I fairly regularly listen to National Public Radio’s news programs on my way to and from work. I really don’t know why I do it. It is either some sort of strange impulse of masochism or else it’s simply because other morning talk shows on regular formats drive me nuts. Possibly it is because NPR employs some very talented writers and I have a real weakness for a well turned phrase, especially in the spoken word. Whether the cause is boredom or a dangerous curiosity, the pleasure I recieve from listening is somewhat akin to plunging my head in a pot of boiling water. Halfway to work I’m screaming invectives at the radio and must change the station to something more soothing – like the local heavy metal station – in order to calm down.
The problem with NPR is that for all their talent with well cut words, they aren’t actually the news agency that they might at first blush seem to be. Nor are they in my opinion actually old media, though their biases totter in the same direction. Ultimately, NPR is not designed to have me as an audience. This is because NPR is in fact new media in old media garb, and like many political bloggers with the same basic economics, their coinage isn’t news or reporting so much as affirmation of their audiences already held views together with passionate stirring language denouncing the evils of their political foes. In this, they are no more news agency than Rush Limbaugh or the 700 Club. Or perhaps, more flatteringly and more aptly, with their familiarly irritating pledge drives, they are the secular equivalent of KLOVE. The point is that Rush Limbaugh, irritating though he may be when talking about the environment with a naivety akin to Herman Melville’s pronouncements about whale, at least knows he isn’t a journalist, understands he’s an entertainer, and sells advertising spots that don’t pretend to be anything but advertising. NPR doesn’t even have introspection enough to know what they are or what they actually do.
But they can really turn a phrase.
I could devote an entire daily blog just to responding to NPR’s interminable biases and shallow propaganda. Other than the effort involved, the two things holding me back from such a blogging frenzy are first, as Schiller coined and Asimov reminds us: ‘Against stupidity, even the gods themselves contend in vain.’ The second is that I can’t generally stand to listen to NPR for more than a few minutes at a time, and they don’t post full transcripts on line.
Today, as on many occasions, while subjecting my brain to its twice daily abuse, I heard a story that I felt someone ought to respond to. This time, I will.
Immigration is a complex topic. It has far reaching economic and social consequence, not only in this country but in the home countries of the immigrants. Immigration is deeply wedded to our history and our national myths, and the role of immigration in the fabric of our society has changed as our nation’s circumstances have changed. The story of immigration is in many ways the story of our country – good and bad. So naturally, NPR’s take on it is neither complex nor nuanced nor particularly thoughtful.
NPR’s take on it can generally be summed up as: “Illegal immigrants good.” If there is anything to add to that, it is generally, “Opponents of illegal immigration are cruel racists.” Naturally, NPR isn’t even honest enough with the audience to present thier view in those blunt terms.
This story is typical in its attempt to push all the regular buttons while circling completely around anything like facts or journalistic balance.
The tone of the story is the one you would adopt if you were covering a disaster. From the coverage, you might expect that the town had been hit by a tornado. And it has the sort of depth of coverage you would expect on covering a simple tragedy like a natural disaster. After all, there aren’t really two sides of the story when it comes to covering a tornado. You interview the mothers. You interview the local priest. You talk about the deep wounds in the town. That’s about all there is to say, and the only thing missing is some local trying to explain how it sounded like a freight train.
NPR would have you believe that there really aren’t two sides of the story when it comes to covering immigration.
But listen to the story a second time. Did you notice that the word ‘illegal’ was not once used in the entire story? Dangerously honest words like that can’t be used less the tone of the story depart from grieving for a tragedy. There is only a single mention of the fact that law-breaking was involved, either by the immigrants or by the company that hired them, when it is admitted that 300 immigrants pled guilty to violating US immigration and labor laws.
We are left no doubt where the writer stands on the issues. The magnitude of the discomfort of this community is truly brought home in stirring languages. All words of blame are heaped on ‘the raid’ has the sort of faceless character of ‘the storm’ or the ‘the quake’. We know where the villain is, or rather, where the writer thinks we should find it. But that is just one side of the story.
If this story had two sides, what would it say?
No members of law enforcement get even thier five second sound bite. The prosecuting attorney is not allowed to present his case. There are no spokespersons on behalf of law and order. We are not told that that Agriprocessors knowingly recruited illegal immigrants and induced them to work in substandard unsafe conditions for very little pay. I think we probably should have that context.
We probably should also be informed that the raid on Agriprocessors was hardly random. It came in the wake of a disturbing series of ethical violations by the company. First there was the documentation of animal cruelty so severe it appalled not just the usual suspects at PETA, but pretty much everyone including happy hamburger eaters like myself. Then there was the company’s refusal to bargain for higher wages or better working conditions when the company’s workers refused United Food and Commercial Workers union United Food and Commercial Workers union. Then there was the admission that Agriprocessors had been regularly dumping untreated waste in to nearby rivers. There was no comment in the story on the fact that some of the evidence that led to the raid included the physical abuse of the laborers by their supervisors, or that the immigrants for their part had been attempting to cook up methamphetamine. What could go wrong mixing narcotics and an abattoir?
None of the competitors of Agriprocessors are interviewed. No former owners of family run kosher meat packing companies put out of business by a giant like Agriprocessors are interviewed. No one is allowed to say that Agriprocessors low wages garnered it an unfair economic advantage against its rivals. There is allusion to the benefit of the plant to the local economy, but very little mention of the damaging impact and loss of jobs it might have caused elsewhere. For once in a case of corruption by a corporate giant, NPR is strangely silent.
Local school officials are interviewed complaining that they will now, because of reduced attendance, receive less money from the state and federal government. No mention is made of the fact that the American tax payer had been forced to subsidize the education of illegal immigrants. No mention is made of the fact that for the money to go to Postville, it had to be taken from school districts trying to teach your kids. Nor is there any statements by the local school board on the children, some as young as 13, found at the meat packing facility at the time of the raid. No attempt to track how much of your money went to welfare to support immigrants who didn’t have fair wages. No complaints are made about how illegal immigration drives down working wages in the social classes least able to afford it, nor the damaging social impact that this has to our country in creating unemployment, vagrancy, mendicancy, and crime. Is it that illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans won’t do, or do they do the jobs that Americans won’t do under the conditions and pay that companies can get away with when employing illegal immigrants?
No, the sole expression of this journalist is shock and disbelief that immigration officials, agents of the US government, would perpetrate such a tragedy by deciding to do their duty and enforcing the law. No thought whatsoever is given to the seemingly novel idea that perhaps enforcing the law is best for everyone, and what really created this particular tragedy wasn’t the enforcement of the law but the fact that the law went unenforced for so long.
Animal rights, clean water, living wages, and worker’s rights are some of the causes you’d think liberals would be strongly on the side of, especially when against the usual liberal bugaboo – ‘Big Business’. But in this case, all those values are tossed out into the swill pond because the town supposedly served as a ‘multicultural model’.
It is not possible to have a functional democracy if there isn’t a functional conversation. It isn’t really possible to have a conversation when everyone involved is only speaking to themselves and has no interest in addressing the complexity of the issue or the difficult facts on either side. I am very much in favor of there being a Rush Limbaugh and an NPR. I think on the whole both are good for America. But, I am very much not in favor of the extent of the national debate being two sides doing nothing but validating the biases of their primary audience.
It is enough to make you wonder whether the ability to write stirringly is even an important qualification in a journalist. Perhaps if someone wishes to style themselves journalists, perhaps they shouldn’t judge themselves by the same standards as poets or entertainers.
Even though, I admit I’d miss the poetry.








The story of this company is just one part of the story of another, much larger, problem.
The trouble is that consumers' desire for cheap food and convenient shopping and major supermarket chains' desire for higher profits both encourage this sort of mess, along with quite a lot of other evils.
Food has to be cheap, particularly at the farm (and slaughterhouse) gate - which encourages farmers and abattoirs to drive down unit costs by any means possible. This includes employing illegals. It includes economising on safety equipment. It includes dumping untreated slaughterhouse waste into rivers and landfill. And on the farmers' side - it includes saturating the land with pesticides. It includes use of intensive methods that amount to mining the soil for nutrients. It includes using antibiotics and growth promoters illegal for use in Europe for good reason. And it includes growing of GM crops - which have strong doubts expressed about their safety.
What can you do about it? Simple, really. Buy your food at local stores - preferably ones that sell organic food. And vote in local governments that have no intention of allowing large developments by shopping chains on open fields. (Admittedly, this may be too late already in most of the US - but there is an ongoing debate on this subject in the UK). Spend a little more on good food and a little less on flashy toys. And a lot less - preferably nothing at all - on devitaminised, chemical-saturated, processed junk.
Apart from its effects on the economy, do this and your body will thank you for it.
Some folks decry the whole "[Single] Narrative" thing as cant applied by one side toward the other. But Taleb, in his The Black Swan points out that all media would have much less to say if it/they stuck to reporting objective facts... and then shut the hell up.
No, the media (and the person who cuts your hair, for that matter) has to tell us "why" -- even if it/he/she doesn't really know.
"The market reacted to [event x] by doing y" keeps a lot of people listening (and talking); and it grabs a lot more eyes/ears and thus sells a lot more advertisements than either a bald "The market did y, full stop"; or, I fear, "The market did y. Why? Let's spend twenty minutes exploring that, discussing possibilities in a reasonable tone of voice."
[Edit: And if the reader doesn't think the ADM Foundation or the Pew Charitable Trusts run ads on NPR, well... "never mind".]
One of the things about evolution is that it doesn't select much against things that organisms can get away with -- that's pretty much a tautology. From this we might infer that we (humans) have gotten away with telling ourselves and each other slanted stories for a long long time. And yelling at each other, too. There's a kind of "race to the bottom" effect, it seems; and it seems that historically the human race has been able to get away with it. Sad, really.
None of these points are particularly new, but I wanted to do more than just give you props for a very good post.
Did you notice that the word ‘illegal’ was not once used in the entire story? Dangerously honest words like that can’t be used less the tone of the story depart from grieving for a tragedy.
Perhaps they realize their audience is not stupid, and that (a) Immigration +(b) deported = © illegal.
And, you are neglecting this story
Where the crystal meth affidavit was mentioned. As was labor abuse. AS were fake IDs. As was the federal affidavit regarding IDs. I could swear I had heard a different NPR story on other problems, but can't find a link to it.
No, the sole expression of this journalist is shock and disbelief that immigration officials, agents of the US government, would perpetrate such a tragedy by deciding to do their duty and enforcing the law. No thought whatsoever is given to the seemingly novel idea that perhaps enforcing the law is best for everyone, and what really created this particular tragedy wasn’t the enforcement of the law but the fact that the law went unenforced for so long.
There is neither shock nor disbelief from the interviewer, and to pretend that there is does him a disservice. You are trying to combine many stories into one. There is the first part, which is the law enforcement story. And the second story, the aftermath.
This is why this story you reference is quite obviously a human interest story. The other parts you mention - competitors, law enforcement, improper tax revenue - are all straight news. And really, write about that, and hordes of Texans and New Mexicans have more compelling stories, in much greater volume.
Instead of writing this solitary blog post, why not fire up ye olde email to NPR's ombudsman?
Perhaps include how Agriprocessors admitted in court how many of their employees were illegal, when trying to nullify a union vote.
Or how just recently, a Union(likely the same one) was trying to unionize the plant, and had referred the plant to the DoL . Weird - now it might be harder to find labor violations?
Or include how this employer who knowingly employed illegals over at least the past 5 years has made over $60k in donations to (only) Republicans.
Or how almost everyone agrees that people who knowingly employ illegals should be punished, and rarely are.
_It isn’t really possible to have a conversation when everyone involved is only speaking to themselves _
This was not a fact oriented story. This was an emotional one. If you're unable to separate straight news and human interest, it's no wonder you get angry at the radio.
Back before 9-11, my entire adult life up to that point in fact, I listened to NPR and saw that it was good. The in-depth stories. The slow, calm narrative pace. No strident commercials. All good. I was the prototypical contented Democrat / NPR listener.
There was never any reason to doubt anything they said. Then 9-11, then the Blogosphere, and then the scales dropping from my ears. It was a slow process, but somehow, years on, I started to understand what conservatives had been saying about media all along. It has been a strange journey.
Limbaugh is an ass. I never listen to him, but his phrase "drive-by media" may be his the apex of his contribution to humanity.
I do still listen to NPR, often times with the same reactions that Celebrim describes. Their stories are the best produced and delivered in any medium. At their best, they can deliver real gems to my ears. I cannot NOT listen.
Their National Geographic Radio Safaris were great.... before they went Global Warming all the time. Sigh....
There's a strong foundation there. If they could somehow, figure out how to diversify their POV, they could be even more of a national treasure than they are.
Dave: It's probably a bad thing to add comments to your own post. I heard that story the first time, and relistened to it as part of researching this post.
I seriously thought of linking to that story as well, but the post was already very long seeing as it covered two main ideas already.
And yes, they've been to Pottsville several times. There was a story some years back I remember that was a celebration of the town's diversity.
I don't really think that the other story you link to is of any help. Analyzing it reveals the same slant as the story I linked to, but it requires a more subtle knife because you have to deal not just with the facts that they present, but they way that they present them. I wanted to focus on the inarguable bias before I tried to sell anyone on the more subtle spin that they do. Moreover, it doesn't change the nature of thier bias if they find it necessary to follow up on that story with this one. There are very many different ways that they could follow up on the aftermath, which I listed, but they choose this one for what I think are very obvious reasons.
As for why I don't send off emails to NPR's omsbudsman, well, the answer is in the post.
As for your talking points, a good many of them are mentioned in passing in my post. The ones that weren't, like the Repubican donations, were in at one time, but cut on revision for space and clarity.
Finally, I'm very aware of the difference between news and human interest. We could also discuss the difference between news and opinion. But with NPR, in discussing them, we would still find that the spin they put on news, thier human interest pieces, and thier opinion peices all consistantly lean hard in the same direction.
1) NPR has been doing a series of stories on this issue lately, every time I'm in the car I hear one. Last week I heard a program on whether states should provide money to extradite illegal aliens. They had two governors on: 1 who believed it would save them money, 1 who believed they didn't have the budget to comply. I thought it was a relatively balanced program; and it also raised the spectre of problems occurring from detentions at immigration facilities.
So yes, there have been multiple stories on this issue. NPR generally assumes that people will listen everyday, and each day catch a piece of each story. Still, they are biased, but no one on television or radio does better reporting than them. Nobody even comes close.
Limbaugh, on the other hand, is an entirely different bird. NPR may be "biased", but at least they don't make it up (as Limbaugh routinely does). While NPR attempts to be informative, Limbaugh excels at misinforming his audience: turning Non-events (Like the Rachel Ray story) into overblown issues, and forgetting important issues like Iraq.
The other great thing about NPR; the debate shows. NPR is one of the few places where you can here a civil, argument-based debate anymore. Unfortunately, their phone lines are often clogged by knee-jerkers with no no-life, but people like Diane Rehms still do a pretty good job of boiling dumb comments down to a smart question. There have been several occasions (on guns, stem-cell research, foreign policy etc) where a smart conservative guest has used arguments that were not used in the knee-jerk television environment we typically live in. Unfortunately, many conservatives dismiss these shows; but I've heard Newt Gingrich, Tony Snow, Bob Dole and a number of other conservatives discuss their joy at being on Rehm's show.
The one (& only) real problem I have with NPR is that it's like listening to your grandfather: Most of the time he has something interesting to say, but occasionally he'll get lost in a story that you don't care about. And then he'll go on, and on and on...
Celebrim,
Nice post. I do not listen to NPR, which is a shame because it had promise. But the slant is not noticeable by them. They came from similar places and similar universities and only associate with people with similar attitude and opinions. It is like the fish in the fish bowl. He only knows water so doesn’t recognize any different environment.
I usually listen to regular local news radio when driving, it gives traffic and weather and any important local and national news. I do not listen to FM in morning because it is juvenile talk. By afternoon FM is Ok and plays decent rock music. Afternoons it would be talk radio, I prefer AM 1090 in Baltimore since less bombastic tone that Limbaugh. Also will bring up local issues. I tried Washington Post and they had some good people but got shocked when it was Air America in the afternoon. Same station but incredible change to horror. I like to listen to rational discourse not illiberal fantasy rants. So back to local news or FM music.
About illegal immigration. There are personal tragedies involved as with any family struck when a parent is involved in illegal activities and the children suffer. I admit that I did not listen to this because I do not want my blood pressure to raise and have heard similar liberal heart rending stories that ignore the underlying principles involved. Illegal immigration is basically as system for employers to attain cheaper labor with second class labor pool that based on their illegality cannot get decent or fair treatment or go to the authorities. It is the same type of situation that Giuliani talked about how police did not inquire about immigration status so that the people could get police services and report crimes. Whether a person is illegal or not, the protection of the law has to apply. It is the Catch 22 for the illegal alien, that if he reports a crime that may lead to deportation.
We already fought one civil war about cheap labor and do not need to go down that road again. The arguments of cheap labor should be discarded. Control of the border is essential and stricter enforcement of immigration status like Arizona instituted will have an effect. The number of illegal aliens that sold homes and moved out of Arizona prior to the news laws was striking. Concomitant results were that in order to get labor for construction job, higher pay was offered. Businesses then tried to recruit from other pools of workers and train them for the job. This increased upward mobility for a lot of displaced labor in Arizona. The local stores that served primarily illegal aliens saw a loss of business. English was more spoken rather than Spanish.
NPR tells the side or slant that they want. There are other sources for alternative viewpoints. So as far as I am concerned they have the perfect right to tell the stories they want whatever their slant. I have the perfect right to listen to something else. If you are really upset write to NPR about your concerns and desires. If more people did that, they might start to realize there is another market that they may want to cater to. Then they may choose to hire correspondents with a different viewpoint.
I guess Fletcher Christian (#1) is off-topic, but I couldn't agree with him more, except for the part about GM foods.
Re NPR, I'm another of those reconstructed formerly reflexive liberals who still sometimes go back for an NPR fix. There are still some NPR stories that don't get shrill, and that's a welcome relief. Sooner or later they chase me off the channel and I just turn off the radio.
My "Road to Damascus" moment was the coverage of the Gingrich budget standoff. I got ready to see news reports of actual harm done by suspended government programs. Instead I saw article after article about government workers hard hit by missing paychecks. I began to wonder: Is it possible that nearly all the really essential functions of government are being maintained, while the primary purpose of the remainder is to provide pork jobs? After that, it was all downhill as I began to examine the news reports in a different light. And I could never enjoy NPR in quite the same way again.
"Perhaps they realize their audience is not stupid, and that (a) Immigration +(b) deported = © illegal."
Please, we're not stupid either- blurring the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants is an acknowledged part of the pro-illegal gameplan. Heck, it IS the gameplan. Please show a little more faith in our intelligence than that. You will never hear the word illegal come out of an activist's mouth, and when the media starts using the same code words and talking points its not hard to see what their intention is.
"Too often, the language of the national media describes illegal immigration as "migration" and illegal aliens as "undocumented immigrants," even though many of them have lots of documents, most of which are fraudulent or stolen. Some media outlets have taken to calling illegal aliens "entrants." Whether such language is meant to engender sympathy or to intentionally blur the distinction between legal and illegal, the mainstream media are taking sides in this debate."
"The Arizona Republic, for example, used "undocumented immigrant" more than 80 times in 36 separate stories in the past month alone; the term appeared as many as 12 times in one article on "migration," according to our Lexis-Nexis search. At the same time, "illegal alien" appeared a total of only nine times during that span, with seven of the references coming from readers' opinions, one from a quotation and one from an editorial."
source
I'm not big fan of Lou Dobbs (in fact im a huge supporter of establishing a workers program), but he is dead on about the deception going on here. It is entirely possible and honest to be pro immigrant and pro-Mexican, but entirely anti-illegal. Law and order first.
Unfortunately, Lou Dobbs also practices his own deceptions. As per his leprosy problems.
RAH: I agree with you to some extent. But there are very few places one can go to get a broad depth of viewpoints. That is one of the problems (and blessings) of the information age: in order to succeed, most news agencies are refining their product to appeal to the audience that is most likely to listen.
On that note, blogs seem to be more or less the same way. WindsOfChange is the only blog I've found (thus far) where divergent viewpoints are categorically accepted (within decency limits). If I argue against the status-quo on liberal or conservative blogs I'm basically gang-posted.
BTW:
Sorry for unrelated posts, but if you don't like NPR, you will like this Colbert Report Threatdown dealing with elitst mice. Just scan to the 2:45 mark.
oops, you still have to click down and hit the "Threatdown" video.
So NPR sees the Postville saga as a simple story of “Illegal immigrants good” and “opponents of illegal immigration are cruel racists.”
Postville?
It was NPR's blinkered view of illegal immigration that turned me from "lifelong member" to "listener," a few years back. Their many other p.c. biases subsequently opened the way to listening alternatives, as described by numerous other commenters. (And I did write the ombudsman on a few issues--about as productive as discussing water with that proverbial fish.)
Postville of all places as the setting for a simple immigrant narrative.
My irony meter will need readjustment to reach that high.
Quotes from the NPR's sanitized audio narrative: "Postville has long been a model of cultural diversity." "The plant brought diversity and prosperity to the town."
For pieces of the fascinating and creepy backstory of the long-running clash between small-town Iowans and Orthodox Brooklyn Lubavitchers, there's Steven Bloom's 2001 book Postville. Here is a good interview of Bloom in 2003. Steve Sailer comments on how this spring's immigration raid fits in with the other aspects of this prominent and multi-faceted failure of multiculturalism.
"Human interest" or hard news, NPR reporters should try a bit harder to learn about the subjects they report on. Until that day, I'll continue believing what they say... as long as I find independent confirmation of the claims, and their contexts.
It's sad. Sometimes, as here, NPR comes off as hardly better than liars.
celebrim-
Here is why, maybe, they make a thinking person slightly nuts. This is well worth the time to listen.
How Modern Liberals Think
BTW, great post. I live in NM and see the changing climate of my home everyday. MS-13 is a hyper-violent bunch of narco-trafficers that NO ONE will do anything about. The level of their violence is akin to that of "A Clockwork Orange". Juarez is an open battle ground. Over a dozen were killed there last weekend.
No nation can survive not having control of it's own borders.
#8 Texan99:
I don't believe that comment was off topic. Giant corporations, if allowed, do reprehensible things. Examples are legion. However, the likelihood of them doing those things is even greater if there is severe downward pressure on the prices they charge, leading to severe pressure to reduce costs by any means available.
Another example; how many people in the USA (and the UK too, to be fair) are willing to pay the prices for clothing that they would have to if all those clothes were made in the home country - by people working under decent (and legal) conditions? Very few. And I am quite sure that many of the cheaper clothing manufacturers that do still exist, in both countries, keep their prices down by running sweatshops staffed by illegals.
Cheap food and other basics have a cost not reckoned in money. That cost is human misery, whether at home or elsewhere. I am not anyone's socialist, but a balance has to be maintained. The question you have to ask yourselves is simple. You, in the USA, enjoy cheap food at least partially because it's produced, picked and packed by illegals. Get rid of the illegals and the price of food goes up. Is that actually what you want?
#17 --
Yes. For the reasons outlined.
Some thoughts from my own experience with NPR: They do some good stories, and they have one fine announcer, Scott Simon.
But, in general, they have the problems you have described. I have reacted to those problems by doing irregular posts criticizing particular programs on our local NPR station, KUOW. For a time I was doing regular pieces on programs by the Chomsky cult (Alternative Radio), and hope to get back to doing that sometime soon.
For the last year, I have been doing posts on a talk program (Weekday on Friday) with three local journalists and a KUOW host. If you approach it as a pathologist -- and I do -- it can be moderately interesting, rather than infuriating. It is fascinating, for instance, to notice that they sometimes get calls from San Francisco an similar places, but never from one of the family-oriented Seattle suburbs (and there are still some).
but never from one of the family-oriented Seattle suburbs (and there are still some).
I always chalked this up to who has time and who doesn't. I tried to call a national, conservative radioshow once, because the broadcaster was looking for a national conspiracy when the answer was so blindingly simple it would take me 15 seconds to explain.
I waited on the phone for an hour. I tried to get work done, I tried to watch tv, I tried to walk the dog. But when you think that any moment you can be on live radio my brain starts to focus on every word I'm about to say. And so you get nothing done.
I have a job, I don't have time to call in. Even stay at home dad's/mom's are often too busy unless the kids are totally out of the house
My theory is that the only people who have this time are singles, who have no life, no job, and are pollitical/radio junkies willing to wait for an hour for their 20 seconds of fame.
AMAC: I'm pretty sure that NPR did a show on that Postville book several years ago. A pretty good one if I recall, full of interviews with different perspectives on the cultural clash. It was probably a weekend program because it was at least 20 minutes long, if not more.
I think that previous program on the clash between small-town Iowans and Orthodox Brooklyn Lubavitchers supports Celebrim's point. If you are going to do a show about immigration at the local level, giving equal time doesn't necessarily mean introducing macro arguments about the economic effect of labor flows on the market. Whenever you bring a group of unassimilated foreigners into a community, particularly if they don't speak English, you are going to have conflict. What's it like to live in a small town and all of the sudden 1/3rd of the people don't speak English or a lot of people don't seem to want to let you know too much about them or to feel excluded from a new group?
Yes, sorry, #17 FC -- as I said, I generally couldn't agree with you more, it's just that the topic here seemed to be more about NPR bias than about the logical and ethical consequences of focusing on the cheapness of food above all other kinds of "cost." I did understand the relationship of your post to the particular NPR story that started the thread. In fact, that subject interests me so much that I suppose I was worried I'd be going off topic if I followed it up too much.
PD Shaw #21 --
OK, so you know something about Postville. Try listening to the NPR segment that Celebrim links to in the body of the post.
That story isn't about the aftermath of the actual roundup of (suspected) illegal immigrants in the actual town of Postville, Iowa. It's a paen to how the peasants and workers, inspired by the proletarian vanguard, are struggling to fulfill the Five Year Plan--even against the saboteurs and wreckers who stand in their way.
The specifics have been updated to reflect the faith-based initiatives of Open Borders and Multiculturalism, but the story arc is straight from those Radio Moscow broadcasts that we used to gather around the shortwave to listen to with such rapt attention.
It's a paen to how the peasants and workers, inspired by the proletarian vanguard, are struggling to fulfill the Five Year Plan--even against the saboteurs and wreckers who stand in their way.
Yes, that explanation is perfectly reasonable, and not over the top or exagerated in any way. [Snark off]
AMAC: I did listen to the NPR story, I thought by the standards of its previous coverage of the Postville book that it certainly could have done a better human interest story by obtaining multiple views of people from the community.
alchemist #24 --
Yeah, thanks... I did neglect the [sarcasm] and [/sarcasm] tags in #23. I guess I still have enough respect for NPR, and listen often enough, to be disappointed when their slips show.
So, I decided to check out the reporter, at least who got the byline. Which I don't believe anyone else has, instead deciding to echo "yes! NPR bad!"
a) he isn't a NPR reporter
b) it was likely submitted about a specific idea
c) he has strong ties to the community , and likely cares more about the impact there more than anything that was brought up regarding
d) and being that it looks like he helped to create a multi-lingual radio station, might have specific views on the whole "illegal" thing
And honestly - if you have a personal connection to something, you're going to be a bit biased. Nothing in the original post brought up as "other options" would matter as much, if a similar event happened in my (old) small town.
It's sad. Sometimes, as here, NPR comes off as hardly better than liars.
Riiight. Telling a human interest story is a lie. Who knew! Next up: That inspiring story of the kid struggling through leukemia is a notch above fabrication.
It's a paen to how the peasants and workers, inspired by the proletarian vanguard, are struggling to fulfill the Five Year Plan--even against the saboteurs and wreckers who stand in their way.
No. No it's not. It is about a rural community which has a substantial chance of not recovering from an event, at least not for some people. I'm sure they're full of commies though.
Why don't one of you try to present something to the NPR news desk, such as the activities of MS-13?
How Modern Liberals Think
Nice speech filled with strawmen and falsehoods.
No nation can survive not having control of it's own borders.
And instead of doing so in October 2001, this was allowed to fester and become a political issue. Surprise!
[Typo caused broken link format. Fixed. --NM]
Dave #27 --
You suggest that Tim Belay, the on-air voice for this All Things Considered story, is a stringer or community activist, rather than a salaried reporter. That may well be so, and it's an interesting fact. But it hardly mitigates the criticism of journalism as NPR is practicing it here.
If you want to hear the story in the context of the show, the audio is here. Ironically, the previous story is "Midwest Faces Flooding, Deaths After Rains." As Celebrim states in the post, "it has the sort of depth of coverage you would expect on covering a simple tragedy like a natural disaster. After all, there aren’t really two sides of the story when it comes to covering a tornado."
After that story, host Michelle Norris (or Melissa Block?) segues over to the Postville story. Here is her entire script:
To your points --
a) if Belay isn't an NPR reporter, does anything in Norris' intro or in Belay's piece inform the listening audience about this? With or without such a warning, should this wrinkle excuse lower journalistic standards?
b) if the story was likely submitted about a specific idea, what does that mean? That it's an advocacy or opinion piece? Should the listening audience know, then, that it's not meant as journalism? Again, is this a legitimate apologia for different standards?
c) if Belay has strong ties to the [illegal immigrant] community, and likely cares more about the impact there more than anything [else], does that excuse the network's failure to present the multiple sides of the issues in play?
d) if it looks like Belay helped to create a multi-lingual radio station, and might have specific progressive views on the whole "illegal" thing, does that make ATC's producers' decisions look more justified or less justified?
Is whitewash and selective omission of awkward facts and circumstance acceptable in every such case, or only when the results are comforting and pleasing to the target listeners' ears? In other words, are NPR's techniques acceptable when practiced by Rush Limbaugh? (assuming he claims to report news rather than preach opinion)
For some people, perhaps more than a bit.
Please scan the Steven Bloom interview linked in #15 -- the guy wrote a book about the human tragedy of Postville -- and then assert that Belay's story line isn't so selective in its omissions as to be very misleading. How many of the local Iowans from that part of the state would agree, do you think? As for the struggling kid: which groups of people play the role of cancer cells in your not-very-germane analogy?
I don't know whether you think the small-town Iowans, or the Lubavitchers, or the illegal laborers are Communists, or why you think so. If you mean that many of the staff at NPR are "Cultural Marxists" whose sympathies are governed accordingly, then I'd say you are probably on to something. Though a single incident, no matter how telling, doesn't constitute proof.
I am typically considered somewhat right wing in my views. I think i'm more analytical than right wing and don't believe in fairy stories. My three news sources are NPR, BBC, and the NYtimes. The BBC is the most tabloid like of the three. For every so called left wing leaning report on NPR there can be found liberals who will find a right wing leaning report on NPR. It's all a matter of viewpoint. Going back to my analytical roots, I find on the whole NPR to be the most balanced news anywhere. Don't judge them on one article. Judge them overall. And in conclusion, I find they are the single radio news outlet that does not insult my intelligence. I think they aim for the highest common denominator rather than the lowest.
Rush limbaugh, Bill O'reilly, eat my shorts, you tabloid mongers.