
NPR’s Ombudsperson Alicia Shepard had this to say about the NPR’s inability to call torture "torture" when it happens in the front parlor instead of behind the wood shed:
there are two sides to the issue. And I’m not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?
Which caused Glenn Greenwald to say this when he learned that Ms. Shepard also teaches "media ethics" at the nation’s premier Jesuit university, Georgetown:
I was momentarily amazed to learn that she actually teaches "Media Ethics" to graduate students at Georgetown University (my amazement quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith — Doug Feith — to teach students "national security policy" and that Berkeley Law School has John Yoo "teaching law" to its students; next semester at Georgetown: Karl Rove teaches Civility in a Post-Partisan Age, Bill Kristol lectures on Accountability in Punditry, while David Gregory examines The Role of Intellect in Adversarial Questioning).
When interviewed by an NPR affiliate after having refused to be interviewed by Glenn for Salon, Ms. Shepard revealed the cringing Beltway attitude about the threat blogs pose for establishment journalism that forced Mr. Froomkin to spend more time with his family:
I think, um, we’re now at a stage where the debate is between dialogue and diatribe, and I wish there was more dialogue. I think there’s more diatribe.
It’s dialogue when the Post and NPR say it. It’s diatribe when someone disagrees with their spin or covers an issue they refuse to acknowledge. Read Glenn’s entire piece. Per Glenn, Ms. Shepard will be on Talk of the Nation today at 2.00 pm EDST, that’s fifteen minutes from now.





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shepard isn’t on yet, i think that will be a little bit later in today’s program.
whyy live streaming:
http://whyy.org/91FM/live.html
npr link for comments on this program:
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..=106215824
Thanks for the update. Glenn’s post did say the program started at 2.00 pm DC time, but not when she would be on the program.
Listeners should feel free to call in and ask her pertinent questions a journalist should be able to answer.
has just started… shepard repeated previous story and first caller question is now on.
Charles Kaiser’s RIP for the Washington Post (h/t Glenzilla):
NPR=nice, polite republicans.
Spot on, there. Scott Simon had a friendly chat with Joe Scarboro last week that made me want to puke. Plus, Juan “journalism as Stockholm Syndrome” Williams is a regular when Dan Shor is away.
NPR went MSM years ago. It isn’t about news. It’s about comfort. Shepard was hired precisely because she would be toothless and docile in her job. It is not a bug. It’s a feature.
No there is not torture as defined by law happened
Do you feel that way about child molesters too? Or is everything ok if your GOP? Please define your standards defend your logic.
I think that’s right. Along with PBS, NPR succumbed to Gingrich and his successor’s repeated assaults on public broadcasting, which eviscerated the independence of its leadership as well as the constancy of its budget. We’re living with the bureaucratic and news gathering consequences of that neocon success.
Obama would be fulfilling his job as a public employee – not supreme commander – if he made public broadcasting more independent and appointed as its next leaders people devoted to news, not currying favor with the current administration.
Sadly, it’s obvious that whatever Obama’s inclinations, the staff that might recommend such moves wouldn’t consider that politically “smart”. That it would be a public good seems as irrelevant to them as it was to Bush’s courtiers.