National Public Radio may be funded by taxpayer dollars, but its audience is firmly on the Left. It’s literally New York Times Radio, as The Daily podcast from The Times airs on almost 300 NPR stations every weekday. Inside this airless liberal silo, they can grow very arrogant about how they Save Democracy.
On April Fools Day, host Michael Barbaro brought on Times political reporter Jim Rutenberg to discuss “Ronna McDaniel, TV News, and the Trump Problem.” Rutenberg should be best known for his infamous 2016 front-page editorial announcing objectivity was officially going in the trash can (as if it was vibrantly observed before).
Rutenberg described the Trump Problem: "If you're a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation's worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?"
Rutenberg proclaimed the “objective” media must now be “oppositional.” Then The Times unfurled the arrogant motto “Truth. It’s More Important Now Than Ever,” and put it on T-shirts.
This created another “Trump problem." The Republican half of the country would dismiss them as Democrat messengers (if they weren’t dismissed before).
Republican listeners could break out a middle-fingers salute at the end of this podcast. They discussed how temporary CNN boss Chris Licht thought CNN “put on a jersey, took a side,” which they obviously did.
Barbaro concluded after NBC's Ronna McDaniel debacle, “a network like NBC perhaps doesn’t put a jersey on, but accepts the reality that a lot of the world sees them wearing a jersey.”
Rutenberg implausibly claimed, “no one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not. If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing.”
What these men are really saying is that liberal journalists want to have their cake, and eat it, too. They want to launch their flagrantly righteous takes against Trump and his voters, and they want to be celebrated as nonpartisan at the same time. “We’re wearing True Facts jerseys!”
Incredibly, this wasn’t the only NPR program on April Fools Day preaching this sermon. On 1-A out of D.C. station WAMU, host Todd Zwillich also disparaged Licht’s approach, especially the Trump town hall with Kaitlan Collins.
“I think that you're seeing increasingly, luckily, journalists who cover politics realize they're not in the old game anymore, that neutrality doesn't only not serve them anymore, but doesn't serve the public anymore,” Zwillich proclaimed. “It doesn't mean being partisan. It doesn't mean you're for one side. It means you're for truth.”
They seize on Trump's election denial as if it's the only issue. Both shows never touched on the Hunter Biden laptop or any other issue where the media suppressed true facts. NPR executive Terence Samuel infamously said “We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” It was a “pure distraction.” Then The Times and other liberal outlets acknowledged the laptop was real…in 2022.
This never came up because both shows failed to include any conservative guests. Because when you’re for the “true facts,” why should the “lying” side get any airtime on tax-funded radio?
