NPR has a Strategic Plan to grow beyond their stereotypical urbane white audience. They announced: “We must expand NPR's audience to reflect what America will look and sound like in 2021 and beyond, attracting a more diverse audience to our journalism and cultural content, with an emphasis on Black and Hispanic audiences on all platforms.”
This would explain in part why NPR would offer black leftists an open-ended publicity platform. Take, for example, the seven-minute interview on Monday’s Morning Edition with former congressman Keith Ellison, selling a new book on his prosecution of police officers involved in the death of George Floyd in 2020. The book’s title is Break The Wheel: Ending The Cycle Of Police Violence. It's "an unforgettable reading experience," says Obama Attorney General Eric Holder in a book blurb.
Morning host Leila Fadel asked every question from the left, down to the legislative advertisements.
FADEL: I remember being in Minneapolis when the verdicts came in, and there was this absolute shock and elation that accountability actually happened. And you at the time that it wasn't justice that day, it was accountability, which is a step towards justice. But since that time, there's been Tyre Nichols, chased by police officers after a traffic stop in Memphis; Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, shot dozens of times; Patrick Lyoya, Amir Locke in Minneapolis, just a few examples. What has to happen?
ELLISON: We need to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act for the signal that the highest body of legislators in our country have said that this is a very serious problem that needs to be fixed. We need to prosecute criminal conduct whether the person had a badge or not.
But that bill isn't just about prosecutions, but lawsuits, to allow individual police officers to be sued over their actions, abolishing qualified immunity protections for law enforcement. So being a police officer would open you up to financially ruinous litigation.
Other than the citation of Amir Locke, there was no mention of how Minneapolis has fared since then, like the funding cuts for police and the dramatic increase in violent crime. That's where a question from the right would come. No one could question if Ellison's record has been harshly anti-police.
Then on Monday night's All Things Considered, co-host Mary Louise Kelly supportively interviewed Muqatee Akbar of Tallahassee's chapter of the NAACP to promote their "Travel Advisory" attack on Gov. Ron DeSantis. At least one question in this interview offered a question from the right:
KELLY: We reached out today to the governor's office for comment, and his press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, sent us this. Quote, "Florida is seeing record-breaking tourism. This is nothing more than a stunt." Mr. Akbar, is this a stunt?
AKBAR: It's not a stunt. I mean, it's a way to draw attention to what has been going on in this state and also to draw attention to the person who has been leading this, which is Governor DeSantis. So we're hoping that this will be a national effort to, like, kind of point to what he's been doing so it doesn't spread throughout this country, which would be disastrous.
NPR is not for the general public. It's tailored and designed for liberals, but they want the liberals to be racially diverse so they can feel better about themselves.
