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National Public Radio's War on Free Speech - by Stephen Lendman
Washington and corporate giants control NPR. Nothing public about it.
Like other major media sources, NPR serves corporate and imperial interests. It's called public to conceal its real agenda. Critics ridicule it as National Pentagon or Petroleum Radio for good reason.
It features managed, not real, news and information. In its May/June 2004 issue of Extra!, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) headlined, "How Public Is Public Radio?" saying:
From inception, "it promised to be an alternative to commercial media that would 'promote personal growth rather than corporate gain (and) speak with many voices, many dialects.' "Not according to FAIR on "every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four of (NPR's) news shows: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday."
Each guest was classified "by occupation, gender, nationality, and partisan affiliation." Combined, 2,334 sources from 804 stories were quoted.
FAIR found NPR relies on familiar dominant sources. They include government officials, professional experts, and corporate representatives nearly two-thirds of the time.
Spokespeople for public interest groups accounted for 7% of total sources, and ordinary people appeared mostly in "one-sentence soundbites."
Male guests outnumbered women about 4 - 1, and those quoted most often came from elite categories like men.
Overall, NPR represents dominant state and monied interests like commercial media. Voices aired are conservative, pro-business, pro-war, pro-Israel, and anti-populist.
Despite its mandate, NPR never represented public interests fairly. Today, it's worse than ever, cheerleading America's wars and interests serving monied elitists. Its state and corporate funders get what they pay for. Otherwise perhaps they'd withdraw support enough to pull NPR off air.
Founded in 1970 as an independent, private, non-profit member organization of US public radio stations, it promised more than it delivered.
From inception, it abandoned the public trust. It relies heavily on substantial corporate and government funding. As a result, it's indistinguishable from other corporate media sources. It's corrupted like the rest. Consider its former head, Kevin Klose, its current president emeritus.
He was hands-on president from December 1998 - September 2008, then CEO from 1998 - January 2009. Earlier he was US propaganda director as head of Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television, and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. As a result, he fit seamlessly in his new role.
