered and Morning Edition. He was particularly incensed at listener tirades against a story on Justin Beiber fans—upset at their idol losing a Grammy to Esperanza Spalding and defacing her Wikipedia entry.

The post quoted several screeds: “Was it really necessary to spend any time, even four minutes, on one account of teenagers being mean to people online?” one NPR fan fumed. Another: “I hope ATC isn’t turning into a tabloid!”

The “stodgiest, whiniest, most self-importantly insufferable snobs of all time,” Manjoo called these complainants. But now NPR has come to their rescue.

“I don’t think that’s true,” responded NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos on Thursday. His commentary on how NPR picks which missives to cite in its letter section quotes ATC Executive Producer Christopher Turpin, who reiterates observations made in Manjoo’s essay:

Generally, criticism trumps praise; the letters segment is an opportunity for listeners to take us to task, not a space for patting ourselves on the back—not that we’re immune to a little back patting once in a while. When a story generates a lot of mail letters are selected in approximate proportion to the audience response. For example, Laura Sullivan’s recent story about Native American children taken into foster care generated hundreds of e-mails complementing her reporting, as well as a few dissenters. We aired three letters praising aspects of the story and one critic.

But it’s worth excerpting a little more of the Slate piece, which gradually morphed into quite a conniption fit. Here’s my favorite paragraph:

I’ve grown to hate these listeners. Oh, I hate them, hate them, hate them. Every time one of their narrow-minded, classist letters makes it on the air, I contemplate burning my tote bag in protest. The problem, for me, isn’t just that some people don’t like some things NPR covers. It’s that these reflexively snobby pseudo-intellectuals see NPR as their own—a refuge from the mad world outside, a “safe,” high-minded palace that should never be sullied by anything more outré than James Taylor (whom, of course, they love).

This screed reminds me of an observation that I made in my book about the early years of listener-supported KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California (Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network). Describing the philosophy of the station’s 1950s opera aficionado Anthony Boucher, I wrote:

From Boucher’s doorstep, the American people seemed incapable of preserving their democracy, and those in the know appeared powerless to hold the American people in check. . . . This genteel editor and his opera collection—embodied the culture KPFA helped create in the early 1950s, a culture of refuge. He represented a radio audience that experienced the world as a problem taken out of its hands, carved up between senators from Wisconsin and commissars from the Kremlin.

I am convinced that the reason why NPR is able to produce those funny little pieces about Justin Bieber and other tabloid-like subjects that Manjoo (and I) defend, is because of the support that NPR stations receive from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If not for the CPB, these stations would depend more on their “core” audiences, who see their donations as quid-pro-quo gestures entitling them to editorial oversight.

If Manjoo doesn’t like the attitude of these listener letter writers now, goodness knows what he’d say about those stations in a post-CPB public broadcasting environment.

ATC host Michelle Norris will “step away” while husband works with Obama Campaign

Matthew Lasar — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:38:45 +0000

Michelle Norris

The This is NPR blog discloses that All Things Considered host Michelle Norris’ husband Broderick Johnson has taken a top position with the Obama Campaign.

“After careful consideration, we decided that Broderick’s new role could make it difficult for me to continue hosting ATC,” Norris explains in a published memo:

Given the nature of Broderick’s position with the campaign and the impact that it will most certainly have on our family life, I will temporarily step away from my hosting duties until after the 2012 elections.

I will be leaving the host chair at the end of this week, but I’m not going far. I will be wearing a different hat for a while, producing signature segments and features and working on new reporting projects. While I will of course recuse myself from all election coverage, there’s still an awful lot of ground that I can till in this interim role.

“I will certainly miss hosting,” Norris adds, “but I will remain part of the ATC team and I look forward to contributing to our show and NPR in new and exciting ways.”

NPR: He’s “Mr. Obama” to us

Matthew Lasar — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:03:21 +0000

It seems that NPR listeners are grumbling again about the network’s practice of calling President Obama “Mr. Obama,” rather than using “President” on a consistent basis.

“A number of listeners have written in recent weeks complaining that NPR reporters refer to President Obama as ‘Mr. Obama’,” notes NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos. But “since the mid-1970s it has been NPR’s policy to refer to the president as ‘Mr.’ instead of ‘President’ on second reference.”

Actually, calling presidents “Mr.” is a good idea. The ordinary salutation removes the aura of royalty from our chief executive, which was sort of the point of the American Revolution, as I recall. Perhaps NPR could use both terms, as did Marilyn Monroe on JFK’s 1962 birthday (“Happy birrrthday, Mr. President . . . “)?

But all Camelot nostalgia aside, Schumacher-Matos cites NPR story instances of “Mr.” going back to “Mr.” Clinton and “Mr.” George H.W. Bush.

The post also notes that NPR listeners have been angry about this issue for several years, and some don’t care if the news service has always handled the matter this way.

“It has not been any more respectable to call Presidents Bush, Clinton, Ford, Carter or Reagan ‘Mr.’ than to call President Obama so,” wrote one listener back in 2009.

Then NPR senior vice president Ellen Weiss responded that the network maintains the practice to be consistent. “We think this policy is as appropriate for President Obama as it has been for previous presidents and don’t see any compelling reason to change it,” Weiss explained.

What do Paris Hilton, Rob Lowe and Ira Glass have in common?

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:58:57 +0000

The answer: a leaked sex tape.

It’s been making the rounds of the blogosphere this week. And if you keep your NPR affiliate on all day long, or load your iPhone up with This American Life and Planet Money podcasts, then this is the sex tape you’ve been waiting for. Or not.

OK, it’s not really Ira Glass, but those really are the voices of Alex Blumberg and Terry Gross. It may or may not be safe for work, depending on your coworkers’ tolerance for a little bit of grunting and groaning from fake Ira Glass.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The college radio "guerillas" who made NPR possible

Matthew Lasar — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:37:29 +0000

College Radio Day has come and gone, but I’d like to add a historic footnote to the festivities. College radio broadcasters in the 1960s convinced Congress to fund radio as well as television in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Without that campaign, it is unlikely that NPR would exist. The story is beautifully told in Jack W. Mitchell’s Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio.

By 1966, the big foundations were pushing hard for Congress to fund public media. But the media for which they sought Congressional aid was television. The famous Carnegie Commission report for public broadcasting didn’t even mention radio.

When it came to radio, "few cared," Mitchell writes. "Most of the major public-broadcasting organizations included both television and radio, with television the dominant focus in all of them. These organizations were quite content to ignore radio to achieve national tax support for their dominant television enterprises."

But there were "a very few crusty old guys who did care," the author adds. One of them was the manager of the University of Michigan’s radio station, Ed Burrows. Burrows sent the station’s program director off to Washington, D.C. to lobby for radio to be included in what, at the time, was being called the Public Television Act, which would create the Corporation for Public Television.

His name was Jerrold Sandler. "It’s very simple," he told public TV’s top DC lobbyist in a confrontation. "You change it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and you change it to the Public Broadcasting Act."

"Well, the word broadcasting doesn’t have the right sound. It’s not television," the TV lobbyist retorted.

"You’re damn right, it’s not television," Sandler shot back, and he fought hard to get radio into the public television bill’s language. He had help from Dean Costen, the U. Michigan station’s former chief engineer, now deputy undersecretary at Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) in Washington. It was Costen who made the words "and radio" follow television everywhere in the administration’s legislative draft for public television.

But several days later, a reporter told Sandler that "radio" had been scratched out of the bill’s language again. Sandler called Costen, who scratched it back in. Sandler then called members of the radio board of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Get to DC and lobby Congress like mad for radio. "You’re going to work your butts off but we’re going to cover that Congress," he told them.

Meanwhile Sandler hired a consultant to write a radio equivalent of the Carnegie Report, The Hidden Medium: Educational Radio, a Status Report, which made the case for radio inclusion.

By April 1967, the Senate Commerce Committee had approved a public media bill which now would create a Corporation for Public Broadcasting, not just a public corporation for television. "The public radio guerillas could not believe their good fortune," Mitchell continues. "They had had no right to win over the television juggernaut, and few of them had believed they really would. To them, the fight had been mainly a game played for the fun of it, the most exciting escapade of their professional lives."

This "improbable victory," made National Public Radio (now NPR) possible. But it also cost the crusaders any role in public radio’s future, Mitchell’s chapter on this episode concludes. They had stepped on too many prominent toes in the educational media universe, the men and women who would now run public broadcasting. And so none of them won leadership roles:

"Not Jack Burke of Kansas State University. Not Will Lewis of Boston University. Not Marjorie Newman of Florida State University. Not Myron Curry of the University of North Dakota. Not Burt Harrison of Washington State University. Not Martin Busch of the University of South Dakota. Not Jack Summerfield of the Riverside Church of New York. Not Al Fredette of the State Medical College of New York. And certainly not Ed Burrows nor Jerry Sandler, each of whom applied for positions at the new National Public Radio, Sandler many times. Neither was ever hired."

NPR began broadcasting in April 1971. Who went to work for the service? "Instead, the task of developing public radio would fall to radio managers who sat on the sidelines as Sandler and company waged war," or to those who had backed the television lobby, or to those too young to be have been involved in the fight.

It is sometimes the fate of revolutionaries to be left out of the revolution they lead. This appears to have been the case for the college radio "guerillas" who insured the funding that would create NPR. Nonetheless, in the wake of College Radio Day, we should remember their valiant efforts with gratitude.

NPR: We R2 covering Occupy Wall Street!

Matthew Lasar — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:18:42 +0000

It appears that NPR is smarting from charges that it has given the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere short shrift when it comes to coverage of the demonstrations. We’ve noticed some discontent in this area, and so has NPR’s ombudsman in his latest post, citing one complaint from a listener in Nebraska:

I hear that NPR has decided NOT to cover the demonstrations involving Wall Street. Is this because NPR gets most of its donation support from Wall Street? If so, then I’ll just stop donating as I have done for the past 35 years.

To which NPR’s Edward Schumacher-Matos responds: "The protests are a lead story tonight (10/03) on All Things Considered and have gotten more play than many critics seem to realize," he writes. "I agree with editors that the lack of a clear purpose for the protests make it a hard story to give importance to. . . . The coverage seems about appropriate to me."

Schumacher-Matos’ post offers a list of NPR pieces on Occupied Wall Street. Looks like the service is stepping up its coverage, especially over the last few days.

I’ve been looking around for where you can find steady and reliable radio coverage of the demonstrations. Democracy Now has certainly been doing lots of stories. So has Free Speech Radio News. There’s a Livestream video link too.

But beyond that I haven’t been able to find anything that offers continuous audio coverage of Occupied WS. If you’ve got something going, let me know.

Perceptions

Meanwhile, NPR has a new CEO: Gary Knell, President of the Sesame Workshop.

"I’m thrilled to join NPR," Knell declares in the NPR press release. "Over the past 40 years, it’s grown from an inspired idea to one of the world’s most respected and leading providers of news, music and cultural programming."

One of the biggest problems Knell faces is how to handle a Republican dominated House of Representatives implacably hostile to continued federal funding for the service. On September 29 the House Appropriations Committee released yet another budget proposal that denies NPR Corporation for Public Broadcasting money. NPR receives a small portion of direct financial help from the CPB, but NPR stations more heavily depend on it for support.

Here’s the New York Times‘ spin on the challenge.

NPR, formerly known as National Public Radio, has the benefit of tens of millions of devoted weekly listeners and a robust Web presence. But it is threatened by, among other things, the prospect of funding cuts, power struggles between the organization and its member stations across the country, and the perception that some of its programming has a liberal political bent.

To which NPR critic and journalism professor Jay Rosen replies:

Can you be “threatened” by a “perception?” I guess maybe you can. But if you can, then I would say that NPR is equally threatened by 1.) the perception that it can be rolled or intimidated, especially after forcing its last CEO to resign in part because right wing trickster James O’Keefe pulled a culture war stunt that worked, and 2.) the perception that it’s increasingly a he said, she said, “safety first” news organization that tends to quote both sides and leave it there.

Is NPR really covering the Wall Street protests?

Matthew Lasar — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:04:55 +0000

NPR ran a story this morning on npr.org about yesterday’s Occupy Wall Street/Brooklyn Bridge arrests. The piece, bylined as “NPR STAFF AND WIRES,” noted that 700 OWS protesters were arrested for marching on a bridge road. The problem, as this YouTube video indicates, is that the cops appear to have led the demonstrators onto the throughway themselves, them busted them for so doing (!!).

Wuddamess. Meanwhile lots of NPR listeners commenting on the latest story are frustrated with what they see as the service’s lack of coverage of the protests, eg:

“Will NPR finally begin covering this on the air?”

“And NPR continues its non-coverage of Occupy Wall Street even as NYTimes and other mainstream media sources have increased coverage. If NPR had treated the Tea Party this way, they may very well have been accused of bias.”

“NPR has been posting AP articles like this on their WEBSITE, but I am yet to hear anything about #OccupyWallSt on the air. The ‘R’ in NPR is supposed to stand for ‘radio,’ right? Agree or disagree w/the protests, I think this is undeniably ‘news’.”

NPR defended its limited coverage of the actions last week.

“The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective,” explained Executive editor for news Dick Meyer.

At least one listener seems to agree with this stance:

“There are 10 million people in New York City, and 300 million in the US. when these protests can get more people to show up than the average friday night high school football game, it will be newsworthy.”

It’s hard to tell whether this Wonkette post is a parody of complaints that NPR isn’t doing enough, or agrees with the gripe. “Haha, right,” reacts Wonkette’s Ken Layne to the Meyer statement”

“Because the fucking Tea Party protests with their ‘more media than protesters’ and the great disruption of several Hoverounds crowding the snack cart and the ‘especially clear objective’ of birthers and Paultards and racists and gun nuts and apocalyptic Jesus freaks and Glenn Beck fanatics was really compelling and newsworthy, right?”

“Never never never listen to NPR. If you want honest news, go to Bloomberg or Pacifica or something.”

Funny about that Pacifica comment. Former Pacifica news director Jo Ann Kawell recently lambasted Pacifica station WBAI in New York City for what she saw as its lack of OWS coverage.

“What’s up with WBAI?” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Why aren’t THEY live broadcasting the Wall Street protests. Fer gawd sakes, their studios are right on Wall Street. Shame, shame, triple shame. This is final proof, if any more was needed, that the Pacifica network is completely moribund.”

Maybe with this Brooklyn Bridge incident, more radio attention will be paid. Could be a good thing.

NPR chides itself for “abortion doctor” reference

Matthew Lasar — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:09:34 +0000

There aren’t very many subjects that NPR listeners won’t fight about, including tinnitus, circumcision, and Yellowstone Park bears. But when it comes to abortion—now that’s when you get the 300 comment threads. I’ve got to concur, however, with NPR listener Marcia Bryant of Cleveland, Ohio, who complained about a NPR Morning Edition story calling an obstetrician an “abortion doctor”:

Certainly you realize that abortion providers are OB/GYN’s. Why not refer to them as such? Why do you refer to them by this one procedure? Do you think Planned Parenthood has separate “abortion doctors” and “STD doctors” and “pap smear doctors?” At the very least you can call them abortion providers.

According to NPR’s ombudsman, the NPR style guide deals with the matter as follows:

Do not refer to murdered Dr George Tiller as an ‘Abortion Doctor.’ Instead we should say Tiller operated a clinic where abortions are performed. We can also make reference to the fact that Tiller was a doctor who performed late term abortions.”

NPR doesn’t use the term ‘abortion clinics.’ We say instead, ‘medical or health clinics that perform abortions.’ The point is to not to use abortion before the word clinic. The clinics perform other procedures and not just abortions.

NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos agreed with the complaint. ”We don’t say a physician is an STD doctor,” he noted. “Or a child-birth doctor. Or a breast-exam doctor.”

Interestingly, this discussion comes on the tail end of a debate between Schumacher-Matos and journalism Professor Jay Rosen over whether a story about efforts by Kansas anti-abortion activists to pass tougher regulations on clinics that perform abortions. Rosen charged that the piece amounted to a form of “he said/she said” journalism in which the validity of the safety claims were not explored. Schumacher-Matos defended the piece.

“Rosen apparently wanted the report to explicitly prove that the regulations were harassment,” he wrote. “If that was his concern, the public health experts felt it was sufficiently communicated. His criticism, however, does demonstrate that NPR’s reporting comes under attack from both the right and the left.”

To which Rosen has posted a new response:

I think this is lame. You can judge for yourself , but I say there was nothing particularly “left” in my post criticizing NPR for relying on he said, she said. True, I have no sympathy for abortion opponents in Kansas, but I also don’t know–and didn’t claim to know–what an honest attempt to investigate these clashing truth claims would find. Maybe the Kansas regulations do have a public health justification, and some basis in common sense. I doubt it, but without investigating myself, how do I know? Isn’t this why we need journalists willing to dig into the matter? Isn’t this why we need NPR?