Frontline/NPR give David Aaron Miller a forum to bash Obama [View all]

[arendt]

If I look at PBS or listen to NPR at all, the first thing I do is google the record of the commentators.

The first thing I saw about Frontline's Obama vs Netanyahu was some guy named David Aaron Miller from the Woodrow Wilson nternational Center for Scholars (WWC).

If you look up WWC, you read how it is a top-tier think tank, established by Congress.

But if you dig a little deeper, you find:

The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman and the Woodrow Wilson Center

wrote that last year in two exposés: “The Selling of the WWC” and “The WWC Desecrates its Namesake’s Legacy.” They revealed that the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center is violating its Congressional mandate and is up to its neck in tainted corporate cash.

A leading Congressman, a Wilson family descendant, citizens’ groups, and many others agreed. One prominent journalist called the WWC “a global joke.”

Several months ago, this Congressionally created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder. It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D–CA) to be its president, replacing Lee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.

Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond. Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years.

and

The WWC has been corrupted by its gluttony for corporate cash. Case in point: it acknowledged that money was the main reason it journeyed to Turkey in 2010 to honor a Turkish billionaire whose Dogus Holding conglomerate is a WWC donor, and to give a much-criticized award to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Cong. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, blasted Lee Hamilton for honoring Davutoglu. Ackerman cited Turkey’s military occupation of Cyprus, closure of the border with Armenia, and denial of the Armenian genocide. Honoring Davutoglu was “absolutely inconsistent with the mission of the WWC and the ideals that animated President Wilson’s administration and foreign policy.”

The Wilson Center, added Donald Wilson Bush, had engaged in “Turkish diplomatic appeasement.” It had “sacrificed its legitimacy as a ‘neutral forum for open, serious, and informed dialogue.’”

“Why,” asked Claudia Rosett, “should Congress keep fueling this morally blank, misleading and venal exercise [the WWC] with millions of American tax dollars?” Good question.

I heard Miller spouting the same "Obama is wrong" analysis on NPR this afternoon.

In both cases, I turned off the media after ten seconds. Now, maybe that was premature. Maybe the Frontline had some balance.

But, i am through with public broadcasting. It is completely colonized and controlled by corporate money. Koch on the board.

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I'm more than willing to listen to someone with an alternate point of view, or with evidence this wasn't just another exercise in Obama bashing by AIPAC.