NPR's Scott Horsley carried water for the Obama administration on Thursday's All Things Considered as he covered the President's green energy executive order. All of Horsley's soundbites during the segment came from the Democratic chief executive and two boosters of his latest environmental policy. True to form, the slanted NPR correspondent failed to include any criticism of the order in his report.
Scott Horsley
By Tim Graham | January 22, 2015 | 11:34 AM EST
There wasn’t a lot of fact-checking of Obama’s State of the Union address, but NPR promised they would be eyeing the factual claims. In a ten-minute segment on Wednesday's Morning Edition, they investigated claims they insisted what Obama said was “true,” if a matter of political dispute.
But in "fact-checking" Sen. Joni Ernst's GOP response, NPR's Scott Horsley played a slippery game with the estimates of jobs created by the Keystone pipeline proposal.
By Tim Graham | August 24, 2014 | 8:51 AM EDT
NPR is again feeling Barack Obama’s pain, with a Friday All Things Considered story they headlined “For Obama, August Is the Cruelest Month.” Even the French are mocking his time off. The media now insist Obama is victimized by bad news, not that he's done anything wrong that would create bad news.
His approval ratings are lowest in August, suggested NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley, but never fear, “the President's numbers have tended to rebound soon after Labor Day.” Horsley insisted that Obama has vacationed far less than George W. Bush:
By Matthew Balan | September 23, 2013 | 6:45 PM EDT
On Monday's Morning Edition, NPR's Scott Horsley boosted President Obama's push for new gun control measures at the Sunday memorial service for the victims of the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. Horsley played four soundbites of Obama bemoaning the apparent lack of action on this issue, while including just one clip from the NRA's Wayne LaPierre.
The correspondent also asserted that two pro-gun control state legislators in Colorado were "recalled by voters after a campaign fueled by the National Rifle Association." In reality, gun control supporters spent seven times more money in the recall than gun rights supporters, as reported by CBS This Morning earlier in September.
By Ken Shepherd | August 9, 2013 | 3:09 PM EDT
President Obama is taking questions from the news media. In the comments section, tell us what you would ask if you were a White House reporter.
I'll be covering the questions journalists ask of the president below the page break. As always, I'm doing this on the fly, so transcriptions of questions may be imperfect:
By Matthew Balan | May 9, 2013 | 5:58 PM EDT
NPR's Scott Horsley filed an unashamedly slanted report on Thursday's Morning Edition about the former national field director for Obama's reelection campaign trying to boost voter turnout among Hispanics in Texas as a means of helping Democratic candidates. The only talking heads that Horsley featured during the segment were the former Obama campaign official, Jeremy Bird, and a fellow of the left-wing Center for American Progress.
The correspondent mentioned only in passing that "some Texas Republicans are skeptical that Democrats will be competitive in their state anytime soon."
By Matthew Balan | August 23, 2012 | 6:57 PM EDT
Scott Horsley's report on Wednesday's All Things Considered could have mistaken for a three-and-half minute ad from a pro-Obama super PAC. Horsley played up how "Mr. Obama often tempers his speeches with a dose of modesty about what government can and can't do" and how the President "pushes back strongly against the anti-government rhetoric of his GOP opponents."
The NPR correspondent also sympathetically noted that "part of the President's challenge...is persuading Americans that the people government is taking care of really are our own." Horsley filled the segment with talking points from Obama's campaign and with soundbites from the Democrat and his campaign, and failed to include any from his opponents.
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 | July 13, 2012 | 6:36 PM EDT
On Friday's Morning Edition, NPR's Scott Horsley favored Obama supporters in his report on the battle for Virginia's electoral votes, playing three soundbites from them, versus only one from a Republican official in the commonwealth. Horsley also played up how "the demographics are shifting in the Democrats' direction."
The correspondent led the segment by noting the Democratic incumbent's planned stop at a high School in Virginia Beach. He wasted little time before playing clips of a recent graduate and his mother, who are both supporters of the President:
By Matthew Balan | June 26, 2012 | 6:54 PM EDT
NPR's Scott Horsley amped up a campaign rally for President Obama to biblical proportions on Tuesday's Morning Edition, as he singled out an Obama supporter who clearly was in awe of the incumbent Democrat, to the point of practically deifying him.
Horsley set the scene, pointing out how "the rain had stopped, and a little sunshine was peeking through the clouds," and how the supporter attributed this change in the weather to the President: "See what his voice does? It clears up the weather, too. It clears up the economy, creates jobs, helps education, and straightens out the weather." [audio clip available here]
By Matthew Balan | April 12, 2012 | 7:19 PM EDT
NPR's Scott Horsley could have been mistaken as a spokesman for the White House or President Obama's campaign on Wednesday's All Things Considered, as he defended the Democrat's record on the economy. Horsley also claimed that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's claim that on women losing the bulk of the jobs over the past three years was "not really the whole story."
The only expert the correspondent cited during the segment was a low-level economist at the Labor Department, who stated that "more recently, we've seen more jobs being lost in education and health services and in government, which historically is where women tend to hold the majority of jobs." Horsley placed more of the blame on Congress (which is partially controlled by Republicans) than Mr. Obama: "The President has been pushing for billions of dollars in additional aid to keep teachers in the classroom, but Congress has not been willing to go along."
By Matthew Balan | February 8, 2012 | 1:36 PM EST
On Tuesday, NPR somehow thought a poll commissioned by abortion behemoth Planned Parenthood on the controversy over an ObamaCare birth control mandate was newsworthy enough to play up on its website. But later in the day, on All Things Considered, a show that reaches millions in the U.S., the media outlet spotlighted how the "new polling...suggests most voters, including Catholics, support the measure."
Correspondent Scott Horsley noted the "survey released today by Public Policy Polling," but completely failed to mention Planned Parenthood's name during his report. Horsley also highlighted a disturbing strategy from the pro-mandate camp without: "Supporters of the new policy are belatedly trying to refocus attention in a more popular direction, away from religious freedom and towards women's health care."