NPR Check blogger mytwords has taken the time (8/4/09) to closely "consider [Scott] Horsely's verbal sleight of hand" on National Public Radio's August 4 Morning Edition:

He equates a completely false distortion--characterizing the tepid Democratic health reform proposals as "government-run healthcare" in opposition to "the free market"--with a completely fact-based statement--"we have a system today that works well for the insurance industry but it doesn't work well for you [the public]." Yes, the system works well (insurance profits more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2007) but not for the public, which pays more for less and suffers about 22,000 deaths a year from the insurance industry's commitment to not covering people. How could anyone cast them as the villain?

Having set up this falsehood, Horsely turns to health insurance industry vampire representative, Karen Ignani (no stranger at at NPR--see March 7, 2009 and June 13, 2009), so she can claim how wrong Obama's statement is because the mob her industry supports "reforms."

But that's not all--"Horsely ends this report with a bit of moralizing against the Democrats, noting that 'Brookings scholar [Stephen] Hess thinks it's unfortunate the Democrats have chosen to demonize health insurance companies.'" Leading mytwords to ponder: "Demonizing the health insurance companies, now why would anyone do that?"

Critiquing some more of National Public Radio's healthcare reportage, blogger Mytwords (NPR Check, 6/29/09) highlights Julie Rovner of Morning Edition "reporting this morning for the private health insurance lobby": "The healthcare cost debate pretty much comes down to this: 'You can't cut costs without hurting someone.'"

Rovner then backs up her "analysis" with "a little Meet the Press sound-bite from Fred Thompson"--"The only way to really save cost is to have rationing or it can be done by a cram-down by the government and take it out of the hides of doctors, hospitals":

Rovner's report mainly serves to highlight and promote the research of Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute. The big deal is that Fisher has found that some areas in the U.S. with lower cost prices for healthcare have better outcomes. Funny thing is that on June 11, 2009, NPR featured this exact research. An interesting thing not mentioned on NPR is the chief "partners" of the Dartmouth Institute. On the list are

• Wellpoint Foundation
• Aetna Foundation
• United Health Foundation

I do smell a conflict of interest, eh?

Rovner fills out the report by going to a solid centrist--Len Nichols (no single-payer, he)--of the New America Foundation (as far left as NPR dare venture).

Don't worry, though--"the wrap-up is provided by Joe Antos of the far-right American Enterprise Institute, who concludes that real change to healthcare is a cultural/behavioral issue more than a cost issue." Read the new issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Media Quarantine of Single-Payer Continues: Fifteen Years Later, Public Health Insurance Still Taboo" (6/09) by Julie Hollar and Isabel Macdonald.

Blogging on how May 4 and 5 broadcasts "feature NPR continuing its function of justifying and sanitizing the U.S. torture regime," dedicated public radio critic Mytwords (NPR Check, 5/5/09) plumbs the depths of NPR's aversion to "human rights or international law advocates or experts"--instead preferring "members or former members of various U.S. government agencies," even "the very ones implicated in formulating and carrying out torture":

For a long time NPR news has minimized (June 2006), dismissed (February 2007), ignored (April 2007), covered over (October 2007) and collaborated with (December 2007) the use of torture by agencies and agents of the U.S. government. You can search NPR news in vain for any original investigative work on exposing torture or on any serious elucidation of the laws and conventions that prohibit the U.S. from committing torture and require prosecution for violators.

See the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "Tortured Justifications for Bad Journalism" (12/07) by Jim Naureckas & Candice O'Grady.

Slate's Jack Shafer (5/1/09) has had his fill of NPR senior news analyst Cokie Roberts' "four minutes of on-air blather about politics, the economy and world events with whichever unlucky Morning Edition host has drawn the short straw" on Mondays. Shafer writes of how, "drained of controversy and conflict, the Cokie minutes provide perfect editorial balance if your idea of balance is zero":

I can think of no comparably sized media space that's as void of original insight and information as Roberts'. Her segments, though billed as "analysis" by NPR, do little but speed-graze the headlines and add a few grace notes. If you're vaguely conversant with current events, you're already cruising at Roberts' velocity. Roberts doesn't just voice the conventional wisdom; she is the conventional wisdom.

Initially wanting to "blame NPR for the segment's wretchedness or Morning Edition hosts Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep for pitching her nothing but giant, slo-mo softballs," Shafer then reconsiders: "No, softball isn't the right sports analogy, if only because Roberts never puts wood on the questions. The segment really unfolds like a brief set of air tennis, with Roberts and a host play-acting a vigorous volley"--which might in some sense be lucky for listeners, considering what comes out when Roberts actually tries to say something....

Critiquing the April 24 edition of NPR's "increasingly vacuous and self-indulgent" Planet Money show, blogger Brian (NPR Check, 4/24/09) notices that the "five long minutes" spent discussing "how long it would take to count to 165 million (the AIG executive bonuses), 45 billion (Bank of America's bailout so far), and 1.2 trillion (total estimated federal bailouts of banks so far)," came right after "a long week of severely deficient coverage of actual financial news" like "40 seconds Morning Edition spent pararaphrasing a New York Times article on the looming Chrysler bankruptcy":

The sad thing is that it actually might have been helpful to provide some real context for the scale of the federal bailouts. However, rather than counting to 1.2 trillion, it would be much more useful to place the bailout figures into contexts that matter, such as comparing the AIG bonuses to the median U.S. household income ($50.2 K in 2007); comparing the $45 B to BOA's ownership equity ($146 B); or comparing the $1.2 T in bailout funds to the U.S. GDP ($14.3 T) or the annual U.S. federal spending (approximately $3 T).

Admitting that these examples are "still not exciting, to be sure," Mytwords considers them "perhaps a little more meaningful than counting for 39,000 years."