LUV News on NPR Hypocrisy

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL,
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Here’s another story the mainstream media is ignoring. And it happens, tangentially, to be about me. As many of you know, I’m a freelancer in public radio. Because of my involvement with the Occupy movement last year, I was fired from one gig (Soundprint) and blacklisted by NPR. NPR also tried to strong-arm another of my employers to get rid of me. They didn’t succeed. I managed to hang on to two radio jobs. Even though I wasn’t an NPR employee, received no money from NPR, and in any case didn’t even cover politics, NPR issued a press release about my political activities and made a federal case out of it, saying, “we, of course, take this issue very seriously.” They blew the story up all out of proportion, to the point that it was even be covered by foreign news outlets.

Well, now comes word that Adam Davidson, who is an NPR employee, the host of “Planet Money,” has apparently been taking payola from the corporations he covers. This blatant conflict of interest is being ignored by NPR and by the media. So far, it’s been reported in only two places that could be considered mainstream: the New York Observer and Huffington Post. Three other, decidedly non-mainstream outlets have written about it: Firedoglake, Alternet, and Democratic Underground. That’s it.

Where are the howls of outrage? Where are all the so-called journalists who lectured me about “ethics,” such as David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun? Where is NPR’s public statement about how they take this issue “very seriously”?

We all know. It’s okay if you toe the corporate line, not okay if you oppose it.

Hypocrisy on top of hypocrisy.