[Marxism] Is Critical Journalism Incomprehensible to NPR?

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3304

Action  Alert

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 not much longer than the  edited version aired by 
NPR. The concluding line in the NPR clip continued only  half a sentence 
further 
in the full transcript (2/13/07): "...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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