Not if you listened on Thursday to NPR's All Things Considered's disgusting and disrespectful "remembrance" of Howard Zinn, who had died the day before.

Fairness & Accuracy in Media & Reporting (FAIR) has issued an important Action Alert asking people to contact the NPR ombud to ask why "All Things Considered" brought on David Horowitz to trash Howard Zinn saying, "There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect." ... Details for how to contact NPR are here.

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NRC/international

A 25-year-old film student from Amsterdam has taken on Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly over his misrepresentation of the Dutch capital.

It is a much-belated response, but 25-year-old Robert Nieuwenhuijs' July 27 video reply to Fox News' description of Amsterdam as a "cesspool of corruption" has nevertheless become a hit on the video-sharing website YouTube.

"Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption. Everything is out of control, it’s anarchy", a sidekick of Fox News conservative anchor Bill O'Reilly said during a broadcast in December 2008.

The O'Reilly Factor wanted to prove the point that the liberal drug policy of the Netherlands had backfired, since the Dutch government was planning to tighten the rules governing soft drugs use. "The Netherlands are becoming more conservative", said O'Reilly.

By showing smudgy images of Amsterdam's red light district over negative commentary - "It's a moral disaster" -, O'Reilly wanted to make his viewers believe that Amsterdam has turned into a modern equivelant of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Last Saturday I heard a disgusting segment of Marketplace Money (produced by American Public Media) on "Vermont's NPR Station": "Banking on the previously unbanked", praising the opening of commercial bank branches in the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Just the kind of feel-good/do-gooder programming that would appeal to Vermont Public Radio's successful, smug, elite listener and donor base: we know better, so let's help the poor people who don't!

But the copy was was straight from the marketing departments of commercial banks. No matter what their public relations people will tell you, Bank of America and Wells Fargo (featured in the segment) are not caring institutions; they want to make a profit and will do anything to attract customers, even by using deceptive marketing in lower class neighborhoods.

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Quote:
President Obama said (via NPR's ATC program):

"I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering in Iran's affairs. But we also must bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. We deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place. [...]

[On Neda Agha Soltani and the video showing her killing:] "It's heartbreaking. It's — it's heartbreaking. And I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about that."

And if the victims of violence had been Palestinians?

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Ken Picard, a reporter for Vermont's Seven Days weekly newspaper, has a post on that paper's staff blog, Blurt, about a "local" connection to a "global" war.

About six months ago, I got a phone call from a reporter who claimed he was calling from Colombia. I automatically assumed he meant the institution of higher learning in upper Manhattan.

"Columbia University?" I asked.

"No, Colombia the country," he replied, without a hint of condescension.

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North Country Public Radio and Vermont Public Radio, the two NPR affiliates in my area, offer some excellent local (and award-winning) programs, but I get extremely frazzled when I listen to - usually when on the road and rarely on my home radio - the NPR news and pundit programs. An interview with a smug, smart-ass Adam Davidson of NPR's Planet Money and "bailout" monitor and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren happened over a week ago. TalkLeft calls it "infuriating," which indeed it is. (The comments at TL are also worth a read.) Corrente has a transcript of the ugly parts. I'd never listened to Planet Money or this interview until today. Actually, I admire Warren and think she's a breath of fresh air and definitely spot on in the thankless work she's doing now.

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