NPR

Brent Bozell mentioned that NPR "Fresh Air" host read from her own contributor John Powers for The American Prospect liberals on how many ways Rachel Maddow was fabulous. The long tribute is worth more attention.

Powers began: "I can’t say for sure when it happened—it was after Barack Obama’s swearing-in yet before Keith Olbermann got suspended for giving money to Democrats—but at some point it began dawning on people that the face of MSNBC was Rachel Maddow." That, Powers thinks, is excellent, and Maddow is the Obama era's "defining liberal newsman": 

If it’s an important Christian occasion, you can predict National Public Radio will seek out an atheist expert. In 2008, NPR marked Good Friday by interviewing John Dominic Crossan, who believed the body of Jesus was not resurrected, but was perhaps eaten by wild dogs.

On Palm Sunday, NPR found it was the perfect day for atheist scholar Bart Ehrman, who has a new book out titled "Did Jesus Exist?" NPR weekend All Things Considered anchor Guy Raz was a big fan: “There are probably few people in the world who know more about the life of Jesus than Bart Ehrman. He's a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where his lectures are among the most popular on campus.” Raz was such a fan he even told Ehrman later that he had bought his lectures on tape:

NPR's Tamara Keith filed a one-sided report on Monday's Morning Edition about Mitt Romney's "apparent shift in emphasis, if not an outright reversal" on the issue of energy policy. Keith cited the "liberal news site Think Progress" as one of her main sources for her report. She also turned to a former aide to Democrats John Kerry and Deval Patrick without giving his political/ideological affiliation.

Fill-in host David Greene spotlighted in his introduction to Keith's report how "the GOP candidates have seized on price spikes as a line of attack against President Obama, largely saying the answer is more domestic oil drilling. But one of those candidates, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, used to have a position somewhat contrary to that."

On Friday's Diane Rehm Show distributed across America by NPR, the host could not stand Republicans getting praised -- the Paul Ryan budget to be precise.

Doyle McManus, a columnist and former Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, acknowledged, "this is a huge, ambitious, bold budget that would restructure the tax system. It would lower the top tax rate to 25 percent. That would be a great gift to upper-income families...You have to give Republicans credit for doubling down, sticking to their guns and sticking to the Tea Party government-cutting and deficit-cutting proposals that they made two years ago in the face of a lot of public skepticism." Diane Rehm wasn't having it:

On Friday's Daily Rundown on MSNBC, anchor Chuck Todd asked about the sour outlook for ObamaCare: “There’s a lot of panic at the White House, to be frank. They really thought this wasn’t going to be that hard of a case....Now they’re biting their fingernails. Should they be biting their fingernails?”

NPR’s Nina Totenberg responded: “Yeah, they should be biting their fingernails." Totenberg insisted that everyone thought this was constitutional, a "piece of cake." But the Bush appointments were "very, very, very conservative." This is not the first time she's loaded the "very" boat:

The mainstream media is reporting that donations to Susan G. Komen for the Cure have dropped substantially in the wake of its decision and subsequent reversal to defund Planned Parenthood.

According to the MSM, this must be due to disgruntled Planned Parenthood supporters, for instance this March 23 CBS News story:

On Wednesday's Morning Edition, NPR's pro-ObamaCare shill Julie Rovner predictably lined up backers of the contested law. Rover again cited the Kaiser Family Foundation and failed to mention their liberal leanings. She also turned to a former Clinton administration official, without identifying her as such, and played five total clips from liberals, versus only two from a conservative.

The correspondent hyped the "the potential impact on the relationship between the federal government and the states" if the Supreme Court struck down the controversial legislation, and that "virtually any program in which the federal government gives money to the states with conditions attached" could be at risk.

Possibly in response to NewsBusters readers who passed on our item on the string of Pope Benedict-mocking jokes on NPR's game show "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos tells NewsBusters and other critics: lighten up, or be compared to radical Muslims. Isn't the ombudsman supposed to advocate for the listeners, not denounce them?

"If we keep jokes about the pope off-limits, we create a silencing effect that is far more damaging than the jokes themselves. We threaten to become like the intolerant extremists now most notoriously bedeviling the Muslim world, though other religions suffer from strains of fanaticism as well." Say what?

Younger political junkies may not remember it, but watchers of the 1992 Clinton campaign can recall "The War Room," a documentary filmed inside the Clinton campaign. There's a new DVD of the film, out so National Public Radio just had to praise it.

On the program "Fresh Air" Wednesday,  film critic John Powers described George Stephanopoulos as "a sweet but overbearing altar boy" while James Carville is "a flat out movie-star" like...a wisecracking snake in a Pixar movie."

The media are falling over themselves to relay a salacious report that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands may have surgically castrated "as many as 10 young men" over a half a century ago, in the 1950's.

Perpetual Catholic bashers such as the New York Times, NPR, and the Boston Globe are having a field day trumpeting the tale.

The message from these outlets is clear: "The Catholic Church is bad, bad, bad. The news gets worse every day!"

A closer examination of the facts, however, reveals that there is a lot more to this story than meets the eye.

On Friday's Inside Washington on selected PBS stations, Charles Krauthammer floated his curiosity about what would happen if the Republicans chose a new candidate for the fall election if Romney or Santorum couldn't get to the magic delegate number. Mark Shields joked about how it would be unfair to pick to someone who hasn't slogged across the country and then made a fat joke: "Chris Christie, have a little ice cream, and come in."

There goes svelte Shields again. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg promised the elite media would savage a new Republican candidate and pick apart everything "he" has ever done or said (no females are apparently allowed in this exercise):

Legalizing suicide is a controversial subject, but not to the liberal media. On Monday night’s All Things Considered, NPR honored Oregon activist Peter Goodwin, a major force in passing Oregon’s “Death With Dignity Act,” for employing his own law and taking his own life with some pills at 83. There was no airing or acknowledgment of the opposing side, those who believe that life should end with natural death.

Culture of death? Banish the thought. Reporter Julie Sabatier’s tone was glowing: “As he was about to turn 83 last fall, Peter Goodwin still had an elfish glint in his eye. You can hear his heritage in his lilting voice.”

NPR's Nina Totenberg got a much-needed education Friday on the hypocrisy of the media's treatment of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's comments about Georgetown University law student and women's rights activist Sandra Fluke.

When the Inside Washington panelist criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for not saying "something less than complimentary" about Limbaugh, Krauthammer smartly responded, "When Obama speaks about Maher’s misogyny as he takes a million dollars for his campaign, then I’d expect Romney to denounce somebody else" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered newscasts skipped covering tens of thousands protesting abortion in the “March for Life” in January, but on Wednesday night, NPR highlighted a dozen protesters of Sen. Marco Rubio, including illegal aliens.

Reporter Greg Allen began: “In Miami, a dozen young Hispanic men and women gathered outside Senator Rubio's office last week to send a message” that Rubio was "Tea Partino," not Latino:

NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos is just making a cartoon out of himself in trying to be responsive after the Juan Williams firing and the Meet-a-Radical-Muslim-for-Lunch scandal. He went to discuss the idea of liberal bias on NPR with....Ralph Nader. "Nader, a five-time presidential candidate, has been calling me in recent months to hold my feet to the fire, and so I went to meet with him."

Naturally, Nader claims NPR is the home of capitalist pigs: "While the political right has been beating the drum for years that NPR is too liberal, Nader says that is not the true picture at all. He says that it is progressives on the political left, like him, who are being excluded from NPR's airwaves." Obama and Nancy Pelosi? They're in the middle.

On Thursday's All Things Considered, Julie Rovner, NPR's resident ObamaCare flack, claimed that the U.S. Senate rejecting an amendment protecting religious liberty was "closer than the 63 percent majority that supports the contraceptive coverage requirement" from the federal government, according to the poll from the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation. The organization is an oft-used source for Rovner.

The group obtained the 63 percent figure by asking a question that omits the religious liberty component to the firestorm: "In general, do you support or oppose the new federal requirement that private health insurance plans cover the cost of birth control?" A Pew Research Poll from mid-February included that issue, and found that 48 percent supported an exemption for religious groups, versus 44 percent in support of the mandate.

As NewsBusters has been reporting, America's media currently feel it's their job to make sure soaring gas prices don't negatively impact Barack Obama's chances of reelection.

NPR's Nina Totenberg did her part on Friday's Inside Washington saying, "Politicians don't control this" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR is supposed to be a very, very civil space to talk. But apparently not when NPR stations air the weekend talk show of PBS star Tavis Smiley and his Marxist professor friend, Cornel West. Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer was disturbed by West alleging the media and the politicians only care about the "vanilla side of town" and the hosts were "laughing hysterically at a 'kill Whitey' joke." Their guest was 1970s Saturday Night Live star Garrett Morris. Maloney asked, "Can you imagine jokes about killing black people airing on NPR?"

Julie Rovner, NPR's on-staff shill for ObamaCare, filed an unashamedly one-sided report on Friday's Morning Edition about the controversial Obama administration mandate that forces religious institutions to include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and birth control.

Rovner turned to only two individuals for her pro-mandate report: Peggy Mastroianni, general counsel at the federal government's own EEOC, an organization which recently got slapped down in a unanimous Supreme Court decision concerning the rights of houses of worship in hiring and personnel matters; and Sarah Lipton-Lubet, a lawyer for the notoriously far-left American Civil Liberties Union, who until May 2011, worked for the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights.

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."

Is a Planned Parenthood poll really newsworthy? On Tuesday, NPR spotlighted a PPP poll commissioned by the abortion giant which found that a majority apparently supports a federal government mandate on birth control that violates the religious liberty of Catholic institutions. The network also trumpeted how "the poll...suggested that Mitt Romney...could pay a price at the polls" for opposing the mandate.

Writer Frank James began his article for NPR.org, "Poll: Majority Of Voters Support Birth-Control Mandate," by pointing out that the ObamaCare regulation was "controversial." But he didn't acknowledge that the poll was "done on behalf of Planned Parenthood" until the second paragraph, and left out any kind of ideological label for the left-wing organization.

The Obama administration announced plans to force Catholic schools, hospitals, and other church-affiliated organizations to subsidize sterilization, abortifacients, and contraceptives in their health insurance plans. Bizarrely, this is causing the media to wonder if the exact opposite is happening. Time.com posted this odd headline on Monday:  "Birth Control: Could It Be Illegal Again?"

On Thursday, NPR talk show host Diane Rehm echoed that science-fiction question: "Are we creeping towards a wiping out of the availability of birth control?" NPR health correspondent Julie Rovner replied "I'm not sure I would say that." Because it's not exactly supported by any present facts?

People at National Public Radio boast about themselves as a network for the smart people. So why must they try to tell smart people that a man who writes a book called “Rules for Radicals” offered “nothing terribly ideological” in his activism?

In an attempt to "correct" Newt Gingrich on Monday night’s All Things Considered newscast, NPR correspondent Ina Jaffe became merely the latest in a line of liberal-media specialists in selling the Opposite of Reality: that Alinsky wasn’t a leftist, and that besides, the conservatives are the ones using Alinsky’s radical rules:

Scott Pelley simply got it wrong on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, when he claimed that the Republican presidential candidates "have finally arrived in a state that was very hard hit by the great recession and has been suffering for a very long time. The unemployment rate here is about 10%." In reality, South Carolina, the state that held the last GOP primary, has about the same unemployment rate, at 9.9% [audio available here; video below the jump].

Two weeks earlier, on the January 17 edition of his CBS Evening News program, Pelley introduced a segment with John Dickerson, who was in the Palmetto State, which referenced the national unemployment rate. But neither on-air personality mentioned the specific unemployment rate inside the state:

American Public Media (formerly American Public Radio) says that its "Marketplace" program "focuses on the latest business news both nationally and internationally, the global economy, and wider events linked to the financial markets."

Okay. One would expect, given the track record of leftist and communist movements and causes in ruining economies and creating unspeakable human misery, that if "Marketplace" were to do a segment on, say, Saul Alinsky, that it might note his antagonism towards free-market capitalism, and how damaging his "Rules for Radicals" recommendations have been in practice. Instead, those listening to yesterday's Alinsky segment got nothing but pap and misdirection orchestrated by a far-left labor prof:

Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, and his sixth speech to a joint session of Congress since taking office in 2009. But there’s no need to spend a lot of time wondering about what the media will say after The Great One speaks, since — like a gaggle of corporate yes-men — journalists have gushed over every one of these major addresses.

“It was a big and bold speech,” ABC’s Terry Moran applauded on Nightline shortly after Obama’s budget address in February 2009, his first before Congress. “It was his debut and he wowed us,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews enthused the next day on Hardball.

In a delicious example of irony, NPR’s Nina Totenberg on Friday falsely claimed that there were more people on food stamps under George W. Bush than are using the food assistance program today.

This marvelously came seconds before she told the panel of PBS’s Inside Washington that “facts don’t matter” to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR  harped on Mitt Romney's "provocative tax detail" on Wednesday's Morning Edition, highlighting that the GOP presidential candidate "disclosed he's in the same low tax bracket as the billionaire [Warren] Buffett." Correspondent Scott Horsley later used clips from President Obama to accent liberals' class warfare spin about the rich paying a lower tax rate than "millionaires and billionaires."

On CBS This Morning, correspondent Jan Crawford also referenced the Buffett tax issue eight minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour, during a report on the Republican presidential race in South Carolina. She used the same label as the NPR journalist: "He [Romney] revealed that he pays a relatively low rate on his investment income. That's the same low rate that billionaire Warren Buffett pays."