The Iowa caucuses officially began the Democratic primary, and even in this ongoing, extended battle for the White House, Iowa remains an important marker for candidates and the media. A close look at a piece by two of NPR’s leading political reporters, which aired just before the caucuses, provides a view of how journalists speak with authority on issues they seem to know very little about. The conversation between Mary Louise Kelly and her partner Mara Liasson, headlined “Where Iowa Falls in the Big Picture of the 2020 Election” (All Things Considered, 2/3/20), began with Kelly introducing the importance of Iowa for Democrats, but, she observed, it’s been on the “backburner,” after days of constant impeachment coverage.
Liasson agreed, then spent most of her introductory remarks on Trump, presenting him as legitimate as any past president:
Tomorrow night President Trump appears in the well of the House before he speaks to both houses of Congress for the big curtain-raiser for him, the State of the Union address. It’s the biggest audience he’ll have all year. It’s—every president gets to kind of kick off his re-election campaign with the State of the Union address, and we can expect to hear a campaign message from him tomorrow.
No mention was made that Trump had flouted the Constitution by refusing to cooperate with an impeachment hearing, or that Republican senators would fail to uphold the Constitution by voting to dismiss impeachment charges after a sham trial with no witnesses. Liasson’s critical remarks were reserved for the Democratic Party, both voters and candidates.
Mary Louise Kelly brought on Mara Liasson (NPR, 2/3/20) to talk about what to expect on the “long road ahead between now and November.”
“I see a very unsettled race,” Liasson told Kelly, and continued, “Democrats are paralyzed by indecision.” One wonders which race she is looking at, as both state and national polls show that Democratic voters are anything but “paralyzed,” and for months have been anticipating the primary with “an incredible degree of excitement” (Vox, 2/3/20). One national Quinnipiac University poll (1/28/20) found a whopping 85% of Democratic voters were either “extremely” or “very” motivated to vote in the primary contests, characterizing their enthusiasm as “sky high.”
Liasson claimed that the main issue for the Democratic Party is “electability”—a fraught term often used to signal ideological orthodoxy rather than empirical chances of winning elections (FAIR.org, 10/25/19). She asserted that Democrats are “confused,” and “for good reason,” because Trump remains an “existential threat,” and not only are none of the candidates “a sure thing,” none even “seem likely to defeat” Trump.
Such handwringing is, again, not founded in facts or data. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published the day before this broadcast—one day ahead of the Iowa caucuses—found that Trump was trailing all the leading 2020 Democratic candidates, with the top four candidates ahead of Trump in theoretical head-to-head matchups. Looking more broadly at polling, the two candidates who were then leading the Democratic field, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, had beaten Trump in 69 of 73 and 63 of 68 matchups, respectively.
The supposed lack of “electability” was solidified as a media obsession in mid-April of last year, when Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, now a political strategist for corporate Democrats (Common Dreams, 2/13/20), announced on the Powerhouse Politics podcast (ABC, 4/17/19) that “Sanders couldn’t beat Trump.” Messina went on to predict that the Democratic field would be honed down to Sen. Kamala Harris and former US Rep. Beto O’Rourke, along with Joe Biden, who had not yet entered the race.
Both Harris and O’Rourke dropped out of the race before the first vote was cast, while Biden’s polling numbers were in free fall after poor showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire. But despite Messina’s foggy crystal ball, his unelectability trope was adopted by pundits as a platitude. Vox (4/24/19) was one of the few to point out a few days later that Sanders actually had a very good electability record, having “consistently run ahead of Democratic Party presidential campaigns in Vermont” when he ran for reelection as a US representative. But “unelectable” is now an overworked spin pushed by centrist Democrats and their corporate media allies.
Liasson went on to worry about the “huge vulnerabilities” all the Democratic candidates have “for the president to exploit.” No mention is made of Trump’s mammoth negatives that present Democrats with enough ammunition to send him running, if they were so inclined. Indeed, corporate media have been incapable of imagining powerfully pointed, rhetorically effective, authentically truthful critical campaigns against Trump.
Bernie Sanders continues to beat Donald Trump in polls even when you remind people that he’s “a socialist who supports a government takeover of healthcare and open borders” (Vox, 1/31/20).
Instead, one of the most feared “vulnerabilities” frequently associated with post-Iowa front-runner Bernie Sanders is that he is a socialist. So common is this assertion that Data for Progress decided to explore it, using the Lucid survey sampling platform to test three different versions of a Sanders vs Trump polling question (Vox, 1/31/20). The first version mentioned no affiliation, the second identified the candidate by party, and the third had Trump labeling Sanders a socialist, in this survey question:
If the 2020 US presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders, who wants to tax the billionaire class to help the working class and Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist who supports a government takeover of healthcare and open borders?
In all three scenarios, Sanders won. He actually did slightly better when identified as a socialist as opposed to just a Democrat.
This third question also dispatched another of Liasson’s exaggerated negatives, the issue of “open borders.” But the wording she chose to represent the issue revealed her slant. Liasson asserted, “Majorities of voters don’t want to get rid of ICE or decriminalize border crossings.” What the National Immigration Forum found in November of last year was:
A majority of Americans told pollsters that they thought immigrants strengthened America, said immigrants have positive attributes such as “hard-working” and having strong family values, and that immigrants were good for America. The percentage of Americans who said they want immigration levels to be reduced is at the lowest level, in two different polls, since that question was first asked going back to 1965 (in Gallup’s poll).
These open-minded American attitudes toward immigration hold tight even in the face of the overt anti-immigrant racism, widely articulated at the highest levels of government, in an ongoing campaign the likes of which the US public has not been subjected to in nearly a century. The result is Trump’s premier accomplishment, a border wall, justified by anti-immigrant rhetoric. Americans may not be willing to say they favor decriminalizing the border, but they most certainly recoiled from the brutality of criminalization so evident on the weaponized borderlands of the American Southwest.
The New Republic (2/5/19) discussed the post-caravan opinion data, citing a Washington Post/ABC poll (4/30/19) that suggested that voters opposed Trump’s draconian approach: The wall “remains extremely unpopular, with two voters opposing it for every one who supports it.” Most importantly, the survey demonstrated a desire to move beyond “securing” and further militarizing the border. We can only imagine what a powerful, careful, progressive Democratic campaign debate on open borders might actually accomplish.
As the two journalists continued to chat, Liasson took closer aim at Sanders, stating with bold authority that “you don’t even need to do the research part of oppo-research because his policy positions are opposed by big majorities of Americans.” Clearly, these journalists did little to no research preparing for this important broadcast. So many polls have documented what the public thinks about Sanders’ policy positions, and the evidence is overwhelming: From a wealth tax to minimum wage, they are extremely popular.
Last March, a CNBC/All-American poll illustrates this: support for paid maternity leave, 85%; government funding for childcare, 75%; boosting the minimum wage, 60%; free college tuition, 57%. Medicare for all came in at 54%. In October 2019, The Hill reported on an American Barometer survey that found “70% of the public supported providing ‘Medicare for All,’ also known as single-payer healthcare.”
Notably, the only issue included in that poll that garnered only a 28% approval rating was Andrew Yang’s idea of a universal basic income, even with the slogan “freedom dividend,” something Sanders has not focused on.
Another key policy proposal with broad public support is a wealth tax that both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll (1/10/20), nearly two-thirds of respondents agree that the very rich should pay more. Among 4,441 respondents, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.” Support among Democrats was even stronger, at 77%, but a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agree with the idea.
Liasson continued with a carefully selected list of “unpopular” positions that Sanders has taken: “He wants to ban fracking and somehow win Pennsylvania.” But a poll released days earlier (Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/30/20) found that 48% of Pennsylvania voters support a ban on fracking, and just 39% opposed a ban; 49% felt the environmental risks outweighed the economic benefits, with 38% taking the reverse position.
“Even a majority of Democrats don’t want to end private health insurance,” she exclaimed. Actually, 77% of Democrats support “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare for All, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan”—as do 61% of independents (KFF, 1/30/20).
What can we take away from this sad story brought to listeners by two formidable journalists, one who recently received high praise for her hardball questioning (NPR, 1/24/20) of Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo? Their ignorance is willful, and finds its roots in a profoundly ideological position, an ideology adopted by journalists who favor and are rewarded by corporate arguments promoted by corporate Democrats.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR‘s public editor here (or via Twitter: @NPRpubliceditor). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
Featured image: Mara Liasson
Thanks, Robin Andersen, for this exemplary critique. Please continue to perform this valuable public service in pointing out the biases of corporate media, including NPR.
Great job. please continue the good work!
What a load of crap! and while we’re at it, why not help legitimize the presidency? Your assessment of the popularity of specific Sanders proposals is SADLY LACKING. DO YOUR RESEARCH NPR!!!!
Keeping it unreal
Can’t stand Trump and can’t stand NPR; both suffer from rot.
NPR has been moving towards the right, since the mid 1990’s. They got rid of all of the local programming on their stations; then, they got rid of their trusted local newsanchors. That is why I don’t give to any of their annual pledge drives, an ymore.
NPR has become Fox lite.
Although I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with your point about NPR’s ideological stance, at least in Colorado they definitely have not done away with local programming. Colorado Public Radio continues to have excellent and very worthwhile local programming as well as very qualified and respected local news anchors. And for that I am very thankful and feel very fortunate.
I heard that discussion. It contributed to my turning the dial. They showed bias as well as ignorance.
Thank you Robin for what appears to be a well researched article that promotes a rational analysis of the democratic primary ‘race’.
I support Bernie and also fair.org. But I have to disagree with the way that this article characterizes the evidence it presents as supporting an NPR takedown of Bernie. That interview clearly shows Mara Liasson’s bias. But, I don’t see this as a pattern on NPR as a whole, and more importantly, the article certainly doesn’t demonstrate that.
Hi, Bernie. I am a big NPR fan and have been disappointed in their treatment of Bernie in both this and the 2016 cycle. This time it is even more evident, with them excluding him from many reports that clearly should have included him. For example, a whole segment with multiple hosts including Ari Shapiro (and I think mara Liasson, but I can’t remember the others) was dedicated to discussing the current polling results where, at the time, Bernie was second to Biden with Warren in third. They spoke at length about Biden and Warren, but failed to mention Bernie until later in the segment, and even then it was briefly, negative, and only once. Exclusion is is also a take-down tactic and it deeply disappoints me that NPR is participating in such bias.
While you’re correct that this specific article primarily showcases Liasson’s bias, NPR as a whole does seem to be on board with it. I’ll still listen to it, but it’s disappointing, regardless.
I generally agree with you but thought the bias was more on the part of Robin Anderson than Mama Liasson.
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802392319/where-iowa-falls-in-the-big-picture-of-the-2020-election
The interview is on line and last 4 minutes – less than it takes to wade through this summary/take-down.
This article ignores the negative things said about Trump.
Simply comparing pro and con percentages on an issue is misleading: More people in PA may oppose fracking on environmental grounds, but they are unlikely to be mobilized on the issue. I live in Philly and would not be more likely to vote for or against Bernie on fracking. People in western PA will be strongly motivated to vote against Bernie or any other Democrat who wants to end fracking because it’s a bonanza for them.
Ah, er… I’m from Pittsburgh’s West End and spent way over three decades in the industry. The suburbs will vot the way they did last time, AGAINST a dead-eyed DNC LLC, typified by Schumer’s, “For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western Pennsylvania…” We’ve all seen Deaths O’ Disparity as MSNBC Thug Ed Rendell gavaged radium flavored fracking brine to our kids, poisoned our air & sold us to Shell, Exxon and numerous foreign oligarchs as Cancer Valley Appalachia™ The actual fracking, pipeline, cracking jobs go to contractors from states or countries with crappier weekly unemployment payments. Last time working at home, I made far more in perDiem than the locals made W4. Despite what Debbie told the court, about DNC being a private corporation, beholding only to keep folks like Sanders OUT of office for their Multinational oligarchs; folks in Pittsburgh itself were out in the tens-of-thousands back during Obama’s G20. We were virtually ALL blue collar? If Mike, Pete or Amy win, we’reiving atop scores-of-thousands of 20K’ deep, intertwined 2mi long leaky, abandoned, lethal ETHANE wells. WHEN Trump wins again, like 2016, DNC’s superdelegates will get even wealthier as deaths increase.
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/pennsylvania-has-the-most-premature-deaths-caused-by-air-pollution-of-any-state/Content?oid=16757374
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accident-last-year-released-surprising-amount-of-methane/
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/wva
NPR comes across as biased as MSNBC….Shameful!
I have boycotted NPR for years now. Why support something so clearly dishonest and right wing?
Gee, NPR ought to be backing the only candidate that doesn’t want to cut arts, public services and other features. It seems that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Sanders is the only candidate that isn’t bought and sold by big money, time for NPR to wake up and smell the coffee.
Like a third of this “fact check” is just a complaint that the journalists weren’t attacking Trump. Great job.
Right: The hardest perspective to find is the one that is honest with its worldview but doesn’t let that get in the way of objective analysis.
A casual reader would see this as a slightly veiled bias for one candidate precisely because it is reads more as opinion than fact-check.
The “fact check” has become so weaponised as to indicate disapproval on its very mention and well before actually checking facts.
I’ll try to fact-check what I’ve just said. Start with this headline on CNN:
“Fact-checking the false claims Trump made in defending Roger Stone”
Compare this to “Fact-checking The Claims Trump Made In Defending Roger Stone.” The difference is in not stating the conclusion of an investigation in the headline. That would seem elementary: If the claims are as false as to be patent, why position the lede as a fact-check.
The bigger problem is that we no longer trust the craft of journalism. It is understandable in a very human way. When we are so viscerally offended, we operate more on emotion than objectivity.
But, had the media in general simply trusted journalism in the form of diligent, consistent, sober reporting and analysis, then any ostensible wrongdoer doesn’t normally survive the weight of evidence.
Now, after four years of ad hominem attacks that have unwittingly and purposely (for profit) blurred Opinion, Editorial, Analysis, and Reporting, the exact opposite goal of the general media penchant seems inevitable.
Well put
I agree, well stated!
Huh? Your volubility is impressive, yet the meaning is difficult to grasp. I’m not sure if you agree with S., who seems to be annoyed about the criticism of Trump, or not. And trying to decipher your intent seems to be too much trouble. Sorry.
It’s ok. Re whether I agree, It may be better to stop at the first word of the response to S.
Volubility is never a goal.
But, in this age, we are so far from accepting plain truth that the parabolic is a much more appropriate method to commune with people who are actually willing to stop, to consider, to be convicted together in just accepting the simple, patent truth. Also a better way not to incite the enemy class.
The goal is just a search for objectivity and I don’t exempt myself from being charged guilty or found innocent.
In this case, I think the truth is clear and this article missed it.
A bonus confirmation is that I just noticed that the CNN headline has the EXACT same format of this article’s headline – betraying the objectivity of a fact check with a damning bias in the word “takedown.”
Wow.
NPR smells the coffee. NPR is bought and sold by a handful of billionaires.
Perhaps your readers are not aware that the entire nature of NPR changed after the Clinton presidency. In his “centrist” neoliberal fervor he defunded and defanged the FCC and allowed the endless consolidation of the media. Where there were at least 159 organizations that owned the media at the onset of his administration, there are now just 5. Furthering that horrifying saga, Bush 2 then went on to defund the CPR (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) which left PBS and NPR at the mercy of corporate sponsors. Then he spitefully demanded that public tv and radio had to present a “fair” version of the news and represent the right as well as the left in equal measure in order to receive the meager funds that were allocated to them. This has ruined NPR and PBS. It breaks my heart to see what they have become!
Longtime NPR listener and while they do have some very good national programs, you’re right about the direction they took and when they took it. Right around 2000 is when they changed.
Tried to post this before, but it didn’t post. You’re right about NPR changing round about the year 2000. -Longtime NPR listener
Never realized she was a member of THE CULT
This was a disgustingly willful ignorant commentary. I thought that you were better than this.
Once upon a time, NPR actually told their listeners to also seek out other news sources. Nowadays, they label themselves a complete news source.
IMHO, NPR is no longer a reliable news source; they are primarily non-music entertainment during my commute. The actual ‘news’ reported during their news programs are minimal to be laughable.
Mara Liasson, I listened to this broadcast and was disturbed by it but couldn’t put my finger on it. This article is very helpful in analyzing the biased nature of your reporting that was bothering me. I am sorry to say that from now on I will not be supporting NPR at the level I was before.
This is the second time I had to call Npr reporters out on interjecting their bias into reporting . I am afraid I will have to stop my donations to you if you don’t bring fairness and objectivity back into our daily lives. I will listen to you very cautiously and skeptically now. What a Sad state for our country that the public’s radio has turned into corporate capitalism.
We need unbiased reporting. The conversation between Mary Kelly and Mara really did a number on Bernie and was full of lies. You want public funding, but you are not serving the publec.
I got the distinct impression while reading it that this article was a parody of real journalism… thus fake news. I mean, is NPR supposed to lambast Trump in EVERY PIECE they do? After a while, we all get inured to all the criticism. Journalists are up against it these days. They have to cover the government like it isn’t a shit show… sound serious about an infantile president, and they are forced to interview conservatives like they might say something that isn’t propaganda. Demeaning at best. They’re the smart kids in the class who have to stand by while the class bully runs the show… a no-win, no dignity situation.
I agree Robert.
Thank you for factchecking their statements. Its pretty sad when even NPR cant be trusted
NPR and Mara Liasson (their chief anti-Bernie correspondent), were at it again on 2/17/20, “Morning Edition” show. the 6am hour, and again in the 7am hour, featured 2 different segments with various anti-Bernie biased reports on why he can’t win and how the Dem party establishment prefers Bloomberg’s money and fears Bernie . your FAIR analyst might want to look into these 2/17/20 reports as well.
Thank you, author, for all the detailed information. I’m extremely disappointed in NPR over this and will be letting them know.
Since the 2016 elections when Sanders was rarely even mentioned I experienced the bias. When I hear commentators say that Sanders is extreme or a socialist, I hear the propaganda. How about doing a show on what is democratic socialism and how many programs we are familiar with come from our taxes which is the underpinnings of democratic socialism: fire department, hospitals, libraries, schools, roads etc
Yes. I have been dismayed lately about Mary louise and her consistently cynical attitude. If you want to appear sophisticated, even when you don’t know what you are talking about, adopt a cynical atitude and you are cool.
My main takeaway from this is… “Fair is Unfair”, how amusing to witness “confronting media bias” with more “media bias”. Just what we need more of. Not. NPR has been left oriented for YEARS… I listen to them A LOT. While they make an appreciable attempt to present from Center, their interviews are primarily with left-oriented contributors. R. Andersen makes clear her own personal bias by the third paragraph. It is not for her to judge the legitimacy of the POTUS; and castigating NPR for pointing out the negatives that Public Interest has presented is hardly helpful, and is disingenuous at best. It is precisely those negatives that must be confronted if Bernie’s campaign is to enjoy success. Finally, her main complaint seems to be that NOT ENOUGH negatives were associated with Trump for her liking… WHY is that? …so that NPR could be equated with all the OTHER news outlets out there? This writer is tired of all those whose current modus operandi is to utilize whatever yellow journalism that may be at their disposal to promote the Democratic Party. Truth and Honesty are More Important than Party… something the DNC must learn, or suffer another downfall. Peace.
Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders. I didn’t see/hear the episode discussed in the article, but I believe this article. I view this situation as just another attempt by neoliberal forces to keep control in the hands of corporations and their wealthy allies. NPR has sold its soul to the corporations that support their economic requirements instead of following their name; PUBLIC not corporate.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself. This piece is a conspiracy-mongering pile of rot. When you’re not qvetching about irrelevancies that have nothing to do with any “takedown of Bernie Sanders”, you’re distorting the record, creating straw man arguments, cherry-picking or actually lying. I read the NPR transcript. At NO point does anyone say none of the Dem candidates “seem likely” to beat Trump. You just made that up.
I’m a progressive voter, and will happily support Sanders should he get the nomination. What the Left needs is honesty, a good debate, and mutual support and respect so we maximize our changes of getting rid of Trump. If Bernie’s your favorite, let’s hear an honest message. What you’ve given us is equivalent to Fox Left. Do better!
At 1:30 in the audio: “They consider President Trump an existential threat to everything they care about, and they just can’t decide who is the best person to beat him and for good reason because none of the candidates seem like a sure thing to defeat Donald Trump”
Dan, well put. I entirely agree with you. I’m a bit put out that you write more concisely than I do. I tend to vent as you can see in my comments below.
I will rub Mara Liasson’s feet every night for a month if she promises to quit throwing shade on Bernie till after Super Tuesday.
Here is my reply to NPR:
I found the two journalists, Mary Louise Kelly and Mara Liasson extremely uninformed about the status of voters, and very biased in their portrayal of the Sanders campaign. I read a few articles about voters’ attraction to Sanders, and the data that these two writers used was inaccurate on several levels. Please get them to get their facts straight. It was evident that they were anti-Sanders journalists.
Sincerely,
Dr. Roberta Ahlquist
The irony that FAIR would publish a baseless smear against NPR and two respected journalists is stunning. I actually went to the FAIR website to confirm that this spurious hit piece was in fact published by the once highly respected FAIR, not a Russian troll.
There is not a single word in this article that supports the banner Headline, that NPR is, or has ever, attempted a “Takedown of Bernie Sanders.” Unless of course, by “takedown” you mean any word of criticism at all.
Clearly the left has lost its freaking mind.
At issue is an All Things Considered broadcast titled “Where Iowa Falls in the Big Picture of the 2020 election.” FAIR contributor Robin Anderson bizarrely takes NPR to task for NOT critizing Trump, Senate Republicans, or the sham impeachment trial, and instead NPR’s “critical remarks were reserved for the Democratic Party.”
Perhaps that is because the topic they were discussing wasn’t Trump or impeachment, it was the Democratic primary in Iowa. I suppose if I write an article about polar bears, I’ll have to preface it by noting that “Trump had flouted the Constitution” as Ms. Anderson insists.
Anderson takes great issue with NPR’s Mara Liasson writing “the main issue for the Democratic Party is ‘electability.'” Actually Liasson was referring to undecided voters, not the party, when she reported, “for them, electability is paramount.”
Anderson dismissed the issue of electability calling it a “fraught term used to signal ideological orthodoxy,” “handwriting,” A “media obsession,” “an electability trope,” and finally, “an overworked spin pushed by centrist Democrats and their corporate media allies. Whew!
The obvious problem with Ms. Anderson’s skree is that the reporting by the NPR team is entirely accurate. Simply calling it fake news doesn’t make it so.
It is abundantly clear from a myriad of independent sources that Democrats like me (with no corporate allies) and millions like me are concerned about the electability of our party’s nominee because of the unique and acute threat to our Republic that is Trump.
I know that Bernie supporters hate the electability question because it is usually directed at Bernie. And I don’t know who Ms. Anderson supports, but her take-down of former Obama campaign manager Jim Messing and her inaccurate sliming of two excellent NPR reporter’s makes me think the term “Bernie Bro” is too gender specific.
Ms. Anderson dedicates considerable ink to polling data to show that the concerns people have about electability is unfounded. Yet her data is misleading as any editor of a publication committed to accuracy should have noticed. The national polling data is irrelevant because the presidential race will be decided by key battleground states, and control of the House by democrats that won in districts that Trump had carried.
Didn’t Hillary prove this point?
Anderson continues to falsely smear the NPR journalists writing, for example, that Liasson had “exaggerated [Bernie’s] negatives,” and “revealed her slant” by reporting “Majorities of voters don’t want to get rid of ICE or decriminalize border crossings.”
Ms. Anderson seems to refute this claim by writing extensively about American attitudes towards immigration, none of which refuted, or even raised the issues of abolishing ICE or decriminalize border crossings.
So once again, the problem with Ms. Anderson’s critique is that the NPR teams reporting is entirely accurate.
What does FAIR stand for again?
Ms. Anderson closes her piece by demeaning two good reporters saying, “Their ignorance is willful” (A polite way of saying intentionally lying), and “profoundly ideological” (read biased), and “rewarded by corporate arguments promoted by corporate Democrats” (I think she’s suggesting the NPR reporter’s have sold out to the corptocracy but that last bit was a little hard for me to follow).
On a personal note, I worked full-time in the peace and justice community for more than 15 years. I’m supporting Warren because I think she’ll whip Trump and help carry down ballot candidates whereas Sanders, who could win, poses a far greater risk of four more years.
You can disagree. Many of my friends do. But for a publication like FAIR to publish such a flawed, overwhelmingly biased, inaccurate article, one that demeans good journalists as well as a political operative for having the audacity to stray for the liberal orthodoxy of fawning adoration for Sanders is astonishing to me.
Since when did the standard of journalism at FAIR become: Anything we agree with. How very Trumpian of you.
Anderson’s analysis is entirely accurate and logical. Nazi Propaganda Radio has only one agenda–the continuing dispossession and slaughter of the native population of Palestine. The same billionaires who fund Trump and the Corporate Democrats fund NPR.
Thank you for the clarifications on this latest example of how NPR’s Liasson (a regular on conservative broadcasting as the token “Liberal”) consistently fails Journalism 101 while simply echoing corporate media narratives.
It is interesting to watch, that as Bernie’s campaign continues to do well, just who is coming out of the woodwork to attack him. The enemies of democracy are revealing themselves one by one.
Nazi Propaganda Radio has one agenda, namely preventing the nomination of any candidate who might stand in the way of endless war against Iraq or Syria, or might lack enthusiasm for the endless slaughter of Palestinians.
2 takes: National Propaganda Radio, or National Pentagon Radio – when, if ever, have you heard an NPM analyst or interviewee denounce the heinously tragic and phony Global War OF Terror, or discuss the greound-breaking research and revelations of (mysteriously suicided) San Jose, Mercury reporter, Gary Webb, on crack-epidemic-era, cocaine trafficking by the CIA – remember: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” William Casey, CIA Director 1981-1987. Mission accomplished.
NPR is “horserace journalism”, predominately asking opinion questions of guests. Let the candidates raise money to bring issues to the public. They hardly service elections or do foreign policy, especially Israeli behaviors.
On the Russia accusations, all characterizations, not facts, not hows.
same old tired DNC propaganda, aimed at destabilizing US political system.
I am disappointed in reading these comments to discover so many failed to recognize the biased right wing nature of NPR until recently. What took you so long?
Please don’t listen to their propaganda, you are being misled.
Don’t forget how Robin Young shanked Tulsi Gabbard back in September in an NPR interview.
I appreciate very much reading your anaylisis of the news even when I am not quite in agreement with you,this is due to the sincerity and thorough reresearch, documation varietty of your sources and objectivity (as much as a human being and journalist can be).
I am not American but I believe but I sincerely believe that the American people is waking up to take matters in their hands andrealy make America Great for the first time ever to really lead the world to a humaine future .Thank you and keep the line.
Slowly, steadily Americans are becoming immune to the constant drum of propaganda from media sources. To maintain a healthy bottom line, the citizenry ‘needs to be managed’ regardless of consequences for our democracy. I’ve come to the conclusion all network news agencies and their management would be ‘just fine with fascism’, so long as they made a profit. I recently saw a video on YouTube from a longtime conservative strategist whose guest laid bare the incontrovertible realization, the kids reaching voting age are increasingly liberal. To paraphrase our inglorious president – ‘we know it, they know it, everybody knows it.’ The question is : will we have a functioning democracy as they come of age?
I expect more from NPR than biased reporting with no apparent factual evidence. Shameful.
Superb analysis Robin ! I listened to that broadcast live and was equally appalled. Thank you for the thorough and clever (!) research on the info contained. Mara was exposed as a barely competent hack. Great job !
I found Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders very educational.
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