May 02 2013
Alternet: How NPR Has Become Key Player in the Bankers’ Propaganda War on What’s Left of Our Social Contract
Just over a week ago, my Twitter feed started getting bombarded with links to the latest — and quite possibly the scummiest — Planet Money/This American Life propaganda piece on NPR for the financial industry, disguised as highbrow progressive journalism.
The piece was called “Unfit For Work: The Startling Rise of Disability in America” and it essentially argued — using wildly flawed research and straight-up lies — that our Social Security program is burdened by a glut of freeloader disability queens, faking their disabilities in order to live high on the Social Security disability insurance hog.
Why would NPR run such a flawed, biased story? The answer takes us right to the heart of Wall Street’s plans to privatize government benefits, which Wall Street bond holders want to slash for their own profits. This battle pits powerful Wall Street interests and their media and political lackeys on the one side, versus an overwhelming majority of Americans — Republicans and Democrats both — on the other. In the middle stands a radio piece from a trusted source, NPR/This American Life/Planet Money, telling its progressive, educated audience that there is in fact a problem with Social Security, and that problem is a bunch of human parasites faking disability to suckle from the Social Security teat.
It’s the sort of rancid old 1930s anti-New Deal propaganda that the American Liberty League or NAM or the Chamber of Commerce used to puke out on a regular basis. But this is 2013, meaning this time around, the battleground is on the putative left, pitting the Democratic Party leaders including Obama against the people who voted for him, and who have nowhere else to turn. On the Democratic Party’s side: their funders on Wall Street, and their neoliberal propagandists in pundit-land and in universities. The key isn’t winning over right-wing conservatives, but rather affluent progressives — i.e., Planet Money’s and NPR’s audience. If they can flip that demographic, Social Security is privatized toast.
The good thing is that the piece was such obvious crap, so intellectually flawed and propaganda-soaked, that Ira Glass and the This American Life/Planet Money/NPR people were forced to respond to their critics. The downside is that the critics were far too respectful, basing their criticism on factual flaws rather than on the corruption that made the flawed reporting not just possible, but inevitable.
Here’s a U Illinois professor respectfully critiquing the piece on the Huffington Post:
Ms. Joffe-Walt, who is neither an economist nor a specialist on disability, is making a claim that in an economics class would be red penciled with the corrective…
The logical error in her reporting comes from simply assuming that the rising number of people on disability is the result of the collusion between poor unemployed people and cash-strapped states. But the reality may be closer to the fact that the Baby Boomer generation, as it ages, becomes more and more subject to impairments that lead to disabilities. Since a third of people with disabilities are those with mental disorders, it is also no surprise that the dramatic rise in diagnoses of depression, OCD, and autism in the same period have had an impact on these statistics.
In These Times and the great Dean Baker also went after the Planet Money piece with padded kid gloves; perhaps they were thrown off by the fatal assumption that Planet Money and NPR are on the same progressive team as they.
Click here for the full story.
One Response to “Alternet: How NPR Has Become Key Player in the Bankers’ Propaganda War on What’s Left of Our Social Contract”
I just posted an article to my blog telling the story of one woman’s struggle to survive while waiting for the nearly-immobile Social Security Disability system to rule on her case.
Here’s the intro; please read the rest here:
http://olivialarosa.com/2013/04/how-to-fix-social-security-disability/
Today, I discovered a report requested by Congress regarding “reforming” the Social Security Disability Program. I read enough of the report to know that the people who prepared it had never actually needed help to survive despite their disabilities. Rather, the report focused on ways to limit the number of citizens who were eligible.
A more laudable goal might be to support a program for disabled people that actually works.
I have worked with, lived with, and advocated for people living with disabilities for fourteen years. Here is a letter from one of them. I sent it on to the named research associate of the Congressional report.
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If I had the support of a functioning Federal Disability Program, I might have been employed three years ago. Instead, I am facing homelessness, starvation, and absolute poverty within the month. Am I a victim of disability fraud?
I am an extremely competent, educated, and experienced member of American society. I am also disabled. Thirty-two years ago, I was a passenger in a Honda Prelude that was hit head on at 60 MPH by a Chevy Van. I suffered major injuries. Both legs were seriously damaged and could never be restored to full functionality despite six surgeries and years of physical therapy.
Now, those legs that I have worked so hard to protect no longer serve me as well as they used to. I cannot even run normal errands any more. The next day, I spend in a recliner or in bed, in order to limit the pain medications I take. I always err on the side of caution regarding any medication dosage.
I cannot walk on grass or gravel. Should I disregard this rule, I will suffer serious leg pain for six weeks. I purchased a mobility scooter with my own money at the end of January. It has given me enough relief that I now feel able to seek work.