NPR's longtime loathing of Fox News approached Maximum Shamelessness on Friday night when NPR anchor Ari Shapiro suggested that Shepard Smith abruptly leaving Fox looked like "a purge based on purity." As if NPR has a pile of conservatives on staff for balance? In 2010, NPR fired Juan Williams for an appearance on Fox where he admitted he gets nervous when people wear Muslim garb on airplanes.

The Aspen Ideas Festival has a reputation of being an elitist conclave of liberal academics, journalists, and pundits (with rare exceptions) to pat themselves on the back and how they could work together to advance their left-of-center worldviews. So it was no surprise when the late June gathering held a June 27 panel called “How We Survive Attacks on Journalism” and featured a who’s who from the liberal media.

MSNBC’s self-crowned political referee, Chuck Todd, appeared to throw in the towel on enforcing D.C.’s political rules, or at least the journalistic ones. During the first segment of Monday’s MTP Daily, Todd and his panelists whined about how the media was expected to be impartial with President Trump attacking them. “But look, two generations of us as reporters. We're trained and conditioned to don't show emotion, we're the umpires and the referees.” Todd claimed. “When somebody is insisting on making you the story, what do you do?…I struggle with it.”

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik appeared on the NPR-produced midday show Here and Now on Wednesday to discuss Megyn Kelly’s move from Fox News to NBC. He twice praised her for “cannily” negotiating herself across the media spectrum -- strange new respect which might make a conservative think she’s headed straight to the left. Then came the jaw-dropper: He said she was "desperately hoping to get away from ideology" like....Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters.

Friday's Morning Edition on NPR spotlighted Hillary Clinton's "very few and far between" press conferences during her presidential campaign so far. David Folkenflik pointed out how it's been "more than two months" since Mrs. Clinton was confronted about her lack of pressers, and how she "suggested there are other, better ways to hear from a candidate." Folkenflik contended, "Clinton may have a point." He also speculated that "why that's the case may have something to do with [her] debacle" during a March 2015 press conference where she stumbled over her e-mail scandal.