National Public Radio launched a “special” series Monday on its news program Morning Edition, “The State of the First Amendment: The Right from Which All Other Rights Flow." In an 11-minute story, anchor Leila Fadel cast nasty aspersions against conservative free speech advocates. They're....hate speech advocates?
It would have been nice to see the taxpayer-funded media actually support the First Amendment after several years in which it sided with social media outlets shutting down the free expression of conservative views. Unfortunately, that's not what we get.
But first, some left-wing paranoia.
LEILA FADEL: We've been talking to Americans across the country who are worried --worried they may be losing a fundamental right. So many are so nervous talking about it that our conversations would start like this...
FADEL: Would you be comfortable with us using your full name?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I'd rather not.
This is a common shtick at NPR -- "our leftist sources won't use their names because Trump." She rounded up a few purported horror stories from the new Trumpian anti-free speech era, but stuck two warning labels on a group that liked Trump’s free-speech moves, Moms for Liberty.
FADEL: A sixth-grade teacher forced to remove an Everyone is Welcome Here, sign.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: I've lost quite a lot of sleep over this matter and have struggled with it deeply.
FADEL: A conservative parental rights group called Moms for Liberty that the Southern Poverty Law Center deems extremist.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I think people in the administration really want to see changes that will open up the government more, and that's good for all Americans. I have a lot of hope.
That would be the left-wing, intellectually discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which purports to fight racism and hate in America but took the side of hateful radical Islam when it put Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who risked her life as a Muslim apostate, on a “hate list” as an “anti-Muslim extremist” for criticizing radical Islam’s brutal treatment of women. And SPLC is still trying to scare elderly liberals out of their money.
NPR not only dug up Joseph McCarthy, a reliable bogeyman for NPR’s lefty listeners, but running an archive audio clip of the man himself in the name of smearing Trump while piling on the paranoia.
FADEL: Will your views be next? Is President Trump a protector of the First Amendment, or is he the biggest threat to it since the McCarthy era in the 1940s and '50s, when fear mongering around Soviet and Communist influence led to the political persecution of academics and leftists?
JOSEPH MCCARTHY: One communist on the faculty of one university is one communist too many.
For NPR, Trump's executive orders against government censorship marked a turning point for the worse
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I've stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back.
FADEL: In anticipation of this moment, social media companies were already backing away from fact-checking. And as Trump celebrated, certain voices re-entered the mainstream. And a warning -- what you're about to hear is hate speech.
What’s with the silly trigger warning about “hate speech,” as if she’s talking to a class of six-year-old children and not supposedly sophisticated NPR listeners?
NICK FUENTES: Around Blacks, never relax.
LAURA LOOMER: Yet, the invasion continues. Our country has been sold out to foreigners of the lowest form.
DAN NUNN: Let's make sure to honor all of our transgender mass shooters, as the International Transgender Day of Visibility is upon us.
Well, a quote from white supremacist Fuentes is an easy call for being offensive. But the other two are, in the first case,– America being invaded by foreign criminals -- a strong but defensible opinion, and in the second case, a clear reference to the under-covered story of Audrey Hale, the biological woman who shot dead six people at a school in Nashville, including three children.
Fadel actually included a scholar who is not a knee-jerk anti-Trumper. Besides former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger she turned to Jonathan Turley, legal scholar on the First Amendment and frequent commentator on Fox News, although Fadel clearly had a bigger issue with Turley’s conservative-leaning comments than with Bollinger.
While Bollinger saw Trump as a danger to free speech, Turley said “he thinks this president could be an unexpected advocate."
FADEL: His alarm actually grew under President Biden over what he says was collusion between the government, social media companies and academia to shut down conservative speech around polarizing issues like elections, public health and beyond.
TURLEY: You had a level of cooperation, coordination between the government and these other entities, that the effect was that thousands were censored.
Fadel tried to dismiss his concerns.
FADEL: It's a charge often made by Republicans and Trump allies. Last year, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that social media companies were pressured to take down posts about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.
Speaking of online censorship, Fadel skipped her own outlet’s arrogant dismissal of the actual news story of Hunter Biden’s damning laptop, a story censored by social media just three weeks before the 2020 elections.
