Despicable. Considering how bad NPR has become, their usual smug and
smarmy self-congratulatory tone is unearned, and appalling.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: FAIR <fair@fair.org>
Date: Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:03 PM
Subject: Is Critical Journalism Incomprehensible to NPR?
To: matt.mattlove1@gmail.com
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3304
Action Alert
Is Critical Journalism Incomprehensible to NPR?
Correspondent mocked Iraqi colleague who asked about immunity
3/4/08
A recent NPR news segment (Weekend Edition, 2/23/08) that dismissed
an Iraqi journalist's question about the pressing issue of U.S.
immunity from prosecution suggests that critical journalism may be a
foreign language to the public radio broadcaster.
On its website, NPR summarized the segment as a look at U.S. Attorney
General Michael Mukasey's Baghdad news conference, which featured
questions from "enthusiastic and sometimes incomprehensible Iraqi
reporters."
The lead example NPR cited of such an "incomprehensible" question was
actually a perfectly sensible one--posed, through a translator, by a
journalist for Radio Sawa, a U.S. government-funded radio station in
Iraq:
"A question from Radio Sawa: Yesterday the Iraqi government announced
that the ability of prosecuting the Iraqi people, the ability of
prosecuting the Iraqis--the American soldiers by the Iraqi people. Do
you think your presence has to do with it now, and do you think…"
At this point NPR justice correspondent Ari Shapiro broke in, saying:
"I'll save you the whole thing. But suffice it to say, Attorney
General Mukasey had a difficult time understanding exactly what the
questioner was driving at. Mukasey diplomatically attributed the
confusion to the translator rather than the journalist."
While Shapiro's comment suggested that NPR was "saving" listeners
from the inconvenience of listening to the entirety of a long and
confusing question, the question was actually only half a sentence
longer than the edited version aired by NPR. (The question ended with,
"...do you think these resolutions have been conducted with
arrangements with the American administration?")
Nor should this question have been difficult to understand for anyone
following events in Iraq; the issue of whether Iraqis could prosecute
Americans over killings of Iraqis is currently a major political
controversy in that country. A few weeks before Mukasey's visit, the
New York Times (1/25/08) reported that the White House was pushing the
Iraqi government to "guarantee civilian contractors specific legal
protections from Iraqi law," an idea that "faces a potential buzz saw
of opposition from Iraq." The immunity enjoyed by private contractors
in Iraq has been debated throughout the past several years, and became
more conspicuous after Blackwater employees shot and killed 17 Iraqis
last September. Indeed, shortly after Mukasey's press conference, the
Associated Press reported (2/21/08) that Justice Department
investigators were in Iraq to research the shooting.
It is, to say the least, convenient that Mukasey would claim to not
understand what was being talked about. The NPR segment legitimized
Mukasey's suspect claim to not understand the question, with Shapiro
saying, "On the second go-round it became clear that a good
translation would not help this question." In reality, though, two
questions from journalists at the press conference followed up on the
question of immunity, and Mukasey did finally respond.
Generally, the NPR reporter treated the press conference as a
curiosity that showcased Iraqi reporters' incomprehensibility. Shapiro
offered a second question: "Another reporter at the press conference
got off to a good start--give us your impressions of the Iraqi justice
system--then started wandering afield." After playing a brief excerpt
of the wayward questioner, who was asking about slow prosecution of
Iraqi government corruption, Shapiro kidded: "The reporter surfaced
for air after for a minute, leaving Mukasey and Crocker wondering
where exactly he'd been in the meantime."
Actually, the question was not long at all, and the
questioner--identified in one transcript as being with the Japanese
News Agency--got a response from Mukasey, who said, "So far as
prosecution of members of the former government, my understanding is
that that is proceeding and that in due course.'
The report concluded with some perspective from NPR's former Baghdad
bureau chief:
"The most important thing that people don't realize is that Iraqis
just have not had a free press for the longest time. So this is such a
new thing for Iraqi journalists. The fact that not only can they come
out and ask all sorts of questions, but they can come ask Americans
questions."
In an email to FAIR's Isabel Macdonald, Shapiro defended the piece as
a fair characterization of the kinds of questions asked at the press
conference. If the network's justice correspondent cannot fathom
questions about the state of the Iraqi legal system posed by Iraqi
journalists, maybe it's not the peculiarity of Iraqi media that
listeners should be most concerned about.
ACTION: Ask the NPR Ombudsperson why NPR responded so dismissively and
condescendingly to the questions Iraqi journalists posed to U.S.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
CONTACT:
NPR Ombud Alicia Shepard
Email form on NPR's website:
http://www.npr.org/templates/contact/index.php?columnId=2781901
Thanks to Steve Burns from Wisconsin Peace and Justice for bringing
this item to FAIR's attention.
The US Embassy in Baghdad's transcript from the press conference is
available at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3305. The full NPR
transcript is available at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3306.
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