National Public Radio

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"The largest share of migrant detainees are held in longer-term centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Currently, about 52,000 migrants are held in ICE custody. A majority of them — 71%, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center — are housed in facilities operated by private prison companies. Immigrant activists say such secrecy has enabled the detention industry to grow with little oversight."

"CoreCivic and GEO Group's revenues totaled a combined $4.1 billion last year, and detention contracts made up about a quarter of that. Both companies are contending with increased competition and declines in their prison businesses, but that's been offset by growth in the detention business... The ACLU... said the expansion of migrant detention in recent years has been driven by private business, not by the federal government."

"In October, David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote... Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it." ...Beasley quickly clarified that his earlier tweet referred to feeding "people on the brink of starvation" and not solving world hunger, he invited Musk to meet "anywhere—Earth or space" to discuss the potential donation. So far, Musk has made no commitments to the agency. Still... How much of a dent would $6 billion make when it comes to feeding millions? ...WFP raised $8.4 billion last year, yet the global food crisis has only worsened. In fact, since Musk and Beasley first started their Twitter conversation, the total number of people at risk of famine has risen to 45 million... Elon Musk asked Twitter followers if he should sell Tesla shares. They said yes."

"As children under 5 wait for FDA approval of a COVID-19 vaccine, some kids still need to catch up on routine vaccines for other diseases, including measles, mumps, and meningitis. According to UNICEF and the WHO, 23 million children globally missed out on basic childhood vaccines that are typically received through routine health services in 2020. Some children in the U.S. caught up last year, but the vaccination rate was still 7 percent lower than years before the pandemic. That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR's adherence to these rules [...] We have worked for decades with the FCC in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States."

"When was the last time the US Marines were called upon to defend the homeland, in the homeland? Perhaps in the War of 1812 and arguably in the Civil War, but otherwise deployed abroad ever since. Missions include toppling reformist governments in this hemisphere and confronting Middle Eastern towel heads who supposedly hate our freedoms, presumably including our constitutional right to mow down fellow Americans with licensed large-caliber weaponry... Perhaps I’m being unnecessarily harsh, but couldn’t NPR just sometimes question what all this preparedness, both domestic and foreign, is about?...NPR’s due diligence is missing in action. No matter what military or veteran hardship story NPR covers, there’s no questioning of assumptions that our armed forces are a force for good, everywhere in the world.... The estimated 1000 or so US military bases scattered throughout 156 countries..."

"I never thought I’d be the target of an NPR attack piece. Through my twenties I even looked to NPR as an outlet full of good, progressive, thoughtful reporting – You know, the soothing voices occasionally interrupted by music no one really listens to but that sounds good between soft-spoken ivy league journalists over the age of 50. Everything about NPR subtly reinforced the idea, “Everything is fine. You’re probably a middle to upper class white person or you hope to be one day, and that’s just great. Everything is fine.”.. Then I woke up. About the time NPR was avoiding Occupy Wall Street – or when they did cover it, acting like those of us who supported it were brainless hippies without a point or at least none that would fit easily into the lives of suburbanites with two kids, one cat, and a robust retirement account. In hindsight I should’ve woken up sooner. I should’ve seen the truth about the time most NPR shows were pushing for war in Iraq, buying into the WMD lie. Or maybe I should’ve realized the truth when Kevin Klose took over as President of NPR in 1998. Klose came straight from a nice seat as director of the US Information Agency, described as “a United States agency devoted to ‘public diplomacy’ (AKA propaganda).”"

"In her five-minute interview with Ursula Wilder, a CIA psychologist whose job there is debriefing returning spies, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly (their alleged National Security Correspondent) spoke of what makes someone who reveals state secrets tick. Kelly failed big-time to probe Wilder about whether she ever thought an insider might ever have a patriotic motivation to inform the public of illegal behavior on the part of the agency. Based on Wilders’ profile of leakers, the answer would surely have been No, but it sure would have been nice to ask. Instead, the official story is simple. Each and every leaker, Wilder maintained, suffers from some DSM psychopathy, such as impulsiveness, narcissism or drug addiction, often compounded by exigencies such as marital discord or gambling debts. Leaks all stem from character defects, Wilder says—and Kelly doesn’t contradict—not to blowback by thwarted careerists or misdeeds the agency wants to disappear....If they’re stressed, it’s likely that their personal lives are out of control, their problems self-inflicted. Any time you have a problem with power, the problem is you. Hear for yourself..."

"On any given day, you can listen to the news on CNN or National Public Radio, then tune in to a Pacifica station. You would think you were hearing reports from different Planets. We inhabit the same planet, but we see it through different lenses."

"I certainly consume NPR news more than any other mainstream source, usually listening to it at least twice daily, though I abhor its coverage of international events. For these reasons, and with the reader’s forbearance, I have chosen to single NPR out to look at how we in the U.S. are collectively misled into ignoring or accepting our own government’s atrocities. This week, NPR has had some significant segments on the world’s refugee crisis, the worst since World War II."

"While Syria is always mentioned in these segments and gets much mention on NPR in general, there is barely a mention of the refugee crisis emanating from Yemen. And, this is a big omission, for as the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has recently reported, Yemen had more people displaced last year due to conflict than any other country on earth. Thus, 2.2 million people were displaced by the armed conflict in Yemen in 2015, a figure which accounts for over 25% of the 8.6 million people displaced around the globe due to conflict last year. In addition to Yemen’s refugee crisis, the IDMC also notes that over 14 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation as a result of the current conflict."

"...The only discussion I have found that NPR gave to Yemen in the context of the world refugee crisis was one, solitary piece back on May 11, and that piece was very telling in what it refused to say about the causes for Yemen’s mass displacement problem... The result of this disproportionate news coverage is that the listener could very well miss out entirely on any discussion of such issues as U.S.-backed crimes in Yemen. And, even if one does hear a segment or two on this matter, this issue will be easily forgotten and certainly not taken as seriously or treated as urgently as the misdeeds of the U.S.’s ostensible enemies, such as Syria’s Assad government, to which NPR gives nearly obsessive attention."

"In this way, we in the U.S., who may otherwise be moved to care about the fate of millions in Yemen whose lives are being upended with our own government’s complicity, are lulled into complacency, with our comfortable feeling about our nation’s inherent goodness fully intact. The result is that those in power in our ostensibly democratic government are given a free hand to aid and abet such atrocities as the near-total destruction of Yemen without the fear of any reprisal or approbation."

"In the past few years, listeners to National Public Radio have been hearing frequent announcements that “America’s natural gas” is an underwriter of NPR programming. These spots, created by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group, claim that increased use of gas is reducing greenhouse emissions and making the world a greener place... There is very little discussion anywhere in the media about the desperate necessity for very rapid, very deep reductions in greenhouse emissions worldwide if we are to keep the rise in global atmospheric temperature to less than 2° C—the threshold beyond which warming could go into unstoppable overdrive. One can listen to countless hours of news reports, including those on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, without hearing anything about the impossibility of achieving those necessary reductions if the world does not resolve to leave a large share—perhaps two-thirds or more—of global fossil fuel reserves in the ground."

"In her recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate... Naomi Klein notes, Corporations and their allies in the big environmental organizations know that leaving most fossil fuels, including natural gas, in the ground in order to stop runaway warming would deal a serious if not mortal blow to big-business-as-usual, so they will never go along with it. We also can’t seriously expect the corporate media to report reliably on this situation. But we can and should demand that NPR and other public media be fully supported by public funds so that they can declare independence from the corporate world and get some relief from their gas problem."

"Producing features on a diverse range of civic and political activities is far below NPR's and PBS's funder-friendly range of entertaining programs. On weekends, to counter the commercial vapidity and the ditto-head Sunday interview shows, PBS and NPR are just not there. They simply do not look for, or listen to, the rumble of people who are on the ground, acting with conscience, organizing to break through power. Meanwhile, smaller programs-such as Democracy Now with Amy Goodman-are picking up the slack of these larger outlets, despite their comparably modest budgets and staff size."

"On November 8, 2002...National Public Radio’s All Things Considered aired a story by longtime correspondent Tom Gjelten. “A war against Iraq would begin with a bombing campaign, and the resources for that phase of action are largely in place already,” he reported. The tone was reassuring: “Defense officials are confident the U.N. Timeline will not get in their way. For one thing, they’re going ahead in the meantime with war preparations. Says one senior military officer, ‘When the order does come, we have to be ready to rock ’n’ roll.’” It was a notable phrase for a highranking officer at the Pentagon to use with reference to activities that were sure to kill large numbers of people. The comment did not meet with any critical response; none of the news report’s several hundred words offered a perspective contrary to the numbing language that distanced listeners from the human catastrophes of actual war. Such reporting is safe. Chances are slim that it will rankle government sources, news executives, network owners, advertisers or—in the case of “public broadcasting”—large underwriters. While NPR seems more and more to stand for “National Pentagon Radio,” objections from listeners have apparently mattered little to those in charge. This should be no surprise. NPR’s president and CEO, Kevin Klose, once served as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, the U.S. government agency responsible for the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio and Television Marti."