Ex-NPR Hill reporter: Lied to daily

[Jamie_B]

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[size=4]After 14 years at [url="http://www.politico.com/tag/npr"]National Public Radio[/url], Andrea Seabrook left in July and, to hear her talk about her experience covering Capitol Hill, it’s clear that she had one takeaway: It’s damn frustrating.[/size][/background][/size][/color]
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[size=4]“I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.”[/size][/background][/size][/color]


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[size=4]As a result, Seabrook is trying to do something about it. Her new project is [url="http://www.decodedc.com/"]DecodeDC[/url], a website that will feature Seabrook’s blog posts and podcasts that aim to “decipher Washington’s Byzantine language and procedure, sweeping away what doesn’t matter so listeners can focus on what does.”[/size][/background][/size][/color][color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]
[size=4]“We need to stop coddling lawmakers, stop buying their red team, blue team narrative and ask harder questions of them,” Seabrook says in an introductory audio clip. Turns out plenty of people agree with her, including SoundCloud, which granted Seabrook’s project a fellowship to support her work.[/size][/background][/size][/color][color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]
[size=4]”I am going to try to focus myself on the stories that none of the other reporters have time to cover,” she said. “NPR would have loved to have had any of these stories. .. The problem is, as a modern, esteemed news organization, NPR also feels that it needs to cover the daily news and the daily news as currently defined is what happened on the floor today, what’s the big debate in Congress, what’s your government doing. And I completely understand that. But our staff is so small on the Hill that it was impossible for me to do more than a story once in a while that agreed with how I felt it should be covered.”[/size][/background][/size][/color][color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]
[size=4]Seabrook’s confident that, even though she left behind an established news organization, “the media environment we’re in makes it very easy for me to leave and say there are so many means of distribution these days that really what matters is content, and if I can make great content than everything else will fall into place.” Seabrook says that a lot of public radio stations have already expressed an interest in airing her reports and stories.[/size][/background][/size][/color][color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]
[size=4]And she’s not out to malign those colleagues on the Hill still tracking down the day’s news.[/size][/background][/size][/color][color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]
[size=4]“There’s a lot of great work being done,” said Seabrook. “I think the problem is the Congress itself. And we’re all in the same positions, scrambling to figure out how the hell to cover these a*sholes.”[/size][/background][/size][/color]

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[color=#000000][size=2][background=transparent]Read more: [url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79998.html#ixzz24U45ZQ3n"]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79998.html#ixzz24U45ZQ3n[/url][/background][/size][/color]

[Vol_Bengal]

Sounds good!

[Jamie_B]

[url="http://www.npr.org/2012/07/18/156985379/andrea-seabrook-reflects-on-covering-congress"]http://www.npr.org/2...vering-congress[/url]

[quote]
[b] [size=4] NPR's Seabrook Reflects On A 'Broken Washington'[/size][/b]



[size=4][color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]After 14 years with NPR and nearly a decade covering Congress, [url="http://www.npr.org/people/2790202/andrea-seabrook"]Andrea Seabrook[/url] is striking out on her own. She began her career in the marbled halls of Capitol Hill before Twitter, before the Tea Party, before the first female House speaker and before that institution's approval ratings sank to near single digits.[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]Seabrook is launching a blog and podcast called [url="http://www.decodedc.com/"]DecodeDC[/url].[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]"One of the reasons that I am leaving to start a new project," she tell NPR's Jennifer Ludden, "is because of how broken Washington really is and how difficult it is to try to ... tell our listeners what is going on with their government day to day."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]"We're in position, as journalists, where ... what the speaker and the majority leader and the minority — what they say is news, right?" she says. "But most of what they say these days — all day, every day — is spin. So it's very difficult."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]Seabrook began covering Congress in January 2003. "It was a time when you could still smoke all over the Capitol. You could still smoke in the speaker's lobby, and really, it sounds like ancient history."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]Dennis Hastert of Illinois was speaker of the House, and Tom DeLay of Texas was the House majority leader. She says that the culture of spin she observes now wasn't a major issue then. "In covering Tom DeLay, I never had to question if what he was saying was spin. He said what he meant."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]"You asked him if he was going to continue the assault rifle ban, and he said, 'Nope.' And you said, 'Well, why? Most Americans support a ban on people owning assault rifles.' And he says, 'Because I don't.' "[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]Seabrook covered Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi's rise to become the first female speaker of the House in 2007. "One story that [Pelosi] told me is when she was a teenager in high school, she was in a debate class and picked a debate topic out of a fishbowl — or her debate partner did. And the debate topic was: Do women think? So she went in her career from do women think, to the first speaker of the House. I find that extraordinary."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]Seabrook's new blog will center on her view of the dysfunctional nature of Washington. She believes that the American people bear some of the blame.[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]"Americans, real people, you have bought this line that we are on two teams in this country. There is a red team, and there is a blue team. When we've gotten to the point where your partisan stripe comes before your American citizenship, our shared culture, our shared values in this country, then we have a real problem at the nation — national, federal level. We vote for people who are going in there to fight red or blue instead of put that stuff down at the end of the election cycle and work on real problems that need to be solved."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]In reflecting on her years, she's learned to value the importance of the individual vote. "As a citizen of any political stripe, you should be very careful to research who you vote for and spend your vote very wisely."[/font][/color]
[color=#333333][font=arial, sans-serif]"If you want someone who's rational and reasonable, then you have to go look for that person and take your vote out of the emotional realm of your brain and into the rational realm of your brain."[/font][/color][/size]

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[big_dish]

Hopefully someone gets the ball rolling, because right now 95% of all politicians (IMO) are completely full of shit. They need to be brought down to the level of the median waged working American more than anyone else in the country. Want to pass a healthcare law? Fine, you're enrolled and unexempt from special treatment. Want to ban insider trading? Fine, you are banned also. Want to ban tax breaks? Fine, yours are banned also. Want to start a buy in/3rd party Medicare and SS? Fine, you are in it too. Want to reduce pensions? Fine, yours is also.