The leftists at National Public Radio have exposed themselves once again, and the joke continues to be on the tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers forced to fund thoroughly partisan political media content that not only clashes with their personal views but also targets those beliefs as hateful and unacceptable.
Narrative Crash
A June 21 article written by Hannah Allam, NPR’s national security correspondent “focusing on homegrown extremism,” attributes instances of panicked drivers running into menacing street protesters to “[r]ight-wing extremists” who “are turning cars into weapons.”
“The message they’re trying to send is, ‘You need to get out of the street and stop these protests,'” so-called “terrorism researcher” Ari Weil tells Allam in the hit piece (pun intended). “They’re trying to intimidate the most recent wave of [Black Lives Matter] protesters, to stop their movement.”
In its frenzy to push this preposterous hypothesis, NPR included a photo of a protester being hit by a car in Louisville, KY. What its crackerjack staff apparently failed to realize is that video of this incident had gone viral, and it clearly showed that the driver of the car was fleeing a growing mass of street hooligans attacking her vehicle.
“The photo, chosen by editors, does not appear to be an example of the assaults described in the story, and has been replaced,” NPR stated in a weak note later added to the article. “Police have not charged the driver, but have charged two of the protesters involved in that incident. Authorities continue to investigate.” That’s as close to an apology that “right-wing” Americans are going to get.
Scarlet R for Trump
Over-the-top bias and complete disregard for journalistic integrity are hardly new phenomena at NPR. In July 2019, it labeled tweets by President Donald Trump criticizing radical progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) as “racist.”
Mark Memmott, NPR’s supervising senior editor for standards and practices, explained why the ostensibly neutral media organization gets to make that inflammatory call.
“We have come to the conclusion in the newsroom that what the president tweeted was racist language, so you could say that,” Memmott stated in an NPR podcast. “We use it when it fits … it was a tweet aimed at four specific individuals, four women of color, using an old racist trope – you know, go back to your home country – very blatantly. And we wanted, just to be clear, that it wasn’t just racially charged, racially inflamed whatever; we wanted to make clear that that is an old racist phrase that was reused.”
A note to one of several articles on the topic professed: “NPR’s newsroom has not changed its view on this issue and will continue referring to President Trump’s tweet as racist.”
Like most of its leftist media colleagues, NPR has been obsessed with fanning the flames of racial strife since Trump captured the White House in 2016. On June 6, an NPR writer urged whites to “decolonize” their bookshelves in the wake of George Floyd’s death. “Study Links Racial Prejudices and Disease Outbreaks” reads an April 20 headline on an article about the Coronavirus crisis. “Trump ‘Embodies Nearly Every Aspect of a Racist,’ Author Says” is the title to an interview with radical college professor Ibram X. Kendi in August 2019. And then there is “When the ‘White Tears’ Just Keep Coming,” a screed that claims “white people use their emotions as a weapon against people of color” in “a form of white supremacy.”
“I just take a big bucket outside and I use them to make Kool-Aid … You’ve never had a better glass of red Kool-Aid than one that’s made with white tears,” Damon Young, a columnist at GQ, gleefully exclaimed. This is the high-quality public radio we can’t do without?
Funding Abortion Advocacy
The fundamental unfairness of making American citizens pay to support such leftist drivel is perhaps best driven home by a closer look at Allam, NPR’s “homegrown terrorism” beat writer. As her official bio on NPR’s website proudly proclaims, Allam “currently serves on the board of the International Women’s Media Foundation [IWMF].”
NPR is in fact listed as a donor to IWMF on the group’s website. The International Women’s Media Foundation in turn states that it financially supports female journalists who report on the threat to abortion rights worldwide. “The IWMF is proud to support reporting of untold stories surrounding Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the Americas,” the group declares in a post on its website. “This initiative supports reporting on issues that impact women and girl’s daily lives in the region, including abortion and contraception access, maternal health, reproductive health policy and abortion bans.”
“America is grappling with a recent surge of restrictive reproductive rights bills in states across the country,” a May 2019 IWMF article at Medium.com reads. “The culling of abortion and reproductive care may seem like a new challenge for the U.S., but the impact of these laws in other countries is well known. “Women journalists continue to cover different perspectives on anti-abortion legislation, and its ramifications, around the world. Their coverage creates a cautionary tale of how restriction impacts women, girls, and the communities they inhabit.”
U.S. taxpayers are forced to give money to NPR, which actively supports pro-abortion “journalism” both financially and via the direct participation of its staff writers. And as thanks, they are derided for any views that don’t conform to the broadcaster’s chosen narrative. Perhaps it is time to end the “public trust” charade of these militant moochers.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
