Free Republic

WASHINGTON — National Public Radio’s (NPR) ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen released an explanation and apology Monday for a map published on the news organization’s website that erased Israel from the Middle East. On January 24, NPR’s blog Goats and Soda, which covers health and culture issues around the world, ran a piece titled, “What Are You Afraid Of In 2016? Globetrotters Share Their Fears.” The post focused on travelers’ anxieties for the coming year, and included an illustration of the Middle East and North Africa, the region of the world that travelers most perceive as being at risk. “The map portion...

James O'Keefe, who is now felling executives of National Public Radio as he previously trap-doored ACORN, must be a deeply cynical young man. How else could he have imagined that ACORN workers in several cities would cheerfully offer to help him set up brothels using underage Central American girls? How else could he have imagined that executives of National Public Radio (and apparently PBS, though that video has not surfaced as of this writing) would eagerly truckle to a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood? But they did. They all did. As a wise woman once said, "No matter how...

All of the controversy surrounding reporter Juan Williams’ inexcusable firing from NPR reminds me of an experience I had with the network a few years ago. An NPR reporter was doing a story on what provokes people to switch from voting for candidates in the political party of their parents to voting for candidates in a different party. I submitted something to the station via email. They were interested, so they sent a reporter to my home with her digital recording equipment. We sat at the dining room table as I explained how I had not abandoned the political party...

Juan Williams firing may be violation of Foreign Agents Registration Act Friday, 22 October 2010 06:49 Right Side NewsWASHINGTON, DC: On October 21, 2010, the Center for Security Policy sent urgent alert notices to Juan Williams, news analyst for Fox News and recently fired news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR); Vivian Schiller, President and CEO, NPR; Roger Ailes, President, Fox News Channel; Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel; and the Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), regarding a possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), warning that they may have been the target of an...

National Public Radio has joined Snopes and UPI among websites that have changed their archives regarding Barack Obama to bring their stories into alignment, in NPR's case eliminating a statement about the "Kenyan-born" senator "since Obama was born in Hawaii." WND reported recently when the archives of the subsidized broadcast outlet referenced Obama's birthplace as Kenya and called him a "son of Africa." But the records were altered shortly after the WND story was posted, and NPR ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, has explained, "I would hope they would correct factually inaccurate information since Obama was born in Hawaii." She explained further....

Those crazy "birthers" are citing National Public Radio. Really? NPR? Archives for the tax-supported organization reveal that a 2008 report described then-Sen. Barack Obama as "Kenyan-born" and a "son of Africa." NPR's promotion for the story included a brief description of West African correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who "describes the stories that have been exciting, including the U.S. presidential race of Kenyan-born Sen. Barack Obama." After discussing various issues developing in Africa at the time – such as Kenya's violent elections, the attacks in Zimbabwe and the presidency of South Africa – the conversation on the program "Tell Me More" turned...

"The Bottom Line: NPR is using taxpayer money to call those who have participated in Tea party events and their supporters idiots. With the liberal Democrats in Congress in charge of NPR’s purse strings, those who make NPR’s decisions have calculated that they can get away with it scot-free."

Dylan Mortimer's "Public Prayer Booth" was the subject of a controversial report from National Public Radio. A pagan priestess runs into the president of the atheists in a phone booth in New York. No, it's not a joke — it's the start of a controversial report from National Public Radio — and your tax dollars may have paid for it. New York City officials this fall launched an art project called "Public Prayer Booth," which features a modified phone booth rigged up with a flip-down kneeler. Passers-by, if they're in the mood, can bend to their (padded) knee and say...

It finally happened. A reporter for National Public Radio in Los Angeles (89.3 fm)approached me in a parking lot and asked if I would mind answering some questions about the upcoming election and politics in general. (BIG grin!) Her tactic seemed to be that me, a gray haired man, was comfortable with life and was settled for the future. In my profession, I didn't have to worry. Wrong. I told her that we have things to worry about, that there is always someone after our jobs and money. Politics is no different. When she asked about the political situation, I...

After eight years in the wilderness, the left expects a clean sweep in the 2008 election -- the presidency (and with it the federal bureaucracy) and larger majorities in both houses of Congress. Looking ahead, liberals are determined to derail potential opposition to their plans to accelerate the deconstruction of America. Consequently, they have targeted talk radio. Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine is just one facet of their scheme to eviscerate the only part of the media controlled by conservatives. Crucial to an understanding of the jihad against talk radio is this: The left will do anything to gag its...

Jennifer Harper, Washington Times reporter and friend of Newsbusters, gives us a revealing look at how far left our taxpayer funded National Public Radio network has gotten itself these days. Even when they try to go a little toward the conservative side of the debate, they get lambasted by their audience, angered that they had the temerity to air conservative views. Of course, the only reason they would get such a rude reception from their own audience is because they have garnered only a far left listenership as a result of their far left programming. After all, if they had...

To Jay Kernis, senior vice president of programming at National Public Radio and a founding producer of "Morning Edition," the darkest moments in the network's 36-year history probably came in 1983, when it was just days away from running out of money and had to be sustained with emergency transfusions from its member stations and from federal grants. ....... The last two years, however, have been a very different story. NPR has created nearly 70 new jobs in its newsroom, many of them for reporters on newly created beats like police and prisons, labor, international economics, the environment, technology and...

HERE'S the difference between this year's battle over public broadcasting and the one that blew up in Newt Gingrich's face a decade ago: this one isn't really about the survival of public broadcasting. So don't be distracted by any premature obituaries for Big Bird. Far from being an endangered species, he's the ornithological equivalent of a red herring. Let's not forget that Laura Bush has made a fetish of glomming onto popular "Sesame Street" characters in photo-ops. Polls consistently attest to the popular support for public broadcasting, while Congress is in a race to the bottom with Michael Jackson. Big...

When I think about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I can't help but think of Pravda, the official newspaper and mouthpiece of the Communist Party back in the days of the Soviet Union. Now, don't get me wrong. It really isn't any of the similarities in their ideological bent that connects them in my mind. Rather, it is the concept underlying both, the idea that the government ought to be in the news business, the documentary business, or even the entertainment business. When government is involved in producing or subsidizing news coverage or political and historical documentaries — even entertainment...

Most Americans, regardless of their position on the war in Iraq, don't object to the expression "Support Our Troops," but earlier this week one National Public Radio commentator asserted that in at least one context, that phrase is "glib," "self-righteous," "partisan," and "vaguely...Ann Coulterish." He also declared darkly that "analyzing its rhetoric" may constitute "treason." [Tom Johnson, who monitors NPR for the MRC, filed this item for CyberAlert.] This past Monday on All Things Considered, Bob Sommer, whose son recently completed a year's service in Iraq, began his segment: "You would think that the sight of a yellow-ribbon magnet on...

Doh! "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening may have crossed the line with his comment last week to National Public Radio's Terry Gross that Fox media empire almost sued itself. (Now that takes some talent!) The story goes that Fox News Channel execs were none too thrilled last year when the wildly popular cartoon, which is on Fox Broadcasting, featured a fake news ticker mocking the station's conservative rep. The headlines included gems such as: "Do Democrats Cause Cancer? . . . Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay . . . JFK posthumously joins Republican Party . . ." ***snip****...

Media Life'sBest of the BestWhereupon we honor the publishers, editors, magazines and newspapers, producers, shows and web sites that we think have made a differenceBy Gene Ely        Media Life recently celebrated its fourth birthday, making us genuinely old folks on the internet, and as the anniversary approached, we had cause to ponder how much we have learned, and more important, by whom we have been most inspired.   Magazines, Media Life included, may pretend to follow their own star -- it would be heresy to admit otherwise -- but the truth is that each day we see things that...

CLEARLY KRUGMANI'm not going to write a National Review Online piece on Paul Krugman's column today -- this particular fly didn't rise to the level of annoyance to justify a full swat. I've already exposed the conflict of interest implicit in a New York Times columnist using op-ed ink to accuse a Times Company competitor, Clear Channel Communications, of political corruption due to its alleged sponsorship of pro-war rallies. And I will quote extensively from several smart takes from around the web today, taking on Krugman from other angles. There's good stuff here. Reader Paul Philp of Radical Results writes,...

On Tuesday afternoon (2/18/03), I got a phone call from a representative of the National Public Radio show On Point. She told me she got my name from a friend of mine. She asked if I could do a brief piece on the burgeoning field of aspirants for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination for a portion of the show called Radio Diaries. Because I am a professional and only torch bridges when absolutely necessary, I refrained from telling her that I didn't need to have my time wasted by NPR. Again. More often than not, when NPR producers have asked...

National Public Radio aired an apology and retraction more than one year after insinuating that a Christian political lobby group could be the culprit behind deadly anthrax-laced letters sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, told WorldNetDaily that the issue has been resolved "amicably," and her group had no further comment. Anthrax-laced letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's office in October 2001 As WorldNetDaily reported, NPR's David Kestenbaum said in a Jan. 22, 2002, broadcast on the FBI's probe of the anthrax attacks that "one group who had a gripe"...