NPR and Walmart go hand in hand…

[KansDem]

I was home sick on Monday and heard this on NPR:

First was a plug for WalMart as a corporate underwriter. No problem; I had heard that Walmart was underwriting some of NPR’s programs. It was the usual blurb that NPR allows its corporate sponsors.

Then in the following half-hour, NPR runs a story about a small California town and its problems with drinking water:

Calif. Town Fights for Clean Tap Water
January 24, 2005 • Alpaugh, a small rural community in California's Central Valley, went without clean running water for over two years. A run-down water system left hundreds of residents with poisoned and unusable water.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4463526

Naturally this story drew sympathy from listeners: the small town had a poisoned water supply with large amounts of arsenic in the water. But, midway through the report (about 2'35"), the reporter stated that two corporations had stepped forth had provided donations to improve the water system, and GUESS WHAT? That’s right, folks: one of the corporations was…tah-dah…WALMART! (the other was BP Petroleum)

It was sooooo obvious. Now, I sympathize with this small California town and applaud any effort to fix its problems, but I have to wonder if Walmart had not been an underwriter, would this story have ever been reported? This raises some questions: just how did the story originate? Who suggested such a story, and was the story suggested as part of WalMart's P.R. blitz?

And…no mention by NPR that George W. Bush allowed the increase of arsenic in drinking water to double. I mean, a complete story would have included this information, and I have no doubt that, had Clinton done this, it would have definitely been part of the story:

The former arsenic drinking water standard of 50 ppb was set in 1975 based upon a Public Health Service standard originally established in 1942. As part of the 1996 revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act, the USEPA was required to re-evaluate the former arsenic drinking water standard. Although the USEPA indicated that a drinking water standard of 3 ppb would be technologically feasible, they decided on May 24, 2000 to adopt a standard of 5 ppb rather than 3 ppb due to cost concerns associated with treatment. Shortly after George W. Bush entered the White House, the USEPA proposed, on January 17, 2001, to revise the arsenic drinking water standard to 10 ppb. The increase in the proposed standard was driven primarily by concerns from western states where the highest concentrations of arsenic-impacted ground water are present. Water suppliers in these states would have had to provide considerable funding to upgrade community drinking water plants.
http://www.geoinsightinc.com/newsletter_fall2002_UpsAndDowns.htm

Hmmmm, makes one wonder…

Well...not really!

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. Well gee... let's ask Maggie Gallagher or Armstrong Williams

I mean it's a free press... right?

[Dr.Phool]

3. No

It obviously costs money.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

4. Touche! eom

[AP]

2. Notice how the argument isn't that the gov't should step in and,

using progressively accumulated tax funds (from corporate as well as individual income) provide clean drinking water for the citizesn.

The argument is that the water was dirty and corporations fixed the problem.

This is sort of like the Tsunami coverage. Almost imediately, the Tsunami coverage was dominated by naming (and puttin on the screens the logos of) the corporations that were helping the relief effort.

Very quickly the story became one of how wonderful corporations are.

I think that's more evidence of the sort of cheerleading for neoliberalism that the media has really turned itself over to.

[GoSolar]

5. NPR has not been worth listening to

for a very long time...