MoveOn.Org Adores NPR, Conducts E-Mail Campaign Against Fox Getting the Helen Thomas Seat

For anyone who does not think National Public Radio is a taxpayer-funded propaganda organ for the left, consider that the radical leftists at MoveOn.org are conducting an e-mail campaign to assign the "Helen Thomas seat" in the front row of the briefing room to NPR a "real, public" news organ, not that Fox "propaganda machine." They think NPR can offer a better cloning of Helen Thomas:

Dear MoveOn member,

As early as Sunday, the White House Correspondents' Association will decide which news organization will be awarded a recently-vacated front-row center seat in the White House briefing room. The contenders? National Public Radio, Bloomberg News—and Fox.

Yes, Fox—which we all know is actually a tool in the right-wing propaganda machine, not a legitimate news organization. They simply don't deserve the best seat in the White House briefing room—a seat held for years by journalist Helen Thomas until she retired recently.

So we're joining our friends at CREDO Action to petition the Correspondents' Association to award the seat to a real, public news organization: NPR.

Can you sign the petition today? Tell the Correspondents' Association to give the best seat in the briefing room to NPR, not Fox.

The petition says, "Give Helen Thomas' former briefing room seat to NPR, which has provided public interest coverage for decades—not Fox, which is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a legitimate news organization."

Then, please forward this email to your friends and post on Facebook and Twitter so we can spread the news faster. Already 140,000 people have signed onto this call through CREDO Action. Help us get up to 250,000 before the meeting on Sunday!

Winning this seat would give Fox legitimacy it simply doesn't deserve—not after years of race-baiting, smears against progressives and Democrats, and spreading right-wing propaganda 24/7.

So instead we're calling on the Association to award the seat to one of our nation's premiere news organizations, which has served the public for years and currently reaches an audience of 27 million.

Media Matters is encouraging the petition, naturally, and reports "They have collected more than 80% of their targeted 200,000 signatures. Read the petition text below and add your name to the more than 162,000 signers".

NPR's current White House correspondent is Ari Shapiro, who "married" Michael Gottlieb in San Francisco in 2004. A friend gushed: "Mike and Ari are the first of my friends to get married and I'm thrilled for them. This movement is even more exciting when it is your friends in the front lines."

Major Garrett of Fox News is assigned to the second row, and NPR is in the third row. In reality, both news organizations are going to be addressed in every briefing they ask a question, if not every presidential news conference. A front row seat for Fox News could make it more noticeable if Obama tried to skip over them. But for the most part, the leftists are simply trying to deny any prestigious symbolism for Fox News that would come from the front-row seat.

Are we really supposed to believe the ad makers of "General Betray Us" are great judges of news organizations? They already put a dent in the reputation of the New York Times by gaining a reduced-rate ad for their slimy attack on Gen. Petraeus, now Obama's man in Afghanistan. If NPR ever wanted to build a "fair and balanced" brand, this certainly doesn't help them.