Media - Corporate

Yesterday, NPR's PR flack was haranguing me on the phone about how NPR had nothing to do with getting Lisa Simeone fired from an independent program called Soundprint.  This was despite NPR having gone public with its concerns over Simeone's "unethical" participation in democracy, and Soundprint's referencing of NPR's "ethics" rules in firing Simeone.  It was also despite NPR's clear intention to get Simeone removed from our airwaves.

National Public Radio on Wednesday discovered that a woman named Lisa Simeone who produced a show about opera called "World of Opera" had been participating in a nonviolent occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., organized by October2011.org.  That same day, NPR persuaded a company for which Simeone worked to fire her, cutting her income in half and purging from the so-called public airwaves a voice that had never mentioned politics on NPR.

This frantic email was sent to all NPR staff:

From:NPR Communications
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:12 PM
Subject: From Dana Rehm: Communications Alert

To:       All Staff
Fr:        Dana Davis Rehm
Re:      Communications Alert

As workers, students, parents and progressives battle Scott Walker in Wisconsin, one of the most popular chants is "FOX News Lies."

We've been saying that at Democrats.com since Election Night 2000, when FOX's Jeb Ellis falsely declared his first cousin George Bush the "winner" in Florida by under 1,000 votes. FOX spent the next six weeks viciously smearing Al Gore for requesting a recount.

FOX News has lied every day since it was launched by rightwing Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch in 1996. And every day, Media Matters documents FOX's lies. Does FOX ever admit or correct its lies? No, they lie about Media Matters instead.

Now they're lying about Wisconsin protesters - calling them "violent" as they show clips of thuggist protesters with palm trees!

From Mike Stark

Hard to get a word in edgewise toward the end. ’tis too bad, because I really wanted to focus on comparing the legacy of conservative ideology vs. that of liberals. Rush Limbaugh cheered George Bush every chance he got. (Don’t be deceived by his claim that he was unhappy with the Bush admins’ spending – he never said so at the time.)

I will say this though: Barack Obama is very difficult for a liberal to defend. Every day seems to bring new disappointment.

The reason people in Tunisia, Egypt, and other parts of the world have been influenced to some extent by the work of Wikileaks is that they have read or heard about the material that Wikileaks has helped to make public. The CBS program "60 Minutes" has just published video of an interview with Wikileaks' Julian Assange -- with the video focused, of course, on Assange himself, with almost no substantive content related to the massive crimes and abuses that have made news around the globe.

The value of the "60 Minutes" video is not in its potential to inform anyone about Wikileaks. We can't, after all, judge the utility of informing Americans about their nation's illegal spying, bombing, war making, or coup facilitating until Americans are actually informed of it, which will require that we finally drop the BS "reporting" on Assange's childhood and haircuts.