Meet NPR's "Planet Money" host Adam Davidson -- Wall Street shill, corporate tool, flunky for the 1%

[brentspeak]

http://shameproject.com/report/adam-davidson-corrupt-wall-street-booster/

Adam Davidson’s Journalistic Corruption: NPR Host Boosts for Wall Street, While Taking Undisclosed Banking Money

By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames • Aug 8, 2012



Adam Davidson is the co-creator and host of the popular economic news radio program Planet Money. On air, Davidson plays the role of an earnest, brainy reporter who’s doing his best to make sense of the complicated, jargon-filled world of finance to report business news in a way that NPR listeners can understand. However, behind the dweeby, faux-naive facade Adam Davidson presents to his listeners is a shrewd propagandist with a long, consistent history of shilling for powerful and destructive interests—and failing to disclose his financial ties to the companies and industries he reports on.

Over the years, Davidson has boosted for the Iraq War and whitewashed the occupation of Iraq, praised sweatshop labor and "experimenting on the poor," attacked the idea of regulating Wall Street, parroted libertarian propaganda about the government’s inability to directly create jobs, argued for "squeezing the middle class," and shamelessly fawned over Wall Street for allegedly blessing Americans with "just about anything that makes you happy." (Read Adam Davidson's full S.H.A.M.E. profile.)

While Adam Davidson has recently come under increasing scrutiny for using his NPR platform to promote the narrow interests of the super-wealthy in this country, little attention has thus far been given to Davidson's corruption—his numerous financial conflicts of interest that seriously undermine his claims to being a journalist, and instead reveal Davidson as a glorified product spokesman for his Wall Street sponsors.

snip

In May 2009, in the heat of the banking industry's massive pushback, Davidson essentially mugged Elizabeth Warren, the chief architect of the financial consumer protection bill, in an interview that took a sharp and bizarre hostile turn early on. Davidson surprised Warren and his own listeners with uncharacteristic personal smears, trying to portray her as a clueless, power-hungry ideologue. Davidson’s attack on Warren was so out of line and uncharacteristically hostile that it sparked a torrent of criticism from NPR listeners who couldn't understand why Davidson or NPR would do such a thing. Keep in mind, this was in the spring of 2009, when unemployment was still shooting through the roof, the future of the economy was in doubt, and talk of a 1930s-style Great Depression-2 was still front and center.

[world wide wally]

1. NPR sucks.

People that won't accept this are just living in the past.

[sendero]

4. Exactly...

... why is anyone surprised? NPR is no better than the rest of the MSM, they are just a bit craftier and more subtle.

I listen to them because there isn't anything else, but the bias that runs through their "reporting' is pretty clear and occasionally right in your face.

[Romeo.lima333]

7. there isn't anything else yes there is, progressive talk tunein

http://tunein.com/radio/Progressive-Talk-c57925/

[ND-Dem]

2. k&R, I love mark ames and the whole exile gang.

[newthinking]

3. shame what happened to NPR (and to some extent PBS)

[Cerridwen]

5. A quick reminder of what happened to public broadcasting.

This is not the totality of it, of course, but this is one major piece of how the r/w went about removing the "liberal bias" from public broadcasting.

From MediaMatters: May 2, 2005

In a May 2 article on efforts by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), "to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias" at CPB, New York Times reporters Stephen Labaton, Lorne Manley, and Elizabeth Jensen noted that CPB recently appointed two ombudsmen "to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts." But the article failed to note that one of the ombudsmen, William Schulz, is an avowed conservative with close ties to Tomlinson, while the other, Ken Bode, is a former journalist and a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who last year endorsed Indiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels. In addition, the Times story made no mention that CPB's new chief operating officer and acting president is a former Bush administration official.

Tomlinson was editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest before resigning to work on Republican Steve Forbes' 1996 presidential campaign, according to a February 13, 1996, article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Schulz and Tomlinson worked together at Reader's Digest, where Schulz was the Washington editor and an editor-at-large. A February 11, 2002, National Review article lamented the "saddening transformation" of Reader's Digest away from "overt conservatism" in the wake of Tomlinson's resignation. The Review noted that "<m>ost of the magazine's top editors had been Tomlinson hires, and virtually all of them were, like Tomlinson himself, political conservatives," but added that "<a> few conservatives remain, most notably Schulz." On June 26, 1986, The Washington Post reported that a Reader's Digest-operated foundation pulled its funding from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to register dissatisfaction with what Schulz called the desire among AEI leadership at the time "to move the organization to the center and appeal to foundations and corporations not thought of as conservative." Schulz also authored a March 14 article for the conservative website Human Events Online.

The other CPB ombudsman is Ken Bode, a former NBC national political correspondent, former CNN senior political analyst, and an adjunct fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. Bode endorsed Indiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels in an October 15, 2004, Indianapolis Star commentary.

According to The Ombudsman Association's code of ethics, an ombudsman is a "designated neutral" who "strives for objectivity and impartiality."

<snip to slightly more at link>

The CPB, i.e., "Corporation for Public Broadcasting A Private Corporation Funded by the American People,":

Since 1968, CPB has been the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting and the largest single source of funding for public radio, television, and related online and mobile services. For approximately $1.35 per American per year, CPB provides essential operational support for the nearly 1,400 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations, which reach virtually every household in the country. (from their current website)

(all emphasis added)

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. K&FuckinR. nt

[nashville_brook]

8. k and r