After a week-long absence, National Public Radio's ombudsman has responded to her critics on her blog.

Your Voices Have Been Heard ... and Ignored

I won't repeat Alicia Shepard's pathetic excuses here, because I care about your digestion. It really is sad. The worst part is, she teaches a graduate-level course in Media Ethics at Georgetown University. I hope any potential students do their research before enrolling in her class, as she is obviously not qualified to teach it.

She has also refused an interview with Glen Greenwald at Salon. Can't take the heat, I guess.

Addendum:
Shepard did consent to a short interview with NPR's own program, "On the Media", and, wow. She appears to try to defend her position, but does a very poor job of it.

Torturous Wording

Labels: language, media, newspeak, npr, npr sucks, propaganda, stenographers

Obama junks "global war on terror" label

The Obama administration has junked the term “global war on terror” because it does not describe properly the nature of the terrorist threat to the US, according to Janet Napolitano, secretary for homeland security.

It never made much sense. Our enemy is one affiliation of groups that use terrorist techniques. Making war on every organization in the world that uses terrorist tactics is beyond our abilities and isn't something we need to do to stay safe.

Labels: language, propaganda

Many years ago, I used to listen to NPR news a lot. I found they offered in-depth coverage that was less insulting to my intelligence than the mainstream commercial media.

Over the last ten years, and especially after the Iraq invasion, things have changed there, and not for the better.

This column by Alicia Shepard, the NPR Ombudsman, is a great example of how far NPR News has fallen. The ombudsman is supposed to represent listener interests, but this column, about why NPR News does not use the word "torture" to describe torture techniques authorized by the Bush administration, reads like a public relations piece. It could have been written by Karl Rove, and for all I know it was written by Karl Rove. It exemplifies everything that is wrong with mainstream American news coverage today.

Read it, but only if you have a strong stomach. And then read Glenn Greenwald's excellent criticism of it on Salon.

According to her bio, Shepard has an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland. I think she should ask for her money back.

Labels: journalism, language, media, newspeak, npr, npr sucks, propaganda, stenographers

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

With luck the actual memo will show up on Wikileaks soon. Until then we'll have to take the Observer's word for it, but most of their other sources about Iraq turned out to be legit.

Labels: Iraq