Terry Gross

NPR Twice Promoted David Weigel as Chronicler of Conservative Extremism
By Tim Graham | June 25, 2010 | 3:23 PM EDT

The idea that Washington Post writer David Weigel was supposed to be a conservative -- and not merely someone reporting on the conservative movement -- was clearly not based on a review of Weigel's output. Weigel didn't just deconstruct conservatives for the Post, but was also presented twice recently by National Public Radio as a wise man assessing the fringiness of conservatives. Last October, they wanted to know how strange Fox News was, and whether they could be blamed for Tea Party protests. Weigel called their influence "massive." Weigel typically suggested Fox and Glenn Beck were not "realistic" in painting President Obama as connected to ACORN and the SEIU.

On NPR's Fresh Air on February 23, before he joined the Post, Weigel reported on CPAC and the Tea Party and embraced host Terry Gross's idea that conservatives shouldn't be big fans of government-enhancing Dick Cheney: 

GROSS: So if the conservative movement is glad that Bush isn't around anymore, and if they think that he embraced big government, why was Dick Cheney such a rock star at CPAC? I mean, if anything, Cheney is the person most responsible for the expansion of the powers of the executive branch.

WEIGEL: Well...

Daily Show's Samantha Bee: Mocking Catholics 'Joyful for Me, Pure Pleasure for Me'
By Tim Graham | June 20, 2010 | 7:08 AM EDT

This is a little old, but it fits a pattern: Comedy Central's hostility to Christianity (and Catholics in particular). Daily Show joke-correspondent Samantha Bee was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross on June 2, as she and Gross giggled over The Daily Show's pro-abortion joke at the last GOP convention, what Gross said was "interviewing people, trying to get them to say the word 'choice,' which you thought had basically been eradicated from their vocabulary." Then, after discussing Bee's teenage habit of stealing cars and selling them and having wild parties, they turned to how it is "pure pleasure" to mock the Catholic Church:  

GROSS: You've done a sketch or two satirizing the Catholic church and the pope. And you went to Catholic school...

BEE: I did.

NPR Promotes Left-Wing Theory of 'Astounding Growth' of Militias and Connects Them to Tea Party, Talk Hosts
By Tim Graham | April 1, 2010 | 7:50 AM EDT

The leftist Southern Poverty Law Center is a National Public Radio staple in analyzing right-wing militia groups -- and then connecting them to the Tea Party movement and conservative talk-show hosts.

Imagine a conservative group connecting liberal talk-show hosts and protesters to radical leftists like...Bill Ayers. Would they get a baldly promotional interview on NPR? No. But NPR Fresh Air hostess Terry Gross both aided the SPLC with a 37-minute promotional interview on March 25 -- and aided Bill Ayers in trashing Sarah Palin days after the 2008 election.

NPR promoted SPLC's Mark Potok and his narrative of "astounding" growth of militias in the Obama era thanks to "ostensibly mainstream" conservatives on All Things Considered on Tuesday night.

NPR Skips Over Publicity for Conservative Authors, But Makes Time for a Dominatrix
By Tim Graham | March 13, 2010 | 6:59 AM EST

Conservative authors rarely get interviewed on National Public Radio. (For example, there was no air time for Mark Levin's best-seller Liberty and Tyranny.) When they do, it can be like Bill O'Reilly's sour and hostile experience with Fresh Air interviewer Terry Gross. On Monday, Gross provided a much kinder 35-minute forum for someone apparently more respectable and noteworthy than conservative writers:

Melissa Febos' new memoir, Whip Smart, details the four years she spent working as a dominatrix. Febos enacted fantasy sequences, spanked grown men and verbally humiliated them for $75 an hour in a dungeon located somewhere in midtown Manhattan.

Febos, who writes that she got started in sex work to pay for a drug habit, tells Terry Gross that working in a dungeon felt like "being in a womb."

Did Conservatives Actually Scream 'Hang Eric Holder' in New York?
By Tim Graham | February 17, 2010 | 3:38 PM EST

Many conservatives remember the myth of protesters yelling "Kill him!" at Obama during 2008 campaign rallies. The Secret Service couldn’t find any proof when a Pennsylvania reporter claimed to hear it. Well, last week on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, former Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer (now with The New Yorker) was claiming there were "Hang Eric Holder" screams at a December protest against holding a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad trial in Manhattan.

A Nexis scan of December 5 and 6 news accounts of the protest by AP, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the New York Post, the Times of Trenton, and several North Jersey newspapers found no trace of a suggestion of such a nasty call. Even Daphne Eviatar of the left-leaning Washington Independent didn’t report it.

Here’s what Mayer claimed on the Gross show, as she explained how Scott Brown exploited fears of terrorism in his Senate race:

NPR Prepares for Christmas With Snarky Feminist Satire Songs
By Tim Graham | December 23, 2009 | 3:45 PM EST

Here’s how National Public Radio celebrates the week before Christmas, with cutesy ukelele songs about feminism. On Monday, the nationally distributed talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross rebroadcast a 2007 interview with leftist singer Nellie McKay (pronounced to rhyme with rye), who has a new album out of Doris Day covers. McKay began the replayed segment by performing a song called "Mother of Pearl" that's sort of a cousin of "Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter." The lines in parentheses were usually spoken, as the voice of sexist conservatives:

Feminists don't have a sense of humor (Tsk, tsk, tsk)

Feminists just want to be alone (Boo, hoo, hoo, hoo)

Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor

They have a tumor on their funny bone

So far, so good, but then the feminist satire kicks in:

They say child molestation isn't funny (Ha, ha, ha, ha)

Rape and degradation's just a crime (Lighten up, ladies.)

Rampant prostitution, sex for money (What's wrong with that?)

Can't these chicks do anything but whine? (Dance break!)

NPR's Gross Explores (and Laughs at) 'Strange' Fox News
By Tim Graham | October 1, 2009 | 8:37 AM EDT

The folks at National Public Radio really don’t like Fox News. They don’t like NPR people on Fox News. When the NPR talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross wanted to discuss Fox News and its role in nurturing tea-party protests, they gave 40 minutes to David Weigel of the left-wing site The Washington Independent. It had the usual tone of exploring the dark side of the moon. Gross led off the show discussing the new conservative protests:

It's a right-wing movement that has been interrupting town hall meetings, staging tea party protests, and challenging Obama's citizenship. The new influence of Fox News TV host Glenn Beck was demonstrated by the 9/12 March on Washington, which he promoted on his show.

To NPR, apparently every Tea Party protester is a birther, and every conservative question at a town hall meeting was an "interruption." They discussed his article on the recent Values Voter Summit for Christian conservatives first, and then turned to the topic of Fox:

NPR's Terry Gross Suggests Rush Limbaugh Damages GOP By Saying 'Extreme Wild Things'
By Tim Graham | July 10, 2009 | 5:37 PM EDT

Terry Gross, the female Philadelphia-based host of the National Public Radio show Fresh Air, notoriously tangled with Bill O’Reilly in 2003 by asking O'Reilly to respond to Al  Franken's attacks on him (two weeks after a giggly interview with Franken himself).

Evangelical Spokesman Resigns After Telling NPR Gay Marriage, Abortion are Negotiable
By Tim Graham | December 12, 2008 | 7:29 AM EST

The Washington Post reported Friday that Richard Cizik resigned his position as spokesman and vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals after he declared he was "shifting" toward supporting civil unions for homosexual couples in a December 2 National Public Radio interview.

NPR's Terry Gross Asks Bill Ayers About Palin-Prodded Death Threats
By Tim Graham | November 20, 2008 | 3:50 PM EST

Unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers got a "distinguished professor" reception for most of the hour on NPR’s nationally distributed show Fresh Air with Terry Gross on Tuesday. But Gross was much more hostile to Bill O’Reilly back in 2003 than she was to Ayers.

Snobby Airs: NPR's Terry Gross Goes After Palin's 'Extreme' Religious Views
By Tim Graham | October 19, 2008 | 8:06 AM EDT

On Wednesday, the NPR talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross aired an interview about Sarah Palin with Michael Carey, columnist and former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News and public broadcasting host (of a political talk show called Anchorage Edition).

Gore: Deadly Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming
By Jeff Poor | May 6, 2008 | 5:13 PM EDT

It was bound to happen eventually - someone from the global warming movement tying the recent Myanmar cyclone to the so-called climate change phenomenon.

Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR's May 6 "Fresh Air" broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross about the release of his book, "The Assault on Reason," in paperback.

"And as we're talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated," Gore said. "And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China - and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."