Free Republic

National Public Radio likes to think it's about civility (not rudeness) and real news (not fake news). But when it comes to Donald Trump, on Friday night NPR became the promoter of a rude and disparaging joke on All Things Considered. Washington Post columnist and NPR contributor E. J. Dionne passed along a joke from unfunny leftist Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker: that Trump's picks were so contrary to the government's mission that next he would name Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo" to run the DEA. DIONNE: Well, I think you've got Trump naming a lot of people who...

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States promises sweeping change in Washington, D.C., and members of the public broadcasting community are naturally asking what that may mean for us. Let’s start with what hasn’t changed. Three powerful congressional chairmen who support public broadcasting will continue in their key roles in both the House and Senate. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), a champion of public broadcasting since his father served as chairman of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Commission in the 1960s, continues as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has helped us secure...

https://web.archive.org/web/20091020224623/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95550177Trial and Triumph: Stories Out Of Africa by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton October 9, 2008 Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR's Africa-based correspondent, tells why her beat has proved one of the most interesting this year. She discusses the stories that have been painful and devastating for many nations on the continent such as the violent political fights that have led to power-sharing deals. She also describes the stories that have been exciting, including the U.S. presidential race of Kenyan-born Sen. Barack Obama.

[snip] Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. [snip] When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters? Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a...

The news Sunday afternoon that Steve Bannon had been named chief strategist in President-elect Donald Trump's White House sparked renewed interest in a topic NPR covered this summer, the rise of the white nationalist movement, also referred to euphemistically as the "alt-right." Bannon is the former CEO of Breitbart News, an online news site that he previously called "the platform for the alt-right." Happily, from my point of view, the language NPR used to describe Bannon and the movement evolved quickly away from just "alt-right." As standards editor Mark Memmott wrote Monday in an internal memo, "additional words are needed...

National Public Radio ombudsman/public editor Elizabeth Jensen has recommended that the taxpayer-funded radio news service bar future live interviews of conservatives who may have controversial views, following an interview Nov. 16 with Breitbart News’ Joel B. Pollak. Pollak, who serves as Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel, defended its Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon from false and defamatory claims of antisemitism and “white nationalism.” He also turned the tables, pointing out that NPR has “racist programming,” including a story that called the 2016 election results “nostalgia for a whiter America.”

Mr. Trump, please, do something about NPR (National Public Radio) upon taking office. That is one media outlet that can be changed or shut down. This morning I listened to their propaganda and they were talking about some girl who had allegedly been mistreated at school after the election. She and a boy had heated discussions prior to the election and he said something after the election that offended her. They used that incident as a platform to insinuate that Trump supporters all over the nation were persecuting Clinton supporters...when in reality, the exact opposite is true. Please do something...

National Public Radio was still in Obama Mode after the election on Wednesday morning, bringing on black author Attica Locke (who also writes for the Fox drama Empire) who rudely implied each and every Trump support is a racist. NPR Morning Edition anchor David Greene politely suggested not every one, but Locke refysed to admit there was a single non-racist: “I’m out with that.” NPR was a bit sick in headlining this “Novelist Adds Fresh Perspective To Election Result Spin,” as if accusing whites of racism is in any way fresh: DAVID GREENE: The Clinton campaign was very worried about...

Reaction to the video of Donald Trump using explicit language and apparently describing himself forcing himself on women continues to roll in. And it is not good for the GOP nominee. Prominent Republicans are calling on him to drop out and elected officials are running from him and fast. See the full list of Republicans calling on Trump to step down at the bottom on this post. The candidate isn't backing down, telling the Washington Post's Robert Costa in an interview today, "I'd never withdraw. I've never withdrawn in my life." The Post reports, Trump called from his home in...

Friends it's Sunday night again and time to relax. Warm up the tubes for another 4 hours of classic radio Americana. Listen LiveInfo *tonight's show will be available at the "Info" link starting tomorrow.Official OTR Blog of "The Big Broadcast" thread: http://kallmansalley.com/

As the polls have sped in a pro-Trump direction over the course of the past week, Hillary loyalists and their media servants (but I repeat myself) have insisted that regardless of what you see in national polling, the electoral map is simply too difficult for Trump to actually give him a viable path to 270 electoral votes. Our rejoinder has simple: That’s true until national trends become so strong that state numbers start to follow, and suddenly the realities of the map change. I don’t know how sustainable Trump’s current momentum is, but I do know that if it continues...

The comic book slide show, illustrated by Andy Warner, is part of KQED’s series “The Lowdown,” described by the station as “Connecting newsroom to classroom,” and is presented among “lesson plans and education guides” for teachers to use. The “lesson” consists of twelve panels, starting with two panels depicting the Republican presidential nominee commenting on Mexican immigrants and proposing to shut down Muslim immigration. It goes on to explain: “Some Americans find his rhetoric alarming, but it follows a long tradition of anti-immigrant public discourse.” Subsequent panels trace hostility to immigration from Benjamin Franklin in the mid-18th century, to the...

Longtime National Public Radio star Garrison Keillor just finished four decades on state-subsidized radio on A Prairie Home Companion. For almost that long, he’s been an easy example of a pretentious liberal snob, precisely the kind who seriously loathes a Donald Trump. If NPR ever wanted to wonder why they haven’t been granted a Trump interview, it’s because he knows NPR is an elite liberal sandbox for people who congratulate themselves on their marvelous taste and mental acuity. So when Keillor penned an acidulous character assassination of Trump for the Chicago Tribune, the liberals were very pleased. At Vox.com, they...

The news organization says it does not have any legal obligation to provide a comments section because NPR indirectly receives federal funding.

WAMU’s Bluegrass Country History and Origins From 1967 through today, WAMU has been a proud supporter of bluegrass music and its culture, which has been part of the Washington region for many years. A large migration from Appalachia occurred during the 1940s, making Washington the capital of a blossoming bluegrass music scene. Bluegrass became a defining sound for many in the area and, by the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, was a hotbed for musicians such as Buzz Busby, Leon Morris, The Country Gentlemen, and later, the Seldom Scene and Johnson Mountain Boys. Bluegrass music had a limited presence on commercial...

Four years after Charles and David Koch's political network opened its bank accounts to promote Republican nominee Mitt Romney, it's now spending millions to save the Republicans' Senate majority from their presidential candidate. This year's Senate ads will focus on issues involving the candidates, not national issues, said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners Action Fund, a superPAC that is doing most of the network's TV ads. Most of the ads deal with "cronyism and corporate welfare, and/or spending and government over-regulation," Davis told NPR in an interview. "What we see is that there's not a national issue per se...

An organization that played a key role in the White House’s effort to mislead the public and Congress about last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran requested $750,000 for this campaign from a foundation backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, according to funding documents leaked to the public. The Ploughshares Fund, a liberal organization cited by top White House officials as a chief architect of the Obama administration’s campaign to push the Iran deal, requested the cash from Soros’s Open Society Foundations so that it could pay off “experts and validators” of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, according to a funding...

On Dec. 13, 2000, after perhaps the most hotly contested presidential election in American history (and a Supreme Court decision that divided Americans), Al Gore did one of the most important things that keeps American democracy working: he conceded. "Let there be no doubt: While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it," he said in a seven-minute statement. He added, "And tonight for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession." YouTube No one expected a recount process that would drag out until December. But this year,...

On the final night of the Republican National Convention last month, as Donald Trump formally accepted his party's nomination for president, my Code Switch co-host Shereen Marisol Meraji fired off a tweet about how unnerved she was watching Trump's address, with its angry denunciations of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. "This speech is difficult to listen to as a Latina and an Iranian," she wrote. "So much fear-mongering." Another NPR colleague — a person of color, and a friend — quickly texted her and told her the tweet might be inappropriate, work-wise. Shereen considered it, and took her tweet down. But...

Trump urged Russian agents to "find" his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's emails and release them, an unprecedented move by a candidate for president encouraging such a foreign breach. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," the GOP presidential nominee said at a news conference in Miami on Wednesday. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." Trump was referring to the ongoing controversy surrounding the private server Clinton used while secretary of state. Separately, the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week was upended by a release of...