NPR: NPR Ombudsman

April 28, 2008

NPR, NEW YORK TIMES AND SOURCING MILITARY EXPERTS

UPDATE:
Media correspondent David Folkenflik reports on the issue of Pentagon consultants and the New York Times in his story which aired May 1 on All Things Considered.

What are your thoughts?

--Chantal de la Rionda, Office of the Ombudsman

By Alicia C. Shepard
The New York Times revealed last week that the Pentagon has long covertly pressured and pampered more than a dozen retired military officers hired by broadcast networks as analysts to ensure positive spin on the Iraq war.

Among those cited was a military consultant for NPR.

After a two-year investigation, Times' reporter David Barstow described how the Pentagon cultivated military analysts for TV and radio by providing special access hoping in exchange for positive spin on the war, particularly after it started going badly. In some cases, analysts used that access to promote their post-military careers with defense contractors.

Deep into the 7,600-word piece on April 20 Barstow mentioned an NPR military analyst, Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr. (Ret.) in an email he sent to the Pentagon that could be construed as Scales trying to gain favor in order to be sent to Iraq for high-level briefings. Scales denies this.

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April 20, 2008

HATING THE MEDIA WHEN YOU SHOULDN'T

BLACKSBURG, Va. --- The sign in the downtown store that sells Virginia Tech paraphernalia was quite clear: "No Media, Please."

It's a fair response to the media onslaught that was expected for the one-year anniversary of the most deadly campus shooting in history. On April 16, 2007, a sociopath gunned down 32 students and then took his own life. Within hours, hordes of news media were sticking microphones, cameras and notebooks into the faces of shell-shocked students.

But that sign in the store is also not fair.

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April 11, 2008

SHOULD NPR LINK TO VIOLENT ANTI-MUSLIM VIDEO?

Without YouTube or LiveLeak, the world might only hear or read about the disturbing new anti-Muslim, Dutch video, "Fitna."

Now just about anyone can see the 17-minute movie that some consider more inflammatory in Muslim-majority countries than the Danish cartoons that sparked riots in 2006.

In the pre-Internet world, the so-called mainstream media played the role of gatekeeper: determining with authority what the public did and did not need to know. Much more editorial censorship existed. But now the public can get any information it wants through the Web -- with or without the news media's guidance. Everything -- in good taste or bad -- gets out in cyberspace.

One issue that arises for NPR is whether the network should provide direct links to potentially offensive material it reports on.

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April 2, 2008

IS OBAMA'S PASTOR ANTI-GAY?

Jason Carlson was driving home listening to All Things Considered (ATC) on March 24 when he heard a gay man say he would not vote for Sen. Barack Obama because the senator's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was anti-gay.

That didn't gibe with what Carlson, an Evanston, Ill. high school science teacher, knew about Wright. Later, Carlson did a quick Internet search using "Wright" and "anti-gay," and discovered that what he had heard on NPR was, in fact, wrong. In a piece edited before broadcast, ATC had put something on air without checking to make sure it was correct.

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