What do NBC News producers do after they retire? Sandy Goodman has become a writer for The Huffington Post, where he has demonstrated how liberal they have been for years at NBC. His latest post denounces NPR in an "open letter" for taking 11 days to notice a leftist “Occupy Wall Street” protest on the air.
Goodman declared: “I've hated Ralph Nader ever since he was personally responsible for George W. Bush's election in 2000, but he and others sure are right when criticizing NPR for not covering the left and these protests (his phone call no doubt helped lead to NPR's belated coverage). If the Tea Party farts, that's news. But God forbid you should cover anything too far left of center.”
NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos aroused Goodman’s ire when he wrote on Monday about leftist complaints that NPR was ignoring these leftist protests. The ombudsman dutifully quoted Dick Meyer, the network’s executive editor: "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective."
Goodman was correct to be angry that NPR wanted some blood in the streets or broken windows before there was “news.” But neither NPR nor Goodman seems aware that tens of thousands of abortion foes march on Capitol Hill each January in a “March for Life,” which NPR routinely ignores. The NPR ombudsman ruled "the complaints have validity," but did not reflect on the notion of pro-Obama media bias, that perhaps protests are less newsworthy when they have the potential to embarrass a Democratic president.
He began: "What a disgraceful decision to have avoided coverage for so long, and having your ombudsman try to mitigate that dopiness by noting that you covered the demonstrations via several AP print stories and blogs on your website. I thought you were in the radio business. I must have been mistaken."
Goodman approvingly quotes Glenn Greenwald suggesting the media are all pansies for corporate power. He concluded "The long-delayed protest coverage adds one more black mark to NPR's record, although I remain more than grateful to it as the only serious, authoritative, widely disseminated, long-form source of radio news in this benighted country."
