Look, a Deficit!: How NPR Distracts You From Issues That Will Actually Affect Your Life

[KamaAina]

http://fair.org/home/look-a-deficit-how-npr-distracts-you-from-issues-that-will-actually-affect-your-life/

Billionaire Pete Peterson is spending lots of money to get people to worry about the debt and deficits, and National Public Radio is doing its part to try to promote Peterson’s cause with a Morning Edition piece that began by telling people that the next president “will have to wrestle with the federal debt.”

This is not true, but Peterson apparently hopes that he can distract the public from the factors that will affect their lives, most importantly the upward redistribution of income, and obsess on the country’s relatively small deficit. (A larger deficit right now would actually promote growth and employment.),...

The reason the Fed raises interest rates is to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. This will prevent the labor market from tightening, which will prevent workers from having enough bargaining power to get pay increases. In that case, the bulk of the gains from economic growth will continue to go to those at the top end of the income distribution.

The main reason that we saw strong wage growth at the end of the 1990s was that Alan Greenspan ignored the accepted wisdom in the economics profession, including among the liberal economists appointed to the Fed by President Clinton, and allowed the unemployment rate to drop well below 6.0 percent. At the time, almost all economists believed that if the unemployment rate fell much below 6.0 percent, inflation would spiral out of control. The economists were wrong; inflation was little changed even though the unemployment rate remained below 6.0 from the middle of 1995 until 2001, and averaged just 4.0 percent for all of 2000. (Economists, unlike custodians and dishwashers, suffer no consequence in their careers for messing up on the job.)

[Orrex]

1. NPR catapulting the propaganda? Say it ain't so!

[world wide wally]

2. NPR has been doing this for the past 10 years. You need to pay attention to what they say and not

just rely on their former reputation.
NPR is Fox jr.

[sendero]

3. NPR...

.... is the most pernicious form of propaganda, coming from an ostensibly unbiased source. Fox Jr. is a pretty good characterization, just look at their TPP reporting.

They truly suck.

[philly_bob]

4. When did NPR go wrong?

As I remember, it happened during the George Bush/Iraq war mania.

Other previously independent institutions that succumbed to Bushian group-think included the League of Women Voters and AARP.

[sendero]

5. That's when it became obvious...

... but I believe the downward slide began a few years before that.

[JHB]

6. FAIR (source of the OP article) has been documenting it since the 80s

[freshwest]

7. When public funding was cut and they had to beg corporations/foundations for funding.

The GOP wanted NPR, PBS and the public airways gone and engineered this. When I was growing up, my city had 3 PBS stations and never looked for funding, government paid it.

There were no marathons for fund raising, then with cuts, they had to beg. They had to hold fund raisers once a year, or every few months. It wasn't enough and they went begging, just as the GOP knew they would.

A look at the sponsors of NPR and PBS shows who has decided what you will see and hear, and NOT see and hear. They don't make it obvious, they make it look like it's altrusim. And some foundations are not charity, they are tax shelters.

'He who pays the piper calls the tune,' is said to emphasize that the person who is paying someone to do something can decide how it should be done.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/he-who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tune

Now, other than Romney who went for the old meme to get rid of 'Big Bird,' they don't mind the 'public' stations. They use them to work for the other side. NPR, etc., always had conservative voices like Buckley, McLaughlin, and others like that. They were not under-represented. They just decided to take things further to the right and completely end Democratic, liberal, etc. ideas. It's worked well for them and the Koch brother, who have funded a lot of things.

JHMH, YMMV.

[Chathamization]

9. Guh, PBS. I remember when they were airing Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered and the Wall St. Journal

Editorial Report (before the latter moved to Fox News).

[corkhead]

11. not too long before Bob Edwards left. it has been a downward slide since then

[philly_bob]

12. Bob Edwards left in 2004

Wikipedia covers his controversial removal from morning edition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Edwards

[Octafish]

8. NPR and Pete Peterson, the Presidents' Friend?

"...Opponents of Social Security have been working for many years to tell a much different story about Social Security in order to influence how the media and Washington decision makers view it. One example of this is Wall Street insider Pete Peterson who has dedicated $1 billion of his Wall Street fortune to the destruction of Social Security as we know it. Peterson is joined in his efforts by other wealthy special interests that have much to gain if Social Security is cut or eliminated..." -- Sen. Don Riegle and Lori Hansen Riegle

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/sen-don-riegle/post_1901_b_845106.html

That Pete Peterson.

[Chathamization]

10. A year and a half ago they were airing daily reports about how Obamacare was falling apart.

They've been terrible for years, but that was the final straw for me (particularly coming right after pushed the "both sides are responsible for the government shutdown" and "the IRS is targeting conservatives" stories).