NPR: Letting Criminals Walk Free is "Common Sense"

I know that listening to right-wing nuts rail about the liberal media can be tiresome, but, in many instances they are correct, especially when it comes to the elite media- major newspapers, the news networks, and, the granddaddy of them all, NPR. A story on NPR this morning about poor criminals was a perfect example. The story was about a change to bond procedures for criminals in Cook County Illinois. The lead-in to the story said something along the lines of “a new law in Cook County will make it easier for accused criminals to post bond at their hearings” or something along those lines- and that immediately caught my attention- because I thought it was going to be one of those “outrage” stories you hear where the reason why its news, is because its so outrageous.

But instead, NPR spun this new law as a victory for poor defendants, who are supposedly disadvantaged by high bonds that they can’t possibly post to get out of jail. The story was entirely positive and ended by concluding with a statement referring to the law as a “common-sense solution” to the bail hearing problem! “Common sense solution”? I guess NPR believes that setting accused criminals free asap is common sense. That last phrase, stated seemingly innocuously completely stripped away any sense of objectivity in the report, which was lacking in it anyways. Forgive me, but isn’t it the job of any good journalist to present both sides of any story- can this reporter (whose name I do not remember) honestly tell us that he wasn’t able to find anyone in Chicago that thinks that making it easier for accused criminals to get out of jail might not actually be the greatest thing since sliced bread? Give me a flipping break, NPR.