Whole Foods and NPR--together again, for the first time anywhere!

I hope all of you have heard that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has written a Wall Street Journal op-ed opposing health care reform. I suspect at least some of you have joined in on the Whole Foods boycott, as I have. But to the clowns at NPR, the boycott must be the actions of a fringe group of leftist nutballs, apparently, because in their online article on the boycott and furor, they achieve the modern equivalent of "balanced reporting". They quote one of the "some" boycotting Whole Foods, who cogently and coherently states that: "he won't be shopping at the store 'as long as this person is in charge at Whole Foods and he maintains his opposition to appropriate health care payment. If this is their corporate philosophy, I cannot support that . . ." Then the writer quotes an opponent: "I wish the whole country would oppose it...And I think that you find now, at least what we hear, maybe not on NPR or Fox News, you hear that the majority of people are against it, but you have Obama sitting there trying to achieve something that people don't want."
Neatly tied up in a bow, isn't it? One for, one against. Except, of course, the first is clearly and simply one man's rationale for his actions, while the other is a diatribe filled with errors. Just like they do at all the right wing rags, NPR has provided "balance" without doing anything to provide the actual facts involved in the right wingers' claims, which are all inaccurate.
Well done once again, NPR!

NPR: Not what you think it is

For decades, NPR has represented a supposedly liberal stance in their news reportage, and I have many liberal/progressive friends that listen to, and trust, it as the best source for news on the dial. Any look at their guest lists, however, let alone what those people are saying, will serve as a wake-up call belying that tradition and that reputation. Yesterday we heard yet more evidence of their capitulation to the forces of authoritarian right wing nuttery, during All Things Considered.
Host Alix Spiegel called upon Bryce Lefever to explain why he says the US torture of detainees is a good thing, and Lefever went even further--he said that the military psychologists employed to torture were patriots deserving praise. "I think the media ought to give us a big ol' thank you for our efforts on behalf of America," Lefever says. "There should be some recognition of the effort — the really extreme effort — that we've gone through to help."
That there are some freaks out there that believe this is not news, really. Republicans have been lauding torture in public for years now, from Smirky on down to Joe the Plumber. So why exactly would NPR sanction an interview like this one, given their reputation? The only answer I can come up with is that they are dropping even the pretense of being an objective news organization (which is itself a liberal construct) in favor of propagating right wing views at public expense. At no point during the interview, apparently, did Spiegel challenge or question Lefever's points, or qualifications, or even engage in any kind of dialogue whatsoever. This kind of stenography is the hallmark of right wing media as envisioned by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes when they launched Fox News Channel, initiating the final assault on objective news reportage.
NPR still contains wonderful niche programming--I love "Car Talk" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"--and I'm willing to entertain the idea that there are some personalities on NPR that haven't sold out completely, but I'm afraid anyone listening to NPR for "the news" is, and has been for awhile now, deceived into thinking that they are well-informed from a centrist, much less a liberal, perspective. That the people hosting and guesting on most of the news shows seem sane and measured in tone merely reinforces what nickname watchful leftists and progressives use for it: Nice Polite Republicans.