WAMC Fresh Air:
Terry Gross did a creditable job interviewing Glenn Greenwald last week. Greenwald was on “Democracy Now” in the morning, and on Terry Gross’ show in the evening.
But the very next day, it was back to carrying water for the Pentagon. She interviewed Michael McFaul, former US American ambassador to Russia, and started by asking just how the Russian media is lying to its people about Ukraine.
McFaul responded by criticizing the Russian media for calling what happened in Ukraine the “overthrow” of a legitimately elected government. “Somebody had to lead the country after Yanukovych fled,” he states simply. What overthrow?
The same is true of charges of “Russia being surrounded by NATO.” Not true, opines McFaul, although the whole world knows that it is. Next softball question: “What it was like to be the U.S. ambassador in Russia when the new anti-gay laws were passed?”
—>NPR is as subservient to the US war machine as the rest to the country’s media. It is refreshing, if not startling when Terry Gross actually interviews a controversial figure like Greenwald. The next day, it is back to stale air as usual.
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Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"American democracy is no longer very democratic, according to a new university study (4/9/14; Perspectives on Politics, Fall/14). Instead, it's dominated by moneyed elites in a process where public opinion has little to no impact on policy. Released a month ago by Princeton's Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin I. Page, the study concludes: ‘Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.’
The political scientists looked at more than 1,700 policies over 20 years to find out how public opinion translates into policy, and concluded that where economic elite views diverged from those of the public, the public had ‘zero estimated impact upon policy change, while economic elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact.’
Bracing news? The study went viral in social media, but has hardly shown up in the US corporate press. A month after its release there have been no network news mentions, nor has it appeared in the most influential newspapers–the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times."
-->Readers of The NYT were spared this damaging study of how the elites completely dominate public policy. Of course, our newspaper of record is an important part of the elite propaganda machine.
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The NYT:
We did a story last week about a Harvard University scientific report warning that “destructive use of large-scale chemical agriculture must be halted in order to give the global bee population a fighting chance to regain their strength.”
We noted that The NYT did not cover the Harvard study, and suggested the omission proves that our newspaper of record protects global giants like Bayer and Monsanto.
But it just gets better. This week, The NYT published a story entitled: “Report Says Fewer Bees Perished Over the Winter, but the Reason Is a Mystery.” Towards the end of the article, The NYT printed a sentence about the Harvard study, followed by six paragraphs supporting the Big Ag point of view that the Harvard University report proved nothing.
—>All the news that Big Ag sees fit to print.
