Michel Martin

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 contained language that the liberals inside PBS and NPR have rarely tried to observe, to seek "fairness and objectivity in all programming of a controversial nature." Apparently, there was no controversy about gays in the military, since NPR's coverage of the end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy consisted of five segments adding up to almost 27 and a half minutes interviewing elated gay men and lesbians.

Was there anyone inside the military or outside who disagreed? Was there anyone who feared what would happen going forward, what next step on the gay agenda would be imposed? NPR had no time for any dissidents from the PC line. They were a publicity network for one side.

 

On July 18, NPR refereed a debate between Ryan Bomberger, CEO of www.TheRadianceFoundation.org, and Rev. Carlton Veazey, President and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

I thought Ryan did great, but he reported afterward he would have scored even more points had NPR not severely edited him. “NPR’s liberal colors shone though as they cut out minutes worth of my responses yet kept every single word he spoke intact,” wrote Ryan in a follow-up report.

Ryan identified where and what the edits were in this YouTube video of the interview...

 

an did great, but he reported afterward he would have scored even more points had NPR not severely edited him. “NPR’s liberal colors shone though as they cut out minutes worth of my responses yet kept every single word he spoke intact,” wrote Ryan in a follow-up report.

Ryan identified where and what the edits were in this YouTube video of the interview...

 

Eleanor Beardsley slanted towards opponents of France's ban on the niqab, or Islamic face veil, on two NPR programs on Monday. Beardsley played several sound bites from French Muslims during her Morning Edition report who forwarded the notion that the law contributes to an "anti-Muslim climate" in the country, and agreed with a guest on Tell Me More who labeled the ban "sinister."

The correspondent, who is based in France, led her report on Morning Edition with a clip from the imam of a mosque in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris, who stated, "You know there is an Islamophobic climate right now and the police don't like to see us praying in the streets." She also turned to another Muslim man who singled out the niqab ban for contributing to this apparent climate:

Managing Editor's note: National Public Radio (NPR) has fired longtime analyst Juan Williams for admitting he gets nervous on a plane when he sees a person dressed in Muslim garb. What follows is a statement from NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell.

Juan Williams has done nothing wrong. What he said echoes what the vast majority of Americans believe. It’s their tax dollars that fund NPR. But NPR is ignoring them. Instead, they are kowtowing to the agenda of radical anti-Americans like CAIR, and doing the bidding of George Soros, who hates Fox News with a passion.

And since when did NPR have standards? Here are just three examples of left-wing statements 100 times more outrageous than what Juan Williams said, with no reaction from NPR:

TV Newser reports that fired CNN anchor Rick Sanchez has broken his public silence and offered his apologies for calling Jon Stewart a "bigot."

On October 4th, I had a very good conversation with Jon Stewart, and I had the opportunity to apologize for my inartful comments from last week.  I sincerely extend this apology to anyone else whom I may have offended.

As Jon was kind enough to note in his show Monday night, I am very much opposed to hate and intolerance, in any form, and I have frequently spoken out against prejudice. Despite what my tired and mangled words may have implied, they were never intended to suggest any sort of narrow-mindedness  and should never have been made.

Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute found it strange that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists was so quiet (add to that their Facebook page seems more concerned about "net neutrality" in the last few days): 

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, during a discussion of the Ground Zero mosque controversy, after Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson recommended that the mosque be moved as a compromise, NPR’s Michel Martin – formerly of ABC News – compared relocating the mosque to similarly treating a Catholic church after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Even though McVeigh -- who described himself as "agnostic" despite his Catholic parents -- timed the bombing to coincide with the second anniversary of the Waco disaster to signal that he was motivated by revenge, Martin ridiculously responded: "Did anybody move a Catholic church? Did anybody move a Christian church after Timothy McVeigh – who adhered to a cultic, white supremacist cultic version of Christianity – bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma?"

Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Sunday, August 22, Reliable Sources on CNN:

On the NPR talk show Tell Me More on Monday, host Michel Martin referred back to her joint declaration with Cokie Roberts last week that Don Imus and Chris Wallace mocked Sarah Palin as a "tool of social control."

That wasn't exactly how Martin remembered it: "I made the point that Palin is also a Fox contributor and a member of the Fox family, as it were, but that didnt spare her from being subjected to this sexist palaver. Cokie made the point that the lure of the boy's club often trumps ideology."

But what made Martin's commentary stand out was her bold declaration of how conservatives unfairly dominate the national conversation, and how Fox people mocking NPR doesn't mean they won't continue to champion the liberal point of view:  

Isn't it funny how people who bully people for a living get really annoyed when somebody takes issue with it? You're not only supposed to let them push you around, you're supposed to like it.

It might seem a little shocking to hear two NPR women standing up for Sarah Palin. But on Wednesday's Tell Me More talk show, host Michel Martin and analyst Cokie Roberts took offense at a weeks-old joke on the Imus show on Fox Business about Palin's first Sunday-show interview on Fox News Sunday:

DON IMUS: When you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap?

CHRIS WALLACE: One can only hope.

Roberts was "appalled" and Martin saw in this ribbing a "tool of social control" to put Palin in her place:

David Shuster may be on his way to CNN, and the cable network may be realizing that it needs the likes of David Shuster -- a hyper-partisan liberal -- if it wants to compete with MSNBC.

The New York Observer reported today that CNN shot a pilot for a new show co-anchored by Shuster, at right in a file photo, and Michel Martin, an NPR reporter with a lower profile, but a noteworthy history of liberal bias.

I wrote a post on Wednesday noting that cable news generally caters to a more political audience. I posited that CNN's supposed attempts to cater to the "center" were not only inconsistent with the network's routinely liberal reporting, but in fact self-destructive, as they try to carve out a market that really isn't there. Apparently CNN got the memo.

As usual, ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored Friday’s March for Life protest. (Even the Associated Press skipped over the tens of thousands marching.) But the PBS NewsHour at least offered a brief from news anchor Hari Sreenivasan:

Thousands rallied in Washington in the annual March For Life. It was the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion. The anti-abortion crowd rallied at the White House, and then moved on to the Supreme Court. A handful of abortion rights supporters were also present.

NPR covered the trial on the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller on Friday night (as well as Friday morning), but had no March for Life mention. On the afternoon talk show Tell Me More, host Michel Martin interviewed Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life. But the pro-life movement was harshly smeared by late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart in an interview that led off that same show:

On Monday's Tell Me More, NPR talk show host Michel Martin offered a few supportive thoughts about Sarah Palin: she "was somebody you wanted to see in the game" as a working mother, and "She seemed practical, honest, unfazed and down-to-earth, exactly the qualities people hope newcomers in general and hopefully women will bring to public life." Apparently, though, these warm feelings evaporated within days. When she "trashed" Barack Obama at the Republican convention, she became "just another Mean Girl" on a rampage:

But then for some reason, maybe it was the glare of the national spotlight, maybe she was that way all along, Palin seemed to morph pretty quickly out of Superwoman into just another Mean Girl — ridiculing people who don't make the same choices she does, and then crying about it when the rest of the world bit her back.

There’s a huge hole in all of the public discussion about the reimposition of a "Fairness Doctrine" or a return to "localism" on the talk-radio format: What about National Public Radio? Liberals would like to "crush Rush" and his conservative compatriots by demanding each station balance its lineup ideologically. But since when has NPR ever felt any pressure to be balanced, even when a majority of taxpayers being forced to subsidize it are center-right?

Why no Fairness Doctrine attention to NPR? It is because those preaching "fairness" on the radio are hypocrites.

Conservatives argue that the media’s liberal bias drives people to talk radio for an opposing viewpoint. Limbaugh jokes: "I am the balance." But new numbers from NPR suggest its ratings may be nearly as imposing as Limbaugh’s: The cumulative audience for its daily news programs – "Morning Edition" and its evening counterpart, "All Things Considered" – has risen to 20.9 million per week.

Former ABC reporter Michel Martin has a history of one-sided bashing of Clarence Thomas. In 1994, the reporter then known as Michel McQueen helmed a 60-minute special on the ABC prime-time magazine Turning Point highlighting women who charged Anita Hill was right and Clarence Thomas was wrong. Pro-Thomas colleagues at the EEOC were not interviewed.

Outraged now at the new Clarence Thomas autobiography My Grandfather’s Son, Martin used her new forum, the National Public Radio talk show Tell Me More, to interview Angela Wright, a disgruntled employee that Thomas fired, who then denigrated him on NPR as "a mean-spirited, nasty, you know, fairly unstable person" who carried around "his self-loathing and his hatred for anything black or civil rights-oriented or affirmative action." She claimed that the Democrats never wanted her to testify. But the actual record from the hearing clearly shows that Sen. Joe Biden read a letter to Wright saying he would honor her request if she wished to testify, and then attached a statement from Wright saying "From Angela Wright, 'I agree the admission of the transcript of my interview and that of Miss Jourdain's in the record without rebuttal at the hearing represents my position and is completely satisfactory to me.'"

Last Thursday, on her new show "Tell Me More," NPR talk show Michel Martin held another one of those non-debates on whether the Republican front-runners should have submitted to the debate organized by leftist PBS host Tavis Smiley. She invited both former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and former Gingrich pollster Frank Luntz to come on and denounce the GOP no-shows for political stupidity and moral cowardice. Luntz insisted "Tavis Smiley is an incredible host, and he is completely fair." But while Martin pointed out that Smiley had prevailed on Steele to help cajole Republicans to attend for several months, she failed to tell listeners that Luntz was hired by Smiley to do polls after the PBS Democratic candidates debate in June. This is not a little-known fact. Liberal Democrat groups like Media Matters had a fit that Smiley hired a Republican pollster for a Democratic debate, and (unsuccessfully) demanded PBS fix it.

In refusing to interview anyone who felt that PBS and Tavis "George Bush is a serial killer" Smiley were offering a hostile forum for Republicans, Martin merely said the RNC failed to send a spokesman – as if there aren’t many conservatives outside the RNC building on Capitol Hill who would accept that opportunity. That's a lazy way to avoid having a contentious debate, instead of a double-beating.

Declaring “it's not far-fetched,” movie director Spike Lee affirmed on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, that he believes Louis Farakhan’s allegation that a levee was destroyed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in order to flood the nearly all-black ninth ward. Lee contended that “a choice had to be made, one neighborhood got to save another neighborhood and flood another 'hood, flood another neighborhood.” ABC News reporter Michel Martin chimed in with how “anybody with any knowledge of history can understand why a lot of people can feel this way, that that's a reasonable theory.” But she went on to dismiss the theory, prompting Lee to demand: "Presidents have been assassinated. So why is that so far-fetched?" To hearty applause from the Los Angeles audience, Lee asked: "Do you think that election in 2000 was fair? You don't think that was rigged?" Lee argued: “If they can rig an election, they can do anything!" Lee soon got into a heated exchange with MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson as he raised the “Tuskegee experiment” as proof the U.S. government is capable of any abuse of blacks. Lee made similar allegations on CNN back on October 11, as recounted in the Washington Times. What he said on HBO and CNN follows.

Video excerpt: Real or Windows Media

On Friday’s Washington Week on PBS, Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher informed the panel that “the little bit we know about” the “record” of Harriet Miers “indicates kind of a, you know, bridge-builder, moderate” and “so there's deep concern among conservatives, some of whom have called for her to withdraw." That prompted befuddled fill-in host Michel Martin, of ABC News, to seemingly presume moderation and consensus-building should be higher values than conservative ideology: "Is that a dirty word, 'bridge-builder,’ 'moderate,’ consensus builder? I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that those were epithets." Gwen Ifill is the usual host of the show. (More complete transcript of the exchange follows.)