Mary Young: CE Blog 3
Mary Young
ENGL 1102
Dr. Molly Daniel
24 September 2018
Current Event Blog: National Public Radio
Assessment of News Source
The National Public Radio (NPR) is a non-profit organization that serves as a radio syndicator to over 1,000 radio stations in the country. Jarl Mohn became the President and CEO of NPR in 2014, after having a large background in the public radio business. He founded E! Entertainment Television (a talkshow covering the latest celebrity gossip) and Liberty Digital Inc. (a company invested in television and media business), and was a general manager of MTV and VH1. He is now a current board member of Scripps Network Interactive, a cable network that focuses solely on providing lifestyle channels (and fights against the gender gap). Mohn and the NPR are both criticized as being “very liberal” by The New York Times, and Mohn has been a contributor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to support Gephardt, Gore, Kerry, and Obama (but before that, supported John McCain).
Summary
The article titled, “A Bunch of Cocaine: Boxes of Donated Bananas Contained $17.8 Million Worth of Drugs” by Merrit Kennedy. The report was posted on September 23rd, recapping what two employees at the Wayne Scott Unit in Texas had encountered when loading donated boxes of bananas. One of the boxes felt different than the others, so the man investigated it to find 540 packages of cocaine. There has yet to be any further announcement on where the package came from, or who the package was intended for. However, Kennedy states that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence, and lists four other situations like this one that had surfaced in the past three years. The Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are continuing their investigations.
Analysis
Kennedy is a reporter at NPR that retweets news-oriented posts and women’s rights posts, however strays from any other political topics, other than a few likes on climate change articles. There is not much that differs from how she covered the story compared to other news reports, despite going into less detail on the events than CNN or Fox, which were more dramatic in diction, as well. However, a common example of this situation that was referenced by other sources, but not NPR’s, was when border control officers unveiled two tons of weed disguised as limes last year. The shipment was coming into the US from Mexico, which could be seen as an avoidance of bringing any negative association to Mexico and the immigration debates.
Opinion
I honestly thought this article was going to be more eventful, which made it quite complicated to write about (which is my fault, I began researching the CEO before even reading the article). However, I have to wonder that if this is such a common practice, has anyone been able to trace the packages back to its origin? If not, perhaps there should be some sort of precautions instead of relying on a weight difference, in this case. I also wonder why people desire to ship off millions of dollars of drugs to an Aldi, for instance. What is the gain from that? Overall, I was disappointed they hadn't actually put the cocaine into the bananas, somehow. I was curious to see how they would of done so.
Works Cited
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/23/650921591/a-bunch-of-cocaine-boxes-of-donated-bananas-contained-17-8-million-worth-of-drug
https://www.nationalpublicmedia.com/npr/audience/
https://www.npr.org/people/334445462/jarl-mohn
https://www.eonline.com/
http://www.vh1.com/
https://www.bloomberg.com/profiles/companies/LDIG:US-liberty-digital-inc
https://corporate.discovery.com/
http://ir.scrippsnetworksinteractive.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=222475&p=irol-IRHome
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/07/562612541/npr-ceo-takes-medical-leave-amid-newsroom-sexual-harassment-scandal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/business/media/npr-ceo-jarl-mohn.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/230/000167726/
https://www.newsweek.com/cocaine-worth-18-million-found-banana-shipment-donated-texas-prison-1135020
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/23/us/cocaine-donated-bananas-tdcj-trnd/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/23/nearly-18m-in-cocaine-found-in-boxes-of-bananas-donated-to-texas-prison
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/09/22/banana-shipment-contained-nearly-18m-in-cocaine-authorities-say.html
ENGL 1102
Dr. Molly Daniel
24 September 2018
Current Event Blog: National Public Radio
Assessment of News Source
The National Public Radio (NPR) is a non-profit organization that serves as a radio syndicator to over 1,000 radio stations in the country. Jarl Mohn became the President and CEO of NPR in 2014, after having a large background in the public radio business. He founded E! Entertainment Television (a talkshow covering the latest celebrity gossip) and Liberty Digital Inc. (a company invested in television and media business), and was a general manager of MTV and VH1. He is now a current board member of Scripps Network Interactive, a cable network that focuses solely on providing lifestyle channels (and fights against the gender gap). Mohn and the NPR are both criticized as being “very liberal” by The New York Times, and Mohn has been a contributor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to support Gephardt, Gore, Kerry, and Obama (but before that, supported John McCain).
Summary
The article titled, “A Bunch of Cocaine: Boxes of Donated Bananas Contained $17.8 Million Worth of Drugs” by Merrit Kennedy. The report was posted on September 23rd, recapping what two employees at the Wayne Scott Unit in Texas had encountered when loading donated boxes of bananas. One of the boxes felt different than the others, so the man investigated it to find 540 packages of cocaine. There has yet to be any further announcement on where the package came from, or who the package was intended for. However, Kennedy states that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence, and lists four other situations like this one that had surfaced in the past three years. The Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are continuing their investigations.
Analysis
Kennedy is a reporter at NPR that retweets news-oriented posts and women’s rights posts, however strays from any other political topics, other than a few likes on climate change articles. There is not much that differs from how she covered the story compared to other news reports, despite going into less detail on the events than CNN or Fox, which were more dramatic in diction, as well. However, a common example of this situation that was referenced by other sources, but not NPR’s, was when border control officers unveiled two tons of weed disguised as limes last year. The shipment was coming into the US from Mexico, which could be seen as an avoidance of bringing any negative association to Mexico and the immigration debates.
Opinion
I honestly thought this article was going to be more eventful, which made it quite complicated to write about (which is my fault, I began researching the CEO before even reading the article). However, I have to wonder that if this is such a common practice, has anyone been able to trace the packages back to its origin? If not, perhaps there should be some sort of precautions instead of relying on a weight difference, in this case. I also wonder why people desire to ship off millions of dollars of drugs to an Aldi, for instance. What is the gain from that? Overall, I was disappointed they hadn't actually put the cocaine into the bananas, somehow. I was curious to see how they would of done so.
Works Cited
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/23/650921591/a-bunch-of-cocaine-boxes-of-donated-bananas-contained-17-8-million-worth-of-drug
https://www.nationalpublicmedia.com/npr/audience/
https://www.npr.org/people/334445462/jarl-mohn
https://www.eonline.com/
http://www.vh1.com/
https://www.bloomberg.com/profiles/companies/LDIG:US-liberty-digital-inc
https://corporate.discovery.com/
http://ir.scrippsnetworksinteractive.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=222475&p=irol-IRHome
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/07/562612541/npr-ceo-takes-medical-leave-amid-newsroom-sexual-harassment-scandal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/business/media/npr-ceo-jarl-mohn.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/230/000167726/
https://www.newsweek.com/cocaine-worth-18-million-found-banana-shipment-donated-texas-prison-1135020
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/23/us/cocaine-donated-bananas-tdcj-trnd/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/23/nearly-18m-in-cocaine-found-in-boxes-of-bananas-donated-to-texas-prison
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/09/22/banana-shipment-contained-nearly-18m-in-cocaine-authorities-say.html
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