Joe Scarborough voiced the feeling of many at the time. “Well I just want to say, I love NPR and I listen to NPR, but I’ve been listening to reformed, pot-smoking hippies for the past thirty years on NPR with a very substantial left-wing bias — and I don’t care that they eat tree bark like Euell Gibbons, and I don’t care if they are still smoking pot in their sixties,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They put on great radio. But for NPR — for NPR, the leadership at NPR to question the bias of Fox News is a joke.” (Daily Caller)
Now I know why I haven’t seen Mara Liasson on the FOX Special Report panel! Michael Eden over at Start Thinking Right has a great post on this topic entitled, “Government-Funded NPR Tries To Force Mara Liasson Off Fox News To Please White House Ownership,” in which he points out the following:
NPR reporter pressured over Fox role
By: Josh Gerstein
December 6, 2009 10:36 PM ESTExecutives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.
At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.
NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.
One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal discussions at NPR.
[….]
To the best of my knowledge, Mara Liasson has never ONCE appeared on either Glenn Beck’s or Sean Hannity’s programs. She has appeared on Fox News Special Report with Brett Baier and with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Unlike the Kool-aid-drinking mainstream media, Mara has been smart enough to understand the difference between news and op-ed, and she has remained on the news side.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media’s malicious and dishonest smearing of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was apparently NOT “biased.” CNN’s “fact checking” of an SNL sketch critical of Obama (while hypocritically ignoring months of unrelenting SNL sketch attacks against Sarah Palin) was NOT “biased.” The mainstream medias’ frequent “reporting” about conservatives “organizing” while simultaneously ignoring PAID liberal activists’ organizing was NOT “biased.”
Take a gander at MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s bias (see HERE and HERE) and then recognize that he is immediately followed by Rachel Maddow (see here and here), who is nearly as bad. There’s your Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on steroids.
The mainstream media seem to love bias and propaganda, just as long as it is LIBERAL bias and propaganda. And anything LESS THAN liberal bias and propaganda sends them into a hissy fit of galactic proportions.
Michael Eden continues:
The NPR ombudsman responded to a Pew study that challenged the liberal bias of the mainstream media by saying this:
There is much that can be pointed to as examples of inherent bias in the media — including NPR.
The media — as a class — tends to be remarkably homogeneous. As an NPR editor pointed out to me recently, “How many of our journalists have ever operated a business?” The poll indirectly points to the need for more diversity in our newsrooms — both intellectual and cultural. […]
This poll may have been done correctly, but in this one aspect — questioning the professionalism of journalists — the result will be a disservice to American journalists and journalism. In order to avoid the “liberal bias” accusation, some journalists might feel there is safety in pack journalism and that is likely to have a chilling effect on tough, independent journalism.
The media and its management have an obligation to maintain a skeptical and adversarial role to whatever party is in power. This poll could discourage that by implying that journalists will always let their personal politics trump their professional obligations.
Keep in mind that for much of the 2008 election campaign, and for most of Obama’s presidency, Fox News was basically the ONLY “adversarial” voice. Fox News has in fact stood alone in avoiding the “pack journalism” that the rest of the mainstream media has pursued. Which is to say, Fox News has actually done exactly those things that the NPR ombudsman argued that the media had to do.
Here is a great example of the bias found on NPR:
Anti-Semitism can come in many forms; I would argue that when a news organization is very unbalanced in their coverage of the currant Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they are showing a bias that is feeding unhealthy views about the Semitic people and their history.
NPR is a left leaning, tax payer funded (government), radio program. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
Read more: RPT What “Is” Fascism (Two Posts Combined & Imported from Old Blog)
Another example from the recent “flotilla incident:”
A recent segment of On Point discussing the Gaza flotilla incident provided a reminder of why National Public Radio has been referred to derisively as “National Palestine Radio”. The segment hosted by Tom Ashbrook was broadcast on June 2, 2010 in the wake of the Gaza flotilla events and featured five guests — not a single one who defended Israeli actions. The show featured:
Dianna Buttu, the Canadian-Arab lawyer who has been been faulted by CAMERA for unabashedly distorting the facts and was caught brazenly lyingKarine AFrancop (Nov. 2009) intercepted by Israel and found to be loaded with vast quantities of armaments do not count. during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, asserting that Hamas rockets directed at Israeli towns do not contain explosives. Ashbrook introduced the former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman as an “Arab citizen of Israel.” Buttu provided her usual calumnies—”the blockade is a war crime”…”nothing linked to security”… “Israel cannot use the defense that the blockade is legal”… etc. Apparently, the two Iranian ships, the and the
Edward Peck, member of the Gaza flotilla and a friend to Hamas and Hezbollah, is associated with the Council for the National Interest, an organization that endeavors to end the close relationship between America and Israel. Peck describes the flotilla as “a humanitarian gesture, not in any way… hostile to Israel… The people were all of the humanitarian variety, ” he assured listeners. We have since learned that among that “variety” were Turkish militants seeking martyrdom.
Christopher Dickey, Middle East regional editor for Newsweek, has long contended that Israel is trying to drag the USA into a war with Iran. He reiterated this point-of-view again on the program. Dickey also falsely assured the audience that Israel, “knew there weren’t any lethal weapons to Gaza.”
Ehud Eiran was the sole Israeli representative. However, he did not present the dominant Israeli perspective. Polls have shown most Israelis solidly back their government’s stance on the blockade, but in typical NPR fashion, the person chosen to represent the Israeli perspective stated that he “does not even support the Israeli position.” On June 14, he published a piece in Newsweek describing Israel as a modern-day Sparta afflicted with a “hardening of the heart.”
Janine Zacharia, a Middle East correspondent with the Washington Post, was the only one who did not overtly criticize Israel. Neither did she defend its actions.
So there you have it – five perspectives and not one voice to present the mainstream Israeli perspective. That’s Ashbrook’s and NPR’s version of a balanced discussion on Israel.
HotAir h/t:
“Fourteen percent of NPR listeners identified themselves as Republican, 40 percent said they were Democrats and 41 percent were independent, according to a survey taken in June by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Among all surveyed by Pew, the breakdown was 25 percent Republican, 33 percent Democratic and 34 percent independent.
