National Public Radio is hypocritical every day they say they offer news instead of left-wing pap. Come on, admit it. You know it’s true.
What’s surprising is when they smoke too much pot and get confused about the boundaries of their hypocrisy. That, of course, is when they become Deceiver-worthy.
Politico reports that Mara Liasson, top political correspondent for NPR and frequent Fox News Channel contributor, was asked by NPR to reconsider her appearances on Fox News.
In other words, stop appearing on Fox News, Mara, or we’ll take back your tote bag.
Liasson has been on Fox News since 1997. So it’s pretty ridiculous for NPR to worry about its image being tarnished by one of their own showing up on a channel that isn’t all Obama-rific.
Here’s the fallout, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
The request apparently came shortly after the Obama administration launched claims in September that Fox was an arm of the Republican Party. It also seemed to coincide with an October piece in Newsweek by Jacob Weisberg, the editor of the liberal Web site Slate, castigating reporters from other networks who guest on Fox.
“Respectable journalists — I’m talking to you, Mara Liasson — should stop appearing on its programs,” he wrote. Liasson declined comment, but Politico reports that she intends to continue her Fox work. A Fox spokesperson had this to say about NPR’s internal flap: “With the ratings we have, NPR should be paying us to even be mentioned on our air.”
Even Joe Scarborough tried, and I mean tried, to talk about the incident. While he says he thinks NPR was out of line, what comes through is his heroic ode to NPR. You can almost hear him lighting a doobie while he yammers on:
“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. They put on great radio.”
Not really. That’s why we don’t listen to it unless we’re trying to take a nap. As blogger Mike Sargent put it, NPR is “the radio form of Ambien.” (I’m leaving Prairie Home Companion out of this because Garrison Keillor has different overlords. Besides, I love ketchup and I’d like to try Powdermilk Biscuits someday.)
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Wow…so not only does the left want to tell us what we can eat, what kind of insurance we should have but also where we can work? Forget socialism this seems more like “Stalin”ism.
If the Fairness Doctrine comes back into play, will NPR be forced to air opposing, conservative viewpoints?
After all, that would be “fair” – wouldn’t it?
I tried listening to NPR once, but it turns out I’m not a white upper middle class college junior studying environmental law, so NPR sent two “friends” down from Evanston to tell me “maybe you need to find somewhere else to get my news… Maybe from one of those ‘corporate’ stations” they said, as their vegetarian “muscles” rippled underneath their neck beards, and pasty white skin. If I didn’t I’d wake up one day with gauged earlobes!
I don’t need that kind of trouble in my life.
I listen to NPR. But mostly because I can’t stand the DJ’s on any other station. They have the IQ’s of egg plants, no offense to all eggplants. I mostly listen because Garrison Keilor is some sort of superhuman/godlike radio personality that makes me get goose bumps whenever I hear his deep soothing voice…
And I like classical and jazz music. The crap they spew about “global warming” makes me scream at my radio.
I just love that Fox has all these broadcasters knickers in a knot and good on Liasson for standing her ground. This White House war on Fox is so pathetic.
It would, but fairness is not what proponents of the “Fairness Doctrine” are after. They’re after establishing a leftist hegemony in radio broadcasting as they’ve (almost) succeeded in doing with TV. That’s why they’re always on about talk radio; there’s no chance of them actually wanting, much less seeking, ideological diversity.
I used to listen to NPR religiously, but suddenly one day just walked off the plantation. Not only was there obvious politicking that they always claim to their audience isn’t there, but there was the pedantry of “sounding serious” when, in fact, they were running items based on 3 and 4 week old wire stories much like the BBC does.
The fact is that the mouth-breathing, cousin-humping howling reprobates who eschew put on pan-Britannic accents (some of which are patently fake) on the AM dial are the ones with real journalism in real time, excercising genuine journalistic ethics without Masters degrees from J-school.
So which is it? If Fox is such a slanted right wing organization, why do they even have Mara L on? And why would NPR want to get rid of someone who “balances” what they perceive as such rabid conservatism? The libs want it both ways. We’re supposed to subsidize their ridiculous liberal-spewing NPR, but they want to curb the First Amendment rights of Beck and O’Reilly. My head is ready to explode!!!
I sometimes listen to the local NPR affiliate when driving, but only until my BS-meter pegs. (Typically, about five minutes.) If they run a story on Cuba, I just switch to the narcocorrida station up the dial without waiting; on Cuba, they start out b*tsh*t crazy.
OH GOD NO! NOT THE TOTE BAG!!!!!
Lol best part of the story right there.
And yeah, any respectable organization would be glad one of its affiliates is going on National tv and honing her journalism skills.
why wouldn’t they want their ‘enlightened views’ to be spread to the toothless banjo-players who tune in the fox news channel? could it possibly be that they prefer to foster divisiveness ??
..and why the heck are my tax dollars supporting supporting their bias anyway? how about if they compete in the open marketplace and i get my tax bill reduced by a smidgen? LOL ..like THAT would ever happen….
This is really disappointing. I like NPR; some of the more offbeat shows are really entertaining and the news is pretty good, especially as an antidote to Limbaughian grandstanding. It’s sad to hear that they’ve been caught up in the same impulses that had the NEA ‘encouraging’ artists to push administration policies; this will do nothing but undermine the argument for publicly-funded news and give ammunition to those who want to cut their funding.
I have some of the same sentiments towards NPR as some of you. I do like some of the segments and they are much less obnoxious in the morning than typical radio shows. As far as a source of my news goes, they are the most neutral I can find. It’s been hard to find a radio station in Chicago (Obamaland) since I moved here that isn’t liberal. I believe that NPR was once very neutral but since Obama took office have definitely started leaning left.
NPR also asked Juan Williams to drop the NPR identifier when appearing on Fox.
56 people complained about him likening Mobama to JJ from Good Times.
http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/02/juan_williams_npr_and_fox_news_1.html
@el polacko – I am highly offended by your characterization, I can’t play the banjo one whit!Now give me a pair of spoons…..
Shucks, D—, I got me a banjo and my cousin/husband can sure play a mean washboard. Alls we need now is to get Ol’ Zeke blowing in a jug and we gots ourselves a band!
Sorry, JGM. The ‘Hee Haw’-equivalent programming slot at NPR has been filled for many years by ‘Prairie Home Companion.’
You guys just don’t get it. Fox is bad because they are right wing leaned – the ONLY Channel that is not pro-Obama. You are a hypocrite if you do not like him, but if you do, then no worries. I find it amusing that this administration likes to pick a fight with one news network when he has lots more ready to bow down to him at the drop of a hat. Scared much Obama?
I simply cannot deal with “A Prairie Home Companion”. Garrison Keillor’s aural-methadone voice, his clammy white-bread lutefisk observations, and the fact that he looks as though he’s been chasing parked cars at high speed all paled in comparison to his atrocious politics. In short, the entire thing is akin to that weird smell that other people’s houses always had when I was a kid. Pfleh.
Maybe NPR is afraid that she’ll catch Conservatism.
I remember once seeing Mara L. in the guest spot on The McLaughlin Group.
While John brayed and Elinor yipped from the left and Tony and Pat smugged away on the right, Mara sat serenely above the fray and dropped pearls of wisdom every time she had the floor.
All this to say, loves ya Mara, keep up the good work.