As of 2pm (Central Time), NPR has removed all comments from Shepard's "NPR Ombudsman" blog.

Comments are back up again as of 2:15 Central - but still a bit creepy that they disappeared just after the "Talk" segment had aired.

"Instead, it's just all in the eye of the beholder, easily re-defined to include or exclude anything we want, dependent upon who is doing it, devoid of any authoritative sources on what it means, and, ultimately, entirely subjective.

In another venue, someone responded to my evidenced, logical argument by simply asserting: "Truth is always subjective."

Of course, that's a cop-out: if everything is subjective, then there is nothing that can be called "truth," including the assertion that "truth is subjective." It's just a lazy way of saying: "I just don't care about truth."

Apparently, this is now NPR's official position: a total lack of interest in truth. What you describe as the "stenographic" position. To borrow Rush Limbaugh's euphemism, the correct journalistic position is now: "grab your ankles" for anyone in power.

Most news organizations have no ombudsman.

Any news organization that does have an ombudsman should be commended simply for actually having an ombudsman.

But, when a news organization stonewalls its so-called "ombudsman", then does the organization actually have one?

* * * * *

Andy Alexander (supposedly the "ombudsman" at the WaPo):

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/06/froomkin_departs_leaving_angry.html

June 26, 2009; 3:13 PM ET

Dan Froomkin’s online White House Watch voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/ *** ended today in The Post, leaving an army of angry followers and a string of unanswered questions [...]

[...] Institutionally, The Post is now responding by circling the wagons -- ironic for a news organization that insists on transparency from those it covers. Its initial statement on June 18 from spokeswoman Kris Coratti lacked substance [...]

[...] I was off much of this week with a minor medical problem. But when I was able to start querying editors yesterday, a wall of silence was erected. Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees the Web site, declined to go beyond last week’s PR statement. Online Opinions Editor Marisa Katz, after talking Thursday with the Washington CityPaper, said she had been instructed not to respond to additional queries. And Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, who had previously responded to questions from me and other journalists (including the CityPaper on Thursday), today said he was unable to comment. [...]

- - Andy Alexander, so-called "ombudsman" | June 26, 2009, 3:13 PM ET

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I scanned the last thread very briefly and, to be honest, it reminded me of the Bronx Zoo, specifically the primate section.

Well, excepting bonobos who, I'm told by people who actually work at our zoo, are all about Teh Love. ;-}

Cynthia McKinney was on a boat interdicted [illegally according to Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on hr in palestinian territories] in international waters as it approached Gaza. The boat had been cleared in Cypress...

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL2879277

At the Personal Democracy Forum earlier this week, Dan Froomkin discussed journalistic impartiality in an interview with Jay Rosen, describing it as "self-inflicted lobotomy."

Next thing you know, NPR will be using euphemisms like “President”, “Madame Secretary” or “Chief Justice” to refer to common liars and law breakers, free-market racketeers, election riggers, war criminals and the like.

Or, they just disagree with your analysis.

"Girlish", "boyish" or "mannish", I merely found her to be asexually sycophantic.

After all, people who can be described individually in any of the above manners, can be found to possess enthusiasm for sucking on "manly accoutrements".

I wonder if Froomkin came to know about this planned salon, and was as a result terminated? He'd have undoubtedly raised an internal stink about it.

I just published something similar on Twitter... of course Froomkin had to go! Imagine what he would have written about those "access" salons!

...Dick Cheney teaching a course on friendship?

For some reason that phrase reminds me of that recent episode when congressional republicans were trying soooo hard to pass a ridiculous resolution to get the name of the Democratic Party changed to "Democrat Socialist Party."

There is something so presumptuous about trying to re-brand another party or person according to one's own agenda.

Good grief! It hardly even works when one tries to re-brand one's own brand! Just ask the Coke marketing department.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/05/20/rnc-drops-resolution-to-call-democrats-socialists/

Putting aside the old idea that when one mentions the Nazis one has lost the argument, let's examine your question.

You suggest that by my logic you can't call the Nazi's final solution Mass Murder because not everyone was muredered.

That is false, because the intetion of the final solution was to murder these people, that the method used was starvation or forced labor until death is not a concern. Essentially, baring the allies intervention the final solutions intent and outcome was to kill.

By contrast with enhanced interogation, the intention is not necessarily to torture, but to extract information using various questionable techniques. It is fair as I said to call some and perhaps even many of the techniques torture, but that there is room for debate on most of the techniques if they arise to the level of torture or simply what might be called agressive, violent, or harsh interogation.

Torture is a word carrying a conotation that may not be accurate, to suggest it be used when it is inappropriate primarily for political reasons, is no differnt than suggesting weaker words be used for political reasons. With each technique and how it's applied you can decide if that is torture, but the program as a whole was not a torture program.

The techniques used were wrong, likely illegal, and certainly ineffective, but that does not make it torture, some techniques were torture but said techniques were neither the hallmark nor the bulk of the program.

What you have is persons for political reasons picking the parts of the plans that were torture, pushing them forward, and then calling the entire plan torture in a hope of conjuring a desired image in the mind of the reader that moves forward their political agenda.

That is what blogger and other marketers of opinion do. That's fine in and of itself, but it's not journalism.