On Friday's All Things Considered, NPR anchor Robert Siegel began the "Week in Politics" segment with a serious focus on San Bernardino, but he "couldn't resist" creating a tag-team mockery of conservative presidential candidate Ben Carson for pronouncing Hamas like it rhymed with "Thomas." Like Morning Joe, these media elites wanted to claim he said "hummus," which is funnier.
Robert Siegel
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 5, 2015 | 11:57 AM EDT
During appearances on NPR’s All Things Considered and PBS NewsHour on Friday, the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne and the New York Times’ David Brooks eagerly touted President Obama’s blatant decision to “politicize” the Oregon school shooting to push gun control.
By Bryan Ballas | March 24, 2015 | 4:22 PM EDT
The birther issue is back. No, not the Obama birther crazies; the Ted Cruz birther crazies.
In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on Monday's All Things Considered, Sarah Duggin of the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law claimed that Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the Presidency is not “an open-and-shut case” because “we don’t know precisely what the framers of the Constitution meant when they put into Article II that no person except a natural-born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president.”
By Tim Graham | October 14, 2014 | 12:46 PM EDT
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has proclaimed in a 4000-plus-word Rolling Stone article that Barack Obama is one of the most successful presidents in American history. So it’s not surprising that liberal National Public Radio came calling for an interview that aired on Monday night’s All Things Considered.
Krugman’s overarching socialist narrative was that Obamacare is a Earth-shaking landmark, regardless of its popularity. Siegel unleashed an absolutely classic example of the liberal NPR weltanschaunng. A “major benefit” should be automatically, ideologically “welcomed” by the American people:
NPR Celebrates The New Republic And Its 'Joyous Hit Pieces' on Reagan, Will; No Mention of Stephen Glass Scandal
By Tim Graham | September 19, 2014 | 2:42 PM EDT On Tuesday night’s All Things Considered, NPR anchor Robert Siegel awarded a seven-and-a-half minute interview to The New Republic and its editor, Franklin Foer. The magazine is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a new book called “Insurrections of the Mind.”
Siegel found time to ask about a Hendrik Hertzberg book review trashing Ronald Reagan as a “child monarch,” which he described as a “scathing and very amusing read.” He also brought up a Henry Fairlie piece eviscerating George Will, which Siegel called “another very amusing piece.” But he never found time to discuss the New Republic’s enormous scandal with writer Stephen Glass's slew of wildly fabricated articles in the magazine from 1995 to 1998, memorialized in the movie "Shattered Glass.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | September 19, 2014 | 12:35 PM EDT
Talk about tone deaf at National Public Radio. On Thursday’s All Things Considered, NPR reporter Don Gonyea ran a segment on Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) traveling to New Hampshire to campaign with Scott Brown as he seeks to become the next senator from there.
Unsurprisingly, the NPR reporter did his best to play up the “Bridgegate” controversy despite the Department of Justice clearing Christie of any wrongdoing in the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal. The accompanying story on the NPR website blared “Will bridge scandal jam Gov. Christie’s road show?”
By Tim Graham | July 11, 2014 | 8:13 AM EDT
NPR got in the spirit of anniversaries on Thursday night’s All Things Considered by recalling the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco. For analysis, they turned to.....New York Times Magazine contributor Sam Tanenhaus, whose lack of political insight was proven by his 2009 book The Death of Conservatism (broadened from a 2009 New Republic essay titled "Conservatism Is Dead.") Oopsy.
Tanenhaus told NPR anchor Robert Siegel that when Nelson Rockefeller tried to argue against “extremism” at the convention, leftist author Norman Mailer wrote it was like “one of those early moments at the dawn of civilization when one caveman stood off the others and said no, we have to be a civilized society.”
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 Tim Graham | September 29, 2013 | 8:53 AM EDT
NPR took up the NFL as a topic, with author Gregg Easterbrook, a sports junkie and long-time writer for liberal magazines and sites like Slate. On Wednesdays’s All Things Considered, anchor Robert Siegel seemed to sneer at the sport: “Football: part sport, part national addiction, part cult.”
Siegel told Easterbrook “Yours is one of the most conflicted books I've ever read. You love the game. And you document the umpteen ways in which it has forfeited any claim to your love. Why not say ‘Enough, goodbye, football’?” Easterbrook said “I love football and I want it reformed.” Both liberals and conservatives might be shocked that the massively profitable NFL is chartered as a nonprofit:
By Tim Graham | September 27, 2013 | 8:40 PM EDT
Kudos to NPR All Things Considered anchor Robert Siegel, who on Thursday night pressed liberal Sen. Patty Murray to consider that perhaps Democrats might want to bend a little on Obamacare. He cited a Pew poll showing the partisan blame for a shutdown would be 39 percent Republican, 36 percent Democrat.
But it really got amusing when Murray wouldn’t budge – in fact kvetched that Obamacare was based on a “Republican idea” – when Siegel suggested that if Obamacare remained unpopular a year from now, would she then concede something might be wrong? Murray, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, actually suggested the American people are simply unaware they have already benefited:
By Tim Graham | July 23, 2013 | 8:25 PM EDT
The next time a public-radio station goes into pledge-drive mode and begs listeners to chip in $100 for those snazzy premiums like the Nina Totin'-Bag, it would be wonderful if, in the spirit of balance and fairness, they would read off some salary numbers for NPR stars. Do people on modest incomes really want to chip in $25 to make sure an anchor can take home $375,000?
Instead, pledge-drive announcers often plead that stations need donations to pay for program fees, not anchor salaries. Blogger and news-app developer Andy Boyle pored over a few IRS 990 forms and revealed some of the highest-paid public radio poobahs:
Civility Succumbs on NPR: Connecticut Gov Slams Gun Makers and NRA 'Monster,' Imagines Mass Shooting in Iowa
By Tim Graham | April 20, 2013 | 4:52 PM EDT National Public Radio’s brand is soothing and civil news and interviews. That certainly didn’t fit when Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy was interviewed Thursday on All Things Considered after the gun-control measures were rejected in the Senate.
Anchor Melissa Block read back to Malloy his comments that gun makers don’t care if mentally deranged people buy their guns. He not only doubled down on that, calling the NRA a “monster,” but when asked what it will take to pass gun control, he suggested Sen. Chuck Grassley might need a mass-shooting in Iowa, or one in Alabama or Mississippi. Civility went out the window on the evening commute.