Conclusions on NPR's Liberal Bias
Friday, September 14, 2012

The final installment of our exploration into the question: Does NPR have a liberal bias? In this segment we hear from conservative listeners Sam Negus and Kevin Putt. Then FAIR's Steve Rendall provides his take on our endeavor. PEW's Tom Rosenstiel reports his findings in examining NPR's coverage for bias. And finally, Ira Glass returns to discuss what he learned from our coverage...

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That was Kevin Putt. Among our critics there were also a fair number of liberals who felt NPR actually leaned the other way.

Next up, Steve Rendall, senior analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR, a liberal organization that monitors media bias. In a controversial study released in 2004, FAIR counted up the liberal and conservative sources cited in news reports on Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

STEVE RENDALL: And what we found was a very strong slant in favor of the GOP. Sixty-one percent of partisan guests who appeared on those two NPR shows in 2003 were Republicans.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: There was a Republican Congress, there was a Republican White House. I mean, doesn't that make sense?

STEVE RENDALL: You should see a few more Republicans on, but the number was 61% Republicans to 38% Democrats. And, we were repeating a study that we had done in 1993, when the Democrats had the White House and both houses of Congress. And in that study, we found that there was the same bias, 57% Republicans at that time and 42% Democrats. So it didn't matter who was dominating Washington. Republicans had more guests.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, I'm assuming that at least a third of our listeners, the third that identify as conservatives, and maybe a good number of the liberal listeners too are thinking you’re a liberal research organization, and you make no bones about it. Why should we trust what you say?

STEVE RENDALL: Well, our studies are replicable. You can check the numbers. Everybody comes from a point of view. But the thing is, we've had four decades of formal campaigning by the right, by groups like Accuracy in Media, the Media Research Center, the Heritage Foundation, to portray our media, corporate and public broadcasting, as being to the left of center. It’s paid off. And I think the fact that we're having this discussion here, the fact that there’s a debate in Congress, shows how much it’s paid off.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And not because there’s a kernel of truth in it.

STEVE RENDALL: Well, I would love to see the studies. I have looked at the studies, I have combed the literature, and I just haven't seen anything that really shows that to be true.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That was Steve Rendall of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

And here’s another study. Tim Groseclose, a professor in the Economics and Political Science Department at UCLA, and Jeff Milyo, an economics professor at the University of Missouri, analyzed 20 mainstream news outlets, counting each time they cited a think tank or policy group in a news story. They gauged the political stripe of a think tank by how many times it was cited by a conservative or a liberal member of Congress. The Congresspeople themselves were rated based on their roll call votes...

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/sep/14/conclusions-nprs-liberal-bias/transcript/

Peter Dale Scott: The term “Deep state” comes from Turkey. They invented it after the wreck of a speeding Mercedes in 1996 in which the passengers were a Member of Parliament, a beauty queen, a local senior police captain, and an important drug trafficker in Turkey who was also the head of a criminal paramilitary organization – the Grey Wolves – that went around killing people. And it became very obvious in Turkey that there were a covert relationship between the police who officially were looking for this man – even though a policeman was there with him in the car – and these people who committed crimes on behalf of the state. The state that you commit crimes for is not a state that can show its hand to the people, it’s a hidden state, a covert structure. In Turkey, they called it the Deep state, [1] and I had been talking about deep politics for a long time so I used the term in The Road to 9/11. This is why I have defined deep politics as all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged. So the term “Deep state” – coming from Turkey – is not mine.

It refers to a parallel secret government, organized by the intelligence and security apparatus, financed by drugs, and engaging in illicit violence, to protect the status and interests of the military against threats from intellectuals, religious groups, and occasionally the constitutional government...

http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Dale-Scott/e/B001IGJXJO

"Hot Coffee"
Friday, July 08, 2011

We all think we know the story of the woman who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself and then sued the fast food chain for millions. But in the new HBO documentary "Hot Coffee", filmmaker Susan Saladoff shows how the media got the story all wrong, and often demonizes civil litigation, using phrases like “frivolous lawsuit” and “jackpot justice.” ...

BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is a whole other media angle to this which involves Citizen United, that ground- breaking decision by the Supreme Court to accord corporations the rights of individuals to free speech and to enable them basically to funnel unlimited amounts of money into political advertising.

SUSAN SALADOFF: So in most of our states now we elect our judges. And that means they have to raise money. And what's happened over the last many years is that large corporate interests have decided well, we want to get rid of these judges who are on our State supreme courts who are more pro consumer.

And so, they started handpicking candidates and funneling money into their campaigns, again, through front groups like Citizens for a Stronger Ohio or Citizens for a Safer Community.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which most people don't know is the largest lobbying group for corporations in the world. They've been shown to be funneling money into these political campaigns.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And this was long before Citizens United. In fact, you have John Grisham talking about his book, The Appeal:

JOHN GRISHAM: The appeal was a book I published. It was always a novel. It’s completely fiction and it’s completely true. It's the story of the purchasing of a Supreme Court seat in Mississippi.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So tell us about the fate of Mississippi Judge Oliver Diaz.

SUSAN SALADOFF: Justice Diaz was on the Mississippi State Supreme Court, and he was targeted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because he wasn't pro-business enough.

MALE ANNOUNCER: Diaz even voted to overturn a cocaine conviction because evidence of a prior cocaine sale was allowed. Oliver Diaz, very bad judgment!

SUSAN SALADOFF: The statistics are that the candidate who has the most money for political ads will win about 90% percent of the time. He actually wound up winning the race, despite all of the money that was put into his opponent’s race, and when he won he was then brought up on false criminal charges and was acquitted but was off the bench for three years while he was fighting those charges.

And then, of course, his reputation was tarnished and he was unable to win in the next election.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I think one of the most alarming images from your gripping documentary is simply the picture of a headline from a paper in Mississippi, which read, “Mississippi Victims Losing 100 Percent of Appeals. Court Ignoring Juries.” ...

http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/jul/08/hot-coffee/

"We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign be Dictated by Fact-Checkers"
Friday, August 31, 2012

This week, a Romney pollster responded to several critical fact-checks of a campaign ad by saying "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." Brooke talks to former New Hampshire governor and former White House Chief of Staff John Sununu about the ad and the institution of fact-checking.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/aug/31/were-not-going-let-our-campaign-be-dictated-fact-checkers/

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu this week nominated Mitt Romney for President at the Republican National Convention. We couldn’t get anyone from the Romney campaign, so we called on him to give us his insight on what’s going on.

JOHN SUNUNU: With all due respect to the quote, “fact-checkers” that have called that ad wrong, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Let me explain to you why they’re wrong. That law was written specifically by a Republican Congress to make sure that a, a governor could not get waivers from the work component. President Clinton vetoed it twice over that provision that prohibited allowing anybody to grant waivers on the work component. The fact-checkers just don’t know what they’re talking about...

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is the problem when everyone has the right to their own facts.

JOHN SUNUNU: Ma’am, you weren’t involved – you weren’t involved in writing the law. Rick Santorum was. You weren’t involved in writing the law. Speaker Gingrich was. You weren’t involved in fighting to make sure that a provision for waivers was not in the law. These people were, and they have attested to the fact, and the weasel wording that comes out of the President of the United States and NPR is not gonna change those facts. I’ve enjoyed being on the air. I’ve got to go to my next call.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why didn’t the ad refer to waivers, rather than no longer having to work? Why not say what it is the President actually did?

JOHN SUNUNU: If you say that the ad is perfectly right with adding waivers, then you’re acknowledging the fact that the President broke the law by granting waivers.

[OVERTALK]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I think the ad is wrong.

JOHN SUNUNU: As, as usual, you, part of the liberal press that will cover this President’s butt across the board, you’re going to lose in November. But I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Thank you...

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/aug/31/were-not-going-let-our-campaign-be-dictated-fact-checkers/transcript/

HBO documentary called 'Sing Your Song' about the life of Harry Belafonte.

It covers his life especially during the early Civil Rights movement.

I never knew this, but he goes onto saying in the documtary that in 1960, MLK was arrested in Atlanta for a traffic stop but they trumped up charges and were going to sentence him to work on the chain gang.

Belafonte and others in the movement went to the 2 running Presidential candidates and Nixon ignored them, while the Kennedys did something. JFK made RFK go down to Atlanta and got MLK out of jail.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101750488

Four-time Academy Award ® Winner Charles Guggenheim
ROBERT KENNEDY REMEMBERED
TRT 29 minutes Black & White

Shown on all television networks simultaneously and at the Democratic National Convention in August of 1968, this film biography evokes the spirit, quality and commitment Robert Kennedy brought to his life and work.

"Abraham, Martin and John" is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and first recorded by Dion. It is a tribute to the memory of four assassinated Americans, all icons of social change, namely Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. It was written in response to the assassinations of King and the younger Kennedy in April and June 1968.

Each of the first three verses features one of the men named in the song's title, for example:

Has anybody here, seen my old friend Abraham -
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, they die young
But I just looked around and he's gone.

After a bridge, the fourth and final verse mentions Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, and ends with a description of him walking over a hill with the other three men...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham,_Martin_and_John

427: Original Recipe | This American Life

Jake Halpern tells this story about document expert John Reznikoff, who came into possession of some materials which—if authentic—would change history. Then things got complicated. Jake is the author of several books, including World's End. (32 minutes)

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/427/original-recipe?act=2

I disagree with the statement that JFK "only turned toward withdrawal in 1963 after almost two years of escalation." Its not at all clear when "the turning point"--if there was such an event--actually was reached, but JFK certainly decided "against escalation" much earlier--indeed, some two years prior to his death.

An important time-marker for JFK--or at least the point when it seems clear what his future intentions were--was December 1961. At that point, JFK turned down the JCS in their request for combat troops for Vietnam.

This particular time marker--call it a "turning point" if you will--was a central focus for John Newman's Ph.D thesis, which was turned into the book, over the summer of 1991, and published that fall by Warner.

Relying here on recollection (so the quote which follows is approximate), a key document indicating JFK's future intentions was dated November 22, 1961 and pertained to a critical JFK meeting with the JCS. At that meeting, which marked JFK's rejection of requested combat troops, the document records JFK as saying something like, "How can you expect me to send troops 10,000 miles and halfway around the world, when I cannot invade Cuba, which is only 90 miles away?"

To which General Lemnitzer (of Northwoods fame) replied: "We should invade Cuba, too."

It was after this Nov/Dec 1961 period that it became clear that JFK was not going to escalate any further. Certainly, American combat troops were NOT going to be sent there. That whole idea was anathema to JFK, and he made that very clear to his inner circle. Going back to George Ball's 1968 memoir, "Discipline Of Power," one will find very strong and unequivocal statement to the effect that JFK never intended to send American combat troops to Vietnam, or follow the course that LBJ subsequently did.

Of course, around 1965--with the publication of "To Move A Nation," by Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Roger Hillsman--the same point was made, if not in his book, certainly on his L.A. Book tour.

Besides Ball, there is Michael Forrestal, who said that JFK told him--and I believe this was within a week of his death, and just prior to his going to Vietnam on a fact finding mission on the weekend of the assassination--that he (JFK) was involved in an extensive policy review, which also addressed the question of "whether we should even be there in the first place." (Quote from memory, from NBC "White Paper," circa 1971)

There is much more that can be said on this whole question of whether there was--as I and other JFK researchers called it-- a Post Assassination Foreign Policy Switch (PAFPS). While no foreign policy expert, I am quite familiar with the underlying documentation, because (a) I was tracking this situation carefully, from back in 1965; (B) I was an early friend of John Newman, a good 6 years before be became involved in the JFK research movement; and © I was very much involved with the ARRB, and Doug Horne, at the time key documents were being unearthed.

Here are some further comments, and anecdotal evidence, thrown together just for this email.

To begin with---and by that, I mean going back to the period 1965-1968--I, like many others who believed there was a conspiracy in Dallas, initially had some difficulty discerning the political motive. After all, didn't LBJ keep most of JFK's advisers? Didn't LBJ get the civil rights legislation passed? Etc. Over the years, as research on the Dealey Plaza aspects intensified, the foreign policy puzzle remained.

Then came the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's top-secret study of the growth of United States military involvement in Vietnam, leaked to the New York Times, which commenced publication on June 13, 1971. Suddenly, every morning's New York Times carried another collection of previously top secret document which exposed the debate that had been going on in the government, prior to the escalation, and many details pertaining to the secret planning.

Next came Peter Dale Scott's high original 1972 work, piecing together the puzzle of NSAM 263/273, and significant new light was shed. Of course, the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and particularly allusions to JFK's withdrawal plan --and then the actual documents in the Gravel edition--provided much new data. Yes, indeed, it seemed there had been a post-assassination foreign policy switch. But you didn't have to be a Talmudic scholar to understand. I remember going to the UCLA dorm to have dinner, and watching Walter Cronkite, once a week, announce American casualties, which were topping 250 per week, back in 1967/68.

Going to microfilmed records of newspaper, someone discovered how, in early October 1963, the L.A. Times ran a front page banner headline after the October meeting when JFK made the decision. In big bold letters across page one: JFK: Out of Viet by '65 (again, from memory).

The contrast between "then and now" was striking.

Jumping forward now a full decade (or more) to the truly groundbreaking research of John Newman:

I worked closely with John Newman, during the period he was doing his Ph.D thesis--back in the late 80s. John had taught a course on Best Evidence, when stationed in Hawaii, looked me up in 1985, and we spoke often, and visited. This was a good five years prior to his becoming known to those in "the movement." I am proud to count myself as someone who persuaded John to do his PhD on the issue of whether there had been a policy change after Dallas.

After John embarked on his project, we spoke frequently, sometime immediately after he had critical interviews. Often, I functioned as a sounding board, and consequently suggested we should record the conversations (which we did). John didn't just do a fine thesis--we have what amounts to an oral history of his process. John had a whole range of conversations, with a variety of people, including a significant one--with McNamara. At some point, he obtained the actual official history of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and that provided a record of McNamara, himself, saying that it was not JFK's intention to send in combat troops.

During this same period, John and I gave two "joint lectures" on the subject of Dallas and Vietnam (one in Maryland, which was mostly attended by various USG personnel, including those at NSA). When it was clear he was to be posted to China, around 1989, I was frankly concerned that something might happen and we would lose this fabulous resource. So I arranged for a professional film crew to record the state of his Vietnam research--this, during a time when he was stationed at Ford Ord.

One of the central themes that emerges from John's research is the extent to which JFK had a political problem that complicated any decision he might make. Specifically, it came down to this: whereas LBJ's problem was to disguise an escalation, JFK's was to disguise a withdrawal.

Those are two diametrically opposite scenarios, and it seems clear that both Presidents acted deceptively, but there is a major difference in the reason for the deceptive behavior in each case. As far as JFK is concerned, recognizing this "political problem" is the key to understanding, and properly interpreting, what otherwise appears to be a confusing and somewhat bifurcated record.

JFK recognized that problem and acted accordingly. He had no intention of provoking a right-wing backlash and throwing away his chance of a second term. On the other hand, the evidence seems clear he intended to disengage, even if that meant a "Laos-like" solution. Some of the best writing about JFK's intentions--admittedly difficult to fathom at times--is to be found in Ellsberg's book "Secrets," where he describes a frank and detailed discussion with RFK about the matter, circa 1967 (again, from recollection)...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9632

"Abraham, Martin and John" is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and first recorded by Dion. It is a tribute to the memory of four assassinated Americans, all icons of social change, namely Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. It was written in response to the assassinations of King and the younger Kennedy in April and June 1968.

Each of the first three verses features one of the men named in the song's title, for example:

Has anybody here, seen my old friend Abraham -
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, they die young
But I just looked around and he's gone.

After a bridge, the fourth and final verse mentions Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, and ends with a description of him walking over a hill with the other three men...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham,_Martin_and_John