NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

NPR's Toothless Defense Strategy

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Howard Kurtz - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Steve Inskeep, A veteran National Public Radio correspondent, is calling from Cairo, having just visited a 23-year-old man with welts on his back who says the Egyptian Army tortured him. “That, to me, is a real story,” he says. At a time when he is trying to get flak jackets to his colleagues in Libya, Inskeep has little patience for charges that NPR leans to the left. “What’s important to us is the work we do,” he says. “I actually get accused of being a conservative as often as I get accused of being a liberal.” In Chicago, Ira Glass, who hosts This American Life, has used his own network’s airwaves to challenge his bosses for being timid. “Public radio is being hit with a barrage of criticism that it’s left-wing media–biased, reprehensible—and we’re doing nothing to stand up for our brand,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “They’re not responding like a multimedia organization that’s actually growing and superpopular.” These exasperated reporters are speaking out against their embattled company in what amounts to a revolt in the ranks. NPR, reeling from an undercover sting that cost the network its chief executive and a chunk of its credibility, is facing the biggest threat in its 41-year history. The House just voted 228 to 192 to eliminate the federal funding that makes up 10 to 15 percent of public-radio budgets, an effort fueled by longstanding conservative complaints about NPR’s alleged leftist leanings. But with its future on the line, NPR’s decimated management has opted for quiet diplomacy rather than a full-throated defense of one of the few news operations that is actually expanding, reaching an impressive 27 million listeners a week.

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Shell Shocked

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Ron Moreau - Dec. 06 (Special Report) - U.S. troops aren’t the only ones in Afghanistan who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. It also afflicts Afghan civilians—and the Taliban, too.

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The World's Best Countries

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - Sep. 27 (Special Report) - Forget the World Cup, the Olympics, even the Miss Universe pageant. Newsweek ranks nations by economy, politics, health and quality of life, proving the globe's true national champions.

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We're Safer Than We Think

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - Special service police officers on duty in Times Square. Are we safer now than we were on 9/11? It sounds like a simple question, amenable to an answer or at least a serious conversation. But we are so polarized in America these days that it almost

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Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Sep. 04 (Editorial) - Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single

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How Obama Got Rolled by Wall Street

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Michael Hirsh - Aug. 29 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama was “incredulous” at what he was hearing, said one of his top economic advisers. The president had spent his first year in office overseeing the biggest government bailout of the financial industry in American history. Together with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, he had kept Wall Street afloat on a trillion-dollar tide of taxpayer money.

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Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Richard N. Haass - Jul. 18 (Opinion) - After nearly nine years of war, however, continued or increased U.S. involvement in Afghanistan isn’t likely to yield lasting improvements that would be commensurate in any way with the investment of American blood and treasure. It is time to scale down our ambitions there and both reduce and redirect what we do.

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Is Rand Paul Crazier Than Anyone Else in DC?

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Conor Friedersdorf - May. 25 (Opinion) - [T]he media seem to reflexively treat some ideas and candidates less seriously than others for no legitimate, objective reason.

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Zakaria on a Third Surge in Afghanistan

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - The real question we should be asking in Afghanistan is not "Do we need a surge?" but rather "Do we need a third surge?" The number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in January 2008 was 26,607. Over the next six months, the Bush administration raised the total to 48,250. President Bush described this policy as "the quiet surge," and he made the standard arguments about the need for a counterinsurgency capacity—the troops had to not only fight the Taliban but protect the Afghan population, strengthen and train the Afghan Army and police, and assist in development.

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Why Fox News Is Un-American

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Jacob Weisberg - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.

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Containing a Nuclear Iran

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - It is time to clarify the debate over Iran and its nuclear program. It's easy to criticize the current course adopted by the United States and its allies, to huff and puff about Iranian mendacity, to point out that Russia and China won't agree to tougher measures against Tehran, and to detail the leaks in the sanctions already in place. But what, then, should the United States do? The critics are eager to denounce the administration from the sidelines for being weak but rarely detail what they would do to be "tough." Would they attack Iran today? If not, then what should we do? It is time to put up or shut up on Iran.

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Torture Doesn't Work and Here's Why

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Sharon Begley - Sep. 27 (Special Report) - While we wait for Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, or the CIA to release evidence that "enhanced interrogation techniques" produced useful, truthful intelligence that could not be obtained without torture, neuroscientists are weighing in on how likely torture is to elicit such information—and they are not impressed.

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Copenhagen or bust

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Gordon Brown - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause. So when world leaders gather this week, first at the United Nations in New York and then at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, it is essential that we move toward resolving the issues that still divide our nations. As scientists spell out the mounting evidence both of the climate change already occurring and of the threat it poses in the future, we cannot allow the negotiations to run out of time simply for lack of attention. Failure would be unforgivable.

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Even Babies Discriminate: A NurtureShock Excerpt

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman - Sep. 14 (Review) - Vittrup sent a third of the families home with multiculturally themed videos for a week, such as an episode of Sesame Street in which characters visit an African-American family's home, and an episode of Little Bill, where the entire neighborhood comes together to clean the local park.

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Why We Believe Lies, Even When We Learn the Truth

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Sharon Begley - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - The same skewed thinking that supports a Saddam-9/11 link explains the power of health-care myths.

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Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff - Aug. 22 (Special Report) - Top Bush CIA officials, including Tenet's successors as CIA director, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, strongly lobbied for the IG report to be kept secret from the public. They argued that its release would damage America's reputation around the world, could damage CIA morale, and would tip off terrorists regarding American interrogation tactics. "Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That's already been done."

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On Iran, Do Nothing. Yet

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - The hyperbole in America and Israel about apocalyptic mullahs with nukes missed the big story in Iran, which was that the mullahs were not apocalyptic, and they were fading in influence anyway. One might have said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is losing its distinct religious basis of power and becoming another Middle Eastern dictatorship—except that it now hosts an opposition movement that does not seem ready to quiet down.

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Can Obama Sell Health Care Reform Without Getting Too Specific?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Holly Bailey - Jul. 02 (News Analysis) - Not unlike George W. Bush when he tried to use his own political capital to sell the equally tricky task of reforming Social Security four years ago, Obama is trying to have it both ways. He wants to bank on his enormous popularity to influence the public to pressure Congress to get something done this year, but he also wants to stay above the fray. Obama doesn’t want to get too specific about what he wants and doesn’t want in a bill because he knows what ultimately emerges from Congress will be a test of compromise.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama's Pay-Go Flameout

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Robert J. Samuelson - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - If President Obama thought he'd score some easy political points by endorsing new PAYGO legislation to control deficit spending, he was sadly mistaken. Although PAYGO--budget-speak for "pay-as-you-go"--seems to limit Congress' ability to cut taxes or raise spending, the initial reviews were unkind and sometimes harsh.

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GM: Is This The End of The UAW?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Gross - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - Most significantly, as stockholders, unions will have to start thinking like owners. The theory of Detroit was that the United Auto Workers union didn't care about returns Chrysler, Ford, or GM could generate to the stockholder because it was simply concerned with maximizing wages and benefits. But the joke was ultimately on the unions, since high labor costs were one of the many factors that caused the companies to fail—and hence to renege on the long-term retirement and health care benefits they had agreed to pay.

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Why Google Faces Antitrust Scrutiny

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Lyons - May. 27 (Opinion) - Most people think of Google as a free search engine—and it is that. But the real genius of Google was that it figured out that advertisers would pay to have their messages pop up when someone types in a keyword. For instance, a hotel chain might pay to show ads to anyone who types in "hotel in Phoenix." Those search ads now represent the biggest chunk of all Internet advertising. Google gets the lion's share, which has allowed it to amass such power that it may end up the target of a federal antitrust investigation.

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Why Traditional Hybrid Cars Are Becoming Obsolete

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Lyons - May. 04 (Special Report) - "We are on the cusp of a period of technical innovation like the automobile industry has never seen," says Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto retailer. "There will be more change in the next five to 10 years than there was in the last 100."

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One Young Woman's Fight to Educate Afghan Girls

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Dina Fine Maron - May. 02 (Special Report) - To bring education to rural areas like this one—where many girls may not know a single woman who can read—Saleem has battled widespread illiteracy and daunting cultural obstacles for the past seven years, setting up schools to change the educational landscape, one child at a time.

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How Successful Were Obama's First 100 Days?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Jonathan Alter - Apr. 27 (News Analysis) - How successful were President Obama's first 100 days? Let's go to the videotape—and the newsreel. With the help of the economic crisis, Barack Obama has put more points on the board than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, and his public investment greatly exceeds Roosevelt's in constant dollars. The only president he falls short of is Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Even if you think he's wrong, Obama deserves high marks for articulating a new vision and getting Congress to act. But he still gets an "incomplete" for the term. That's because his ethos is to do "what works." Problem is, we don't know yet what will.

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Radical Ways to Cool the Planet

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fred Guter - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - As forecasts for global temperatures grow increasingly dire, scientists are taking a serious look at an idea once considered crazy: reengineering the atmosphere.

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