Dissecting NPR - FishbowlNY

NPR Fights Back: Survey Shows Most Listeners of NPR Are Conservative

Ujala Sehgal — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:17:34 +0000

Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” is stepping up to the plate in defending NPR. He writes for the Wall Street Journal on Thursday:

I can point out that the recent tempests over “perceived bias” have nothing to do with what NPR puts on the air. The facts show that NPR attracts a politically diverse audience of 33.7 million weekly listeners to its member stations on-air. In surveys by GfK MRI, most listeners consistently identify themselves as “middle of the road” or “conservative.”

As for James O’Keefe, the activist whose video prank led to NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller losing her job, Inskeep loftily recounts hearing of the story while he was reporting from Egypt. When he had dinner that night with the NPR Cairo bureau, they barely discussed the NPR news back home. Writes Inskeep:

I noticed a contrast between the news that NPR reports from the Arab world and the news NPR has lately made at home. Each news story revealed the values of the people reporting it… I congratulate Mr. O’Keefe for upholding his values: faith in the power of video to mislead.

Zing! NPR could have used some of Inskeep’s backbone when the O’Keefe story broke, before it fell over itself apologizing and getting rid of people. Now this latest defense might just be too late.

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French Spiderman Climbs New York Times Building

Noah Davis — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:14:34 +0000

Alain Robert, who calls himself “Spiderman” and happens to be French, is currently climbing The New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan. We have no idea why.

UPDATE: Hooray, he made it! Now he’s being hauled away in handcuffs! Also, Robert will forever be the answer to the trivia question, “What’s the fastest way to get to the top of The New York Times?” Zing.

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Off the Media: Gates v. Garfield v. Blogosphere

Dorian — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:21:22 +0000

“On the Media” co-host Bob Garfield this week asks America’s-richest-man, philanthropist and future thinker Bill Gates what we’ve all wanted to know: What do you think of those Mac ads on TV that make you look really doofy? “But it’s you!” Garfield quips, when Gates refuses to talk about “another company’s” ads. Evidently, not everyone got the point, and Garfield at three in the morning found himself writing a response to a commentary about what a publicity hungry hound he is. That’s almost too meta for us.

Meanwhile, laughter was heard over this script that was cleverly written in the passive voice in which good fun was made of the Administration’s — any administration’s — inability to say “Yep, we did it — sorry,” and instead say that “mistakes were made.” (Though Clinton never did say “Sex was had with that woman” — and Garfield notes that all his examples are from Republicans — we bet a few slippery Democratic examples could have been found.)

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Off The Media: Urinating Editors

Dorian — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:26:55 +0000

Did you think we’d forgotten “On the Media”? Nah, we’ve just been a little distracted.

This week:

This joke co-host Brooke Gladstone told didn’t make sense to us until we read it in the transcript:

A reporter and an editor are going through a desert. They’re really parched. They come upon a pristine pool of water. The reporter jumps right in. The editor, on the other hand, drops his trousers and begins to urinate. And the reporter says, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” And the editor says, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m making it better.”

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Off the Media: Clever Headlines, Kate Coe and Giuliani

Dorian — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:09:43 +0000

OK, we may be giving too much significance to just one segment on this week’s On the Media, but since it’s sister-blogger Kate Coe from our own FishbowlLA, we can’t help but crow. OTM’s Bob Garfield interviews Kate about her story for the L.A. Weekly on how little coverage a black-on-white Halloween crime received.

What also stood out this week was these wince-inducing headlines on the OTM Web site:

“Clink Stained Wretch” (on San Francisco reporter Josh Wolf’s imprisonment for refusing to turn over video he took of a demonstration).
“A Zion in the Sand” (on whether the pro-Israel lobby is really preventing honest debate on Israel).
“Murder Ink” (on LA Times crime reporter Jill Leovy‘s quest to cover the crimes in The Homicide Report).”
“Twist of Hate” (for Kate’s story).

Last week (which we haven’t covered, yet) there was a nice piece reminding us about how disliked Giuliani was before he became “America’s Mayor” on 9/11 (of which The Onion today names him president). A lot us remember when Rudy was not the beloved rock of 9/11, but rather an overly-controlling, press-loathing, distrustful, nightclub hating … Remember? Well, OTM notes that Mr. Presidential Candidate kid-from-Brooklyn might have to face some uncomfortable questions, again.

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Off the Media: ‘Barely A Buttock Would Leave The Leather’

Dorian — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:11:49 +0000

This week, we leave you with our favorite quotes from our favorite New York-based meta media NPR radio show:

Guest co-host Mike Pesca, in reference to the State of the Union address: “It seems to me to be an element of kabuki, or actually it’s a lot like the Roman Catholic mass — a lot of up-down, up-down. I think that if there were no cameras there, you know, barely a buttock would leave the leather.”

Emily Bazelon of Slate saying why she could go on an AIPAC-funded junket to Israel. Her answer’s logic sure confuses us: “There’s no way that this isn’t a problematic thing to do, which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have done it. I mean, I don’t regret that I went. But I completely see the argument that it’s troubling and creates these ambiguities and creates questions about our objectivity in covering the region.”

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Off the Media: High Def Porn, Low Def Journalists

Dorian — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:14:08 +0000

[photo via Flickr]

On the Media this week acknowledged what the New York Times and Wall Street Journal subsequently got to: Pornography not only exists, but technologically sometimes leads the way. The Times tells us porn actually won’t lead the way in HD because the pictures are just a little too real. While the WSJ talks about porn as key in the standards battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Although OTM’s tech expert interview subject says porn might not play a big role, because they do less and less of their stuff on DVD, and more on cable, satellite, Internet and wireless.

OTM also this week also lets Dennis Kucinich‘s former media advisor Jeff Cohen tell us that the reason Kucinich isn’t taken as a serious candidate is because of arrogant, holier-than-thou reporters who know what’s best for voters better than voters do.

We could certainly argue a connection between the story — about mainstream news media’s arrogance and lack of touch with the real public — and another OTM’er this week on how bad a year ’06 was for newspapers, with declining circulation and no 20-somethings reading them. Our argument would also note that the supercilious, self-important nature of so many “journalists” — why the f*ck can’t we say “reporters” anymore? Because it doesn’t sound as “important?” — helps account for the popularity of The Daily Show and Colbert Report, which call out the bombast. Which reminds us:

Where was Colbert/O’Reilly on OTM?

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Off the Media: Liberal, Censor-Avoiding Apples

Dorian — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:18:29 +0000

This week from On the Media we learned that:

Co-host Brooke Gladstone is willing to joke about her liberal self. In a story about how conservative bloggers (the “right-o-sphere”) are being skeptical of their skepticism of the mainstream media’s Iraq war coverage:

“Some conservative bloggers, mired in the ugly truth about the war in Iraq, are wondering whether they should have spent less time attacking the MSM and more time believing it. We thought we’d get into the argument, so we’ve enlisted prominent conservative blogger Ed Morrissey, AKA Captain Ed (pictured). We’ll take the position of — surprise, surprise — the liberal blogs.”

People in countries with less-than-free access to the Internet can get around the censor by getting a favored uncle or cousin or someone in a more free place to install Psiphon on their computer and let them in.

Apple’s new cell phone device thingy — there, that puts the iPhone in its place — was the big story of the week. And there weren’t enough skeptical stories. (We agree, but we’ll still gladly do some shameful and self-damaging act to get our hands one.)

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Off the Media: The Human Interest Slog

Dorian — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:40:33 +0000

Ahhhh, NOW we know what makes for a good cable news story. It has to be “human interest,” which to On the Media co-host Bob Garfield means “aberrant, ongoing and unresolved.” But when he says a story like the Mt. Hood climber search “affects nobody but the principles,” is he forgetting the taxpayer money spent on the rescue efforts? Besides, we’ve heard news people justify this kind of coverage as cautionary tales. (“Remember, when you’re mountain climbing, not to die a horrible death by getting lost …”) OK, sure, those stories push more “real” news aside. But isn’t that what the news business has been about since before the penny-paper days of the 19th Century?

Impressively for a holiday week (check out the disharmonious “Fa la la la la” at 52:46 on the podcast), they managed to put a show together with no retreads of previous stuff. Co-host Brooke Gladstone interviews Eason Jordan (pictured) about his new “Iraq Slogger” venture — essentially a newswire devoted solely to Iraq that’s already, after weeks in existence, gotten about 500,000 pageviews and some 100,000 visitors, Jordan tells FishbowlNY. OTM covered half of the new business.

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Off the Media: Bob and Don

Dorian — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:40:33 +0000

On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone once told us we clearly “love” her fellow host, Bob Garfield. Blushing, we admitted a certain admiration for the way he unflinchingly cuts against the “I’m so smart” deep-voiced broadcast grain, calls a spade a spade (or even an ace, when it is) isn’t afraid to laugh uproariously on air, or point out contradictions and stupidity. And thus, we admit what we find most compelling about this week’s show is Bob’s essay on how our former secretary of defense is suddenly lamenting the phrase “war on terror”:

Asked if there was anything different he’d have done in Iraq, Rumsfeld offered, “I don’t think I would have called it a war on terror.” Oh, really? … Rumsfeld had many opportunities to change the spin, but he clung to “war on terror” like a magic talisman. And no wonder; It was a linguistic trump card, justifying anything the administration did on grounds of national security.

Really.

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The Origin Of The ‘Surrender Monkey’

Dorian — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:42:20 +0000

Who knew the Supreme Court was a dysfunctional family? We learned that this week from Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick, telling On the Media the Court does itself a disservice by releasing audio only of the most controversial cases, not the boring ones where the justices all sing in nine-party harmony. And Nina Totenberg, NPR’s Supreme Court reporter, should let her hair down more often. Who knew she could do such fun impressions of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg? Nina, how about a Souter?

In OTM’s piece on the new “France 24” channel, Brooke filled us in on the origins of surrender monkey,” which last week fronted the NY Post: The phrase first appeared, she said, in 1995 on The Simpsons (Groundskeeper Willie called the French “cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys”), it was “reinjected … into the mainstream media” in the late ’90s by National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg” and “gleefully repeated on Fox News and other apparently Francophobic news outlets” during the run-up to the Iraq War. But we know Brooke’s no-cheese-eating, Francophone: She thought “Art de Vivre” is the “art of life” until her guest gently told her it’s “the art of “living,” which is supposedly the raison d’etre of France 24 — to get more of that French cheese in our news.

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Garfield: ‘Because Zimbabwe Was Booked Solid’

Dorian — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:15:49 +0000

So, why was On the Media in Turkey? Because show co-host Bob Garfield had another reason to go. Here’s his answer:

“Because Zimbabwe was booked solid.

“Har har. Actually, in my capacity as an ad critic for Advertising Age, I go around the world giving speeches — lately about the collapse of the old media/marketing model before the Brave New World is built out. (I call it “The Chaos Scenario.”) Over 20 years, I’ve done 80% of my on-location NPR reporting (100s of pieces from, like, 25 countries) while on Ad Age business. This trip I was in Oslo, then Istanbul. Freedom of speech in Norway isn’t a big issue, so I decided to focus on Article 301.”

Article 301, of course, being … oh, yes, the part of the Turkish penal code which criminalizes “insulting Turkishness” and is often used to prosecute writers and journalists.

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Off the Media: Turkey, Elections and Repeats

Dorian — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:58:49 +0000

On the Media this week couldn’t resist the post-Thanksgiving pun, when Bob Garfield (do we have to call him co-host every week?) went slightly outside the usual Mideast sphere for a visit to Turkey, where he revealed that the press still isn’t completely free — though things are better.

Ana Marie Cox (still funny for us to hear the Wonkette referred to as Time.com) expounded on the nuance behind the election headlines: some of the Dems elected were conservative, and the all-important “swing voters weren’t thinking so much about the Iraq war; they were thinking about wanting a change for a lot of different reasons,” like corruption (which you already know if you paid attention).

And a couple of reruns, one on the create-a-pundit industry of media coaches by John Solomon, and a another from New Yorker Jay Rosen, speaking about “legacy media â€¦ saddled with an outdated or heavy infrastructure in an age when to be nimbler and lighter might be a lot better.”

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Off the Media: Dobbs, Fox and Auletta

Dorian — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:02:49 +0000

There’s no love of cable news on OTM this week, what with co-hosts Gladstone & Garfield taking it out of CNN’s Lou Dobbs (our previous on that is here) and Fox news. The short bit by Bob on Fox is quite the sendup. Quckly noting a HuffPo-provided unsourced piece the channel ran on how Iraqi insurgents are “pleased” with Dems winning the US elex, he asks: “What’s the source?” then quips, “We report. You decide.”

Also, Brooke’s interview with an astute Ken Auletta tells why family-owned newspapers — even families as committed to journalism as the Sulzbergers — may not be able to overcome newspapers’ current economic realities:

“I think it’s real important to say this on behalf of the Tribune Company or Wall Street or anyone who says, my God, what’s your plan for growth in the future? And that’s a fair question to be asking, and it’s one that journalists should climb out of our bunkers and not just, look, how do we do good journalism, but how do we attract readers?”

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Off the Media: Fork Bending Liberal Journalists!

Dorian — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:00:00 +0000

We couldn’t hide our amazement this week at having “On the Media” host Brooke Gladstone confirm that she is not only married to a liberal, she probably IS one. Yep, the host of “On the Media,” in an intelligent piece about whether journalists are able to have beliefs or not — at least of the political variety — disclosed that she had been looking to vote for Hillary Clinton on a non-Democratic ticket. That means it was most likely the Working Families Party, whose politics are aligned with the likes of Pete Seeger and other certified lefties.

Not that we lose any respect for Brooke. Far from it. One could, in fact, argue, as some do in her piece, that disclosure is most the honest form of flattering the audience, and is much more honest than pretending there’s a priesthood (when everyone knows there’s fooling around behind the scenes). If the Washington Post‘s Len Downie really does, as he claims, avoid having any partisan thoughts about which dopes of a politician are better than any others, then our hats are off, and he’s a better man than most. “Does he say he can bend forks with his mind?,” quips Michael Kinsley. “You know, some people can do remarkable things.”

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