To promote his documentary “The Big Uneasy,” focusing on the man-made engineering disaster related to Hurricane Katrina, actor and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer decided to purchase advertising time on National Public Radio (NPR). Instead of operating in the public interest, NPR’s legal department began to censor what language could be used to promote the film.
Mr. Harry Shearer, Photo by: Steve Moore (C) Veracity Stew, 2010
I had the pleasure of running into Harry this weekend while attending Rising Tide V in New Orleans, a media and bloggers conference focusing on the recovery and rebuilding post-Katrina. Speaking very candidly, Shearer said, “We put the money on the table and submitted the copy. And after a week NPR legal said ‘this language will not be approved.’”
Shearer states in a column on HuffingtonPost that “NPR’s legal department ruled that these words were not acceptable in the announcement: documentary about why New Orleans flooded, that the only words that would work for them were documentary about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.” What a ridiculous suggestion, considering that the documentary is all about the engineering, construction and failure of the levees by the Army Corps of Engineers.
When I asked Harry if NPR gave an explanation on why they opposed that specific language, he simply stated that “lawyers don’t do that.”
Has NPR’s actions changed the filmmaker’s opinion of the public broadcaster? “My opinion about NPR began to change in the run-up to the Iraqi war. They were as gullible and incredulous as the New York Times.” Shearer added that, unlike the Times, NPR never apologized for it.
It is amazing that five years after New Orleans was nearly wiped from the face of the Earth, there is still a concerted effort to re-frame the cause of the damage and flooding as a natural disaster instead of the incompetence of those responsible for a failed levee and flood protection system. New Orleans did not flood because of Katrina, it flooded after the storm when the levees broke.
“The Big Uneasy” is showing for one night only in selected theaters across the nation. We highly recommend you watch and learn. Not even NPR’s censorship can prevent the truth from being told.
About Stew Steve
NPR lost their backbone after Newt Gingrich, et al. rode into Washington with their “Contract On America”. At the time, FRONTLINE was doing some marvelous exposes of the corrupt Bush regime (remember the 3 trillion dollar S&L bailout?) This so enraged the conservatives that one of Gingrich’s key platform points was slashing funding to public broadcasting, using the trumped-up outrage directed at a painting using
urine/poop. Since then, I’ve noticed a much more timid reporting of events, and total conformity with right-wing talking points.