On Saturday, NPR’s Weekend Edition celebrated atheist author Philip Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy he wrote for middle-schoolers, a sort of anti-Narnia series. Anchor Scott Simon celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first book in this trilogy and interviewed Pullman as he sat a BBC studio in Oxford, hinting they have "maybe the mark of real excellence."
Scott Simon
By Tim Graham | November 2, 2014 | 8:40 PM EST
In the October 13 edition of Time, they asked radical-left black professor Cornel West if he voted for Obama in 2012, and he said he couldn’t vote for a “war criminal.” NPR promoted this radical leftist on Saturday morning’s Weekend Edition, but in six minutes and 22 seconds, never mentioned the president or the 2014 elections.
This syrupy interview promoting West’s book Black Prophetic Fire ended with anchor Scott Simon utterly failing to notice (again) that the leftist Ferguson narrative of Evil Cop Shoots Gentle Giant is facing a serious clash with facts.
NPR's Weekend News Shows Skipped Any Journalism on Obama Scandals -- But Found Six Minutes for Rhino Horns
By Tim Graham | May 13, 2013 | 2:07 PM EDT
How enthusiastic can NPR be in avoiding the emerging Obama scandals? Try this: So-called “All Things Considered” aired no features on Benghazi or the IRS on Saturday or Sunday. (This excludes on-the-hour news updates.) But they found time for six minutes on the trade in rhino horns.
It was more ridiculous on “Weekend Edition” Saturday and Sunday – they also skipped both. NPR correspondent Michele Kelemen reported on Secretary of State John Kerry for 4 minutes and 22 seconds without a single word about Libya. Somehow the State Department’s Benghazi fiasco wasn’t listed as a “thorny issue” in the Middle East:
By Geoffrey Dickens | January 10, 2012 | 10:18 AM EST
This week the Today show is celebrating 60 years of being on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting the NBC morning show’s liberal agenda. From past anchors like Bryant Gumbel blaming “right wing” talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and Katie Couric trashing Ronald Reagan as an “airhead,” up through current anchor Matt Lauer wondering how Barack Obama would “manage the expectations” of being called “The Messiah,”
MRC analysts have been documenting the worst the show has offered.
The following are 10 of the most obnoxiously liberal examples of Today show bias from the MRC’s archive; for even more bias from the Today show anchors please visit the Profile in Bias pages of Gumbel, Couric, Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry. (Top 10 Video Countdown after the jump)
By Tim Graham | July 17, 2011 | 11:31 AM EDT
NPR is clearly relishing the Murdoch newspapers scandal in Britain. Its Weekend Edition headline on Saturday was "News Corp. Dynasty Crumbles From the Top Down." Anchor Scott Simon interviewed Financial Times columnist Clive Crook and asked if the scandal will cause sell-offs: "How big a dent that they represent in his holdings and his influence?...Can you foresee them having to make incisions in their holdings?" Just say it: What will happen to Fox News?
Crook said it was quite a "catalog of disasters" with closing down News of the World and now accepting resignations from top News Corp./NOTW executives like Les Hinton and Rebekah Brooks. But he also said the really tight relationship in Britain between politicians and the newspapers came about because...Britain has "largely succeeded in getting money out of politics." It dramatically increased media power. No wonder the liberal media favors it:
By Tim Graham | April 3, 2011 | 4:03 PM EDT
If you thought of a place on the radio dial on a Saturday morning where Sen. Tom Coburn would be pressed as squishy, it probably wouldn't be NPR. But on Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR anchor Scott Simon asked some basic questions about a budget deal, and then shifted to Grover Norquist's criticisms of Coburn for being a tax hiker. This could be seen as quite an anti-Grover segment, with how strongly Coburn attacked him:
SCOTT SIMON: Let me ask you about a debate that was brought to my attention this week. You're -- Oklahoma, I think can fairly be identified as a farming state. You're opposed to ethanol subsidies.
TOM COBURN: Well, I'm specifically opposed to the ethanol blending credit, which is just one of the subsidies that we give for ethanol.
SIMON: This has opened up, as I don't have to tell you, a pointed disagreement with Grover Norquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform.
NPR Anchors Line Up to Deny Bias; One Says the Charge Insults NPR-Listening Conservatives as 'Stupid'
By Tim Graham | March 23, 2011 | 7:23 AM EDT Newsweek’s Howard Kurtz suggests “What’s Killing NPR” is its failure to strike back at conservative charges of liberal bias: “Staffers flown in for a recent meeting in Washington groaned when executives said it would be too risky for them to aggressively defend NPR, and that perhaps they should get media training for Joyce Slocum, who took over on an interim basis after the firing of CEO Vivian Schiller.”
Kurtz quotes a series of angry NPR anchors who think they are the essence of fairness and balance. Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep insisted “I actually get accused of being a conservative as often as I get accused of being a liberal.” Kurtz asserted in an NPR survey last year, 37 percent of listeners described themselves as liberal or very liberal, 25 percent as middle of the road, and 28 percent as conservative or very conservative—a split he said was very much on Inskeep’s mind. “If you’re saying we’re a liberal propaganda front,” he says, “you’re insulting the intelligence of millions and millions of conservatives who listen to us every day. You are saying they’re stupid.”
NPR's Scott Simon: Shootings Just 'Didn't Happen When 63 Million Watched Walter Cronkite Every Night'
By Tim Graham | January 16, 2011 | 5:26 PM EST Long past the time when it was debunked that Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner might have been motivated by talk radio or TV, NPR was still entertaining the "vitriol" attack line, as anchor Scott Simon interviewed liberal St. Petersburg Times TV critic Eric Deggans on Saturday morning's Weekend Edition. Simon even bizarrely claimed that this kind of violence didn't happen when "63 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night."
First, that exaggerates Cronkite's nightly audience (it's more likely the networks might have attracted 63 million between the three of them). But does Simon really believe that in the Sixties and Seventies, there was never a mass shooting with six deaths in America? Or say, a Jonestown mass suicide of Americans (preceded by a congressman being shot there)? Or the shootings of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, George Wallace, or two attempts at Gerald Ford? Facts were being mangled:
SIMON: People have observed over the past few years, for example, that, you know, this just didn't happen when 63 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. But I don't know, hasn't colorful and even intemperate speech been a part of politics and journalism?
By Tim Graham | December 13, 2010 | 8:29 AM EST
That taxpayer-funded leftist sandbox called National Public Radio promoted the latest work/wreck of “progressive art” on Saturday morning's Weekend Edition. In San Francisco, they're twisting the classic ballet The Nutcracker into a radical-left jeremiad. Anchor Scott Simon announced nonchalantly: "'Tis the season for The Nutcracker. One production in San Francisco is decorated with a grab-bag of liberal political causes. In the Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie, the ice caps melt during the Dance of the Snowflakes and Clara is an undocumented Latina maid."
Liberal reporters think liberals aren't at all noteworthy so they get no label. When the media elite announces something has "liberal causes," it's extremely leftist. Reporter April Dembosky interviewed the show's writer and director, Krissy Keefer, without mentioning she ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi from the far left, demanding the impeachment of Bush in 2006:
KEEFER: We are a political dance company in that we try to make work that is socially relevant, that is responding to the real ideas and real needs of people today in the community.
By Noel Sheppard | November 27, 2010 | 5:14 PM EST
It appears that at NPR, even a fat lip for the President is to be heralded as a crowning achievement furthering his prestige and street cred when dealing with despots like Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
According to Scott Simon, a president with a "gnarly, vivid scar" might even be able to intimidate China's rulers into halting their currency manipulation (audio follows with partial transcript and commentary):
By Brent Bozell | October 27, 2010 | 12:28 PM EDT
National Public Radio’s firing of Juan Williams tells you all you need to know about the radical, and thoroughly intolerant, Left. Juan Williams is a liberal, but still, he isn’t liberal enough. The idea that he would acknowledge a mere thought of discomfort at the idea of people in “Muslim garb” on airplanes in a post-9/11 world became a firing offense. It didn’t matter that he prefaced it with all the perfunctory and politically correct disclaimers about not being a bigot and we shouldn’t blame all Muslims for terrorism.
Fired.
Today’s Left is void of any principles whatsoever. They can be as astonishingly offensive and insulting as they want toward Christians, and no one gets punished. The indefatigable Catholic League provides the documentation.
By Tim Graham | July 18, 2010 | 5:16 PM EDT
Someone at NPR.org is feeling wildly optimistic about the political direction of President Obama and the Democrats. A transcript from Weekend Edition Saturday was headlined "Obama's Very Good Week." They summarized: "Obama scored a couple of significant victories during the week, earning a weekend break in Maine with his family. But it's not clear whether his wins will improve public approval." Not clear? When NPR anchor Scott Simon and White House reporter Scott Horsley discussed the polls, it wasn't a good week in the world of public opinion. It looked "terrible for the Democrats." Find the sunny side of this:
SIMON: And the skepticism about the president's economic program, if you take a look at the polls, its not just limited to his obvious political opponents, is it?
HORSLEY: Yeah, for some time now we have seen doubts about the stimulus program - widespread doubts. This week the White House released a report saying that the stimulus had saved or created as many as three and a half million jobs so far. But what the public is really focused on is that still painfully high unemployment, and slower private sector growth than any of us would like.