As NPR faces the prospect of being defunded by conservatives, ABC's The View marked Jewish American Heritage Month by honoring former NPR anchor Susan Stamberg and NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, touted as the 'Queen of Leaks,' meaning leaks from Democrats seeking to damage Republicans.
Over treacly music, Sarah Haines hailed Stamberg as the first female anchor of a national broadcast news program (All Things Considered) with a “neutral and relatable tone.” Then she gushed over Totenberg for winning seven awards from the American Bar Association, as if that group isn’t a gaggle of Democrats.
Haines oozed that “Nina was dubbed the Queen of Leaks by Vanity Fair” is also being honored by a pile of leftists. So today, it's time to review how Totenberg & Co. were partisans the whole time.
In reality, Totenberg has been a queen of leaks from Democrats seeking to damage Republican Supreme Court picks. She succeeded in ruining Douglas Ginsburg in 1987, and in the cited article in Vanity Fair, they explained how Totenberg made an agreement to credit Legal Times for breaking news, but they she refused to give them credit on air. Sleazy.
Totenberg failed to get Thomas in 1991, but after she dragged Anita Hill out into the open to testify, she repeatedly showed her agenda in live coverage of the Hill-Thomas hearings. She touted the wonderful accomplishments of leaks, and constantly touted Hill's credibility and so-called corroborating witnesses. She relished the unproven claims of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers in 2018. But she and the "public" media never made trouble for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She wrote an entire book relating how she and Ginsburg were the best of pals in a book titled Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships.
When Paula Jones came forward in 1994 and accused Bill Clinton of crude sexual harassment (involving indecent exposure), Totenberg suggested Jones was in it for the money. (Anita Hill signed a two-book deal with Doubleday in 1993 for an estimated $1 million plus.) NPR had no serious interest in 1999 when Juanita Broaddrick went on Dateline NBC and asserted Bill Clinton raped her at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. While NPR’s Nina Totenberg broke Anita Hill’s unproven charges into the mainstream press, she had no story on Broaddrick. NPR broadcast only one report on Morning Edition on February 25th, the day after the NBC interview.
Now remember, a White House spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that President Trump will send Congress a promised $9.4 billion rescissions package next week, seeking to claw back about $1.1 billion in advance funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is inspired by decades of leftist propaganda and double standards.
These tales can be found in an ancient paperback titled Public Broadcasting & The Public Trust, edited by David Horowitz and Laurence Jarvik. We all wrote critiques of public broadcasting for what they called The Committee for Media Integrity.
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