FLOTSAM & JETSAM: IF NPR IS SO OBJECTIVE WHY DOES IT KEEP CALLING POLITICAL CAUSES 'REFORMS?'

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

IF NPR IS SO OBJECTIVE WHY DOES IT KEEP CALLING POLITICAL CAUSES 'REFORMS?'

Sam Smith

As long as everyone's beating up on NPR, here's a more significant problem than its handling of Juan Williams that it shares with most of the conventional media: as long as a conservative or establishment group labels what they're doing as a "reform" media like NPR go along with it.

In its political sense, a "reform" is something that corrects past errors and to call such a policy a "reform" implies that the media fully agrees with it.

Here are a few dictionary defininitons:

"To put into a new and improved form or condition; to restore to a former good state, or bring from bad to good; to change from worse to better; to amend; to correct; as, to reform a profligate man; to reform corrupt manners or morals."

"Synonyms - To amend; correct; emend; rectify; mend; repair; better; improve; restore; reclaim."

"To return to a good state; to amend or correct one's own character or habits; as, a man of settled habits of vice will seldom reform."

"Amendment of what is defective, vicious, corrupt, or depraved; reformation; as, reform of elections; reform of government."

Yet we, find on NPR, reporters talking about immigration reform, education reform, banking reform . . . without the slightest sense in doing so they are doing as strong a political position as one could should of specifically advocating something.

So to hell with Juan Williams. Let's reform NPR by getting it to stop calling conservative programs "reform."