On All Things Considered on April 4, liberal NPR pundit E. J. Dionne complained that “we've created this whole system of dark money and now we're supposed to be grateful that a lot of rich people can give money under the table and over the table. And the last thing is, a lot of people using the words oligarchy and I think that's an appropriate word.”
On All Things Considered on April 30, NPR campaign-finance reporter Peter Overby aired an entire story about Democrats and former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens complaining about “dark money,” campaign spending from groups that don’t disclose their donors. But on the May 14 Morning Edition, Overby aired an entire story about a left-wing dark money group called the “Democracy Alliance,” and never mentioned once their donor non-disclosure.
Peter Overby
On Thursday night’s O’Reilly Factor, the Fox News host opened the show by attacking former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman for visiting the White House 157 times, almost four times as many appearances as Hillary Clinton. O’Reilly hinted this was a “smoking gun” of the White House running the IRS harassment campaign of the Tea Party.
But guess what: this fact of Shulman’s well-worn path to the White House gates has yet to be reported by ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. O’Reilly can’t believe this number:
Journalists are said to love transparency, at least when it comes to other people. When it comes to others exposing reporters' own conflicts of interest and past histories, however, some take a decidedly different tone.
Ben Howe, contributing writer to both RedState.com and Breitbart.com, has posted video of a brief but instructive conversation with NPR reporter Peter Overby regarding NPR assigning Overby to cover stories about the liberal Common Cause challenging the tax-exempt status of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, even though Overby is a former Common Cause employee. In recent weeks, Overby has written five stories about Common Cause's attack on ALEC.
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.
On Thursday's Morning Edition, NPR's Peter Overby slanted towards a left-wing coalition targeting the conservative group ALEC. Overby trumpeted how Coke and Pepsi succumbed to pressure from the "campaign to put a spotlight on companies that sell products to a public that might object to hardline conservative policies, such as 'stand your ground' laws or requirements that voters show a photo I.D."
The correspondent featured representatives from two of the groups in the coalition- ColorOfChange and Common Cause- and labeled them as a "civil rights group" and a "good government group" respectively. He also made only one passing reference to their political ideology- that they were part of "progressive groups and shareholder activists."