Count NPR as one of those national media outlets that just can’t really grasp the notion that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post have ruined the narrative that “gentle giant” Michael Brown never wrestled police officer Darren Wilson for his gun. The finding of burns on the thumb “supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound.” But NPR blurred over the inconvienent news.
Audie Cornish
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 16, 2014 | 2:55 PM EDT
It seems as though National Public Radio has joined the ranks of the liberal media championing illegal immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas following his arrest on Tuesday, July 15 for attempting to board a plane without proper documentation.
That evening, NPR’s All Things Considered did its best to promote Vargas, with co-host Audie Cornish and media correspondent David Folkenflik engaging in a cheerleading session for the illegal immigrant. Cornish began the segment by lamenting how Vargas is “a Filipino without legal status in the U.S., though he has lived in this country for more than 20 years.” [Click here to listen to the MP3 audio.]
By Tim Graham | July 6, 2014 | 11:08 PM EDT
Jay Carney is doing a round of interviews fresh out of the White House. In The New York Times Magazine, Jim Rutenberg threw briefing-room softballs like this: “Do people in the first row like to showboat?”
Carney said yes: “If you look at the difference in tenor between the on-camera briefings and the on-the-record-but-off-camera gaggles, it’s night and day.” That’s not just due to the TV audience, it’s due to the idea that gaggles are more designed to set up the briefing and the day’s coverage. In this and other interviews, Carney tries sneakily to dismiss the idea that Obama didn’t live up to hise pledge to be transparent.
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 30, 2014 | 12:09 PM EST
Sen. Rand Paul sat down with NPR anchor Audie Cornish on the January 29th All Things Considered, and from the moment the interview began, NPR’s listeners knew the likely outcome: a one-sided attack job.
Anchor Robert Siegel explained that while Cathy McMorris Rodgers gave the official GOP response, Sen. Mike Lee had a Tea Party response, and Paul had an online video response. Cornish began the interview by asking, “How do you convince the independent voter out there who sees this kind of mishmash of responses from various Republicans and no definitive agenda?”
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 16, 2014 | 5:15 PM EST
Benghazi could have been prevented. Those were the findings in a newly released bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that blamed the State Department for failing to protect the U.S. consulate in eastern Libya.
During its nightly All Things Considered program on Wednesday, NPR anchor Audie Cornish and reporter Tom Gjelten spent nearly four minutes discussing the report without uttering the names Obama and Clinton once. Gjelten even made a bit of a gaffe about the Democrats. On Thursday, NPR’s Morning Edition didn’t bother to cover Benghazi, but instead found time to discuss whether or not Florida would decide that medical marijuana should be given to children with seizures.
By Matt Vespa | April 1, 2013 | 5:25 PM EDT
If we're going to have our tax dollars spent on NPR covering political news, can't we at least insist that they report the news accurately?
On Friday's All Things Considered, co-Host Audie Cornish opened an eight-minute segment by saying, “the gay marriage debate arrived at the Supreme Court, and White House efforts to tighten the nation's gun laws ran into serious Republican opposition.” Granted, the Tea Party caucus in the Senate is planning on a filibuster of the anti-gun bill that’s making its way to the floor, but the “serious” opposition comes from within the Democratic Party, as no less a partisan Democrat than Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid noted a few weeks ago.
On March 19, Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post reported that Sen. Feinstein’s assault weapons ban amendment to the gun control bill had, in the words of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “using the most optimistic numbers, has less than 40 votes.”
By Matt Vespa | November 20, 2012 | 11:33 AM EST
During Friday’s broadcasts of the PBS's NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered, liberals continued with their narrative about the fiscal cliff, and how it’s not all that bad. Previously, Mark Shields and E.J. Dionne agreed with New York Times-style Republican David Brooks that they would go off the cliff. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne equated it with the “will of the people.”
But now, the Post’s Ruth Marcus and E.J. Dionne insist that the cliff isn’t a cliff. It’s actually a well-defined “slope." But in the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big f***ing deal.”
By Tim Graham | July 26, 2012 | 5:40 PM EDT
Like all the other Obama-friendly media, NPR on its evening show All Things Considered devoted time to putting Obama’s “you didn’t build that” outburst “in context.” Co-host Audie Cornish promised, “In a few minutes, we'll listen to exactly what the president said in context.” They offered Obama a 70-second soundbite.
But first, Cornish turned to NPR correspondent Scott Horsley, who spent 90 seconds unloading how the businesses the Romney campaign is using to rebut Obama’s remark are all beneficiaries of government largesse:
By Matthew Balan | June 6, 2012 | 8:09 PM EDT
NPR's Tamara Keith forwarded the "war on women" talking point of Democratic senators on Tuesday's All Things Considered as she reported on their proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. Keith spotlighted how "the bill's author...Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland, points out women earn just 77 cents for every dollar made by a man in the same position. She says that's the real war on women."
However, the correspondent omitted that several cosponsors of the bill actually pay their female staffers less than male staffers. She also slanted towards the liberal politicians by playing three soundbites from them, versus only one from a Republican senator.
By Matthew Balan | May 25, 2012 | 7:24 PM EDT
NPR obviously thought the case of Monsignor William Lynn, "the highest ranking Catholic official in the U.S. to be criminally tried for covering up child sex abuse by priests," was newsworthy, as they devoted four and a half minutes to the story on Thursday's All Things Considered. Meanwhile, the public radio network has yet to cover the Monday filing of 12 major lawsuits against ObamaCare's contraception/abortifacient mandate by Catholic dioceses and organizations on the air.
Correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty's report aired mere minutes before the CBS Evening News led with the Lynn case. On Friday, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell took both CBS and NPR to task for playing up the story, while remaining completely silent on the pro-religious freedom litigation.
By Matthew Balan | April 24, 2012 | 6:15 PM EDT
Peter Overby filed a one-sided report on Thursday's All Things Considered about a liberal coalition's campaign against the conservative organization ALEC. Overby cited the "good government group" Common Cause without mentioning the organization's left-of-center ideology. More importantly, the correspondent failed to mention that he is a former employee of Common Cause.
The NPR journalist lined up three talking heads, who all criticized ALEC, while failing to include sound bites from defenders of the conservative group. Overby also omitted that one of the three works for a law firm that represented Common Cause.
By Tim Graham | December 28, 2011 | 11:38 AM EST
NPR marked Christmas morning by whacking at the Tea Party. NPR anchor Audie Cornish handed over her Weekend Edition Sunday microphone to American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein, who gave the Tea Party a B if the goal was to “try and keep government from functioning,” but in “actually trying to make things happen in a constructive fashion, we’re down in the D-minus level, and that’s being generous in the Christmas season.”
Ornstein was much happier a year ago. On the morning of December 23, 2010, he told NPR’s David Welna the country had the “most productive lame-duck session” since the 1940s and Welna added “Ornstein says this lame-duck session was a fitting climax for an amazingly productive 111th Congress.”