This week, National Public Radio senior editor Uri Berliner sent shock waves through their staff by going public with an article on The Free Press website about how they lost the public’s trust due to an explicit animus against Donald Trump. Since Trump entered politics, the public radio network’s audience has become even more dominated by very liberal Americans.
But it didn’t start with Trump. NewsBusters can tell you NPR has demonstrated a leftist bent from the beginning. NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg destroyed the Douglas Ginsburg nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, then tried again with Clarence Thomas in 1991. This animus against conservatives didn’t kick in suddenly in 2015.
Totenberg, both on NPR and on talk shows, brazenly represented the leftist tilt of NPR, wishing out loud that Sen. Jesse Helms (or one of his grandchildren) would get AIDS, and proclaiming after 9/11 that she was ashamed of America when news broke that terrorism suspects were held in secret CIA prisons. There were other outrages over the years on NPR, but Totenberg was the “face” of left-wing activism.
NPR executives tried to claim that “inclusion” of differing views is an NPR value — but anyone who listens to NPR on a regular basis quickly figures out that this is a taxpayer-funded liberal sandbox. There’s no real room for conservative views. When Republicans appear, NPR staffers are on the attack.
CNN’s Oliver Darcy complained that Uri Berliner’s article demanding more viewpoint diversity on NPR was a “massive gift to the Right.” On a daily basis, taxpayer-funded NPR is nothing short of a massive gift to the Left, pumping out progressive propaganda to over 1,000 stations. Because it has “public” in its branding, too many Americans still think it’s fair and balanced and a service to everyone, which only signals they’re not paying enough attention to the product.
Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.