Not satisfied with mere concern–trolling over an NPR employee who decided to be a right-wing martyr and throw away his job to promote right-wing talking points, the Media Research Center decided to attack NPR’s new CEO for having unapproved opinions before she became CEO. Tim Graham — hater of all things NPR — ranted in an April 18 post:
Conservative Twitter is having a ball with woke new NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s tweets drew a New York Times story (which isn’t in the paper). The headline was gentle, about criticism over “Tweets Supporting Progressive Causes.”
Benjamin Mullin noticed one showed Maher wearing a “hat with the logo for the Biden presidential campaign.” (He left out the Covid mask). He also noticed this colorful tweet:
“Had a dream where Kamala and I were on a road trip in an unspecified location, sampling and comparing nuts and baklava from roadside stands. Woke up very hungry.”
NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara rebutted Maher “was not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen.” Now she is “fully committed to NPR’s code of ethics and the independence of NPR’s newsroom.” Maher repeated that line: NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.”
But just like her tweets, our search of Maher’s campaign contributions show she’s a fan of the Democratic Party:
[…]Mullin’s story ended with Maher at a “town hall-style meeting” with NPR employees, and naturally, she was asked about NBC’s ill-fated decision to give a contributor slot to former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was too close to election deniers. Maher proclaimed “I think that the most effective way that I have seen this play out is, if you’re bringing somebody into a story that is pushing a deliberate distortion, be extraordinarily well-prepared to push back and very prepared with the information necessary, the irreducible facts.” Take that, Stacey Abrams?
We assume that neither Graham nor anyone else at the MRC has bothered to look up the political contributions of Fox News executives, let alone draw a direct line between them and the channel’s highly biased coverage.
Meanwhile, the MRC was continuing to take victory laps over the martyrdom of Uri Berliner, the ex-NPR employee who blew up his career to spread right-wing talking points. Curtis Houck gushed in an April 18 post that National Review writer “Jim Geraghty went postal on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) over its handling of now-former senior business editor Uri Berliner’s bombshell essay for The Free Press meticulously dismantling NPR for its decades of liberal media bias.” We don’t recall Geraghty ever complaining about the rampant bias at Fox News. MRC writer Stephanie Hamill ran to a podcast co-hosted by Lara Trump “to discuss the growing scandal at NPR”; no dissenting view was permitted during the podcast, during which Trump declared that NPR’s job was to “carry water for the Democratic Party.” Hamill somehow forgot to mention that Trump had recently been named co-chair of the Republican National Committee, where her job is literally to carry water for the Republican Party, and her appearance on Trump’s podcast was a demonstration of how the MRC is an arm of the RNC.
Graham returned to complain that the Washington Post covered the story without injecting right-wing bias into it:
The Washington Post is covering NPR’s Uri Berliner controversy – now that he’s resigned. The front of Thursday’s Style section ran a story by media reporter Elahe Izadi with the usual framing of “conservative activists” vs. “public radio network.” As if this isn’t “right versus left.” This was the online headline:
Turmoil at NPR after editor rips network for political bias
The public-radio network is being targeted by conservative activists over the essay, which many staffers say is misleading and inaccurate.
Izadi and the Post suggested that your critique is self-discrediting if it can be cited by conservatives.
[…]Izadi’s story was stuffed with NPR reporters and executives huffing that they’re not putting out a slanted left-wing product. They’re an “independent” outlet doing “fact-based reporting.” Disagree with that? It’s a “bad-faith” argument. The liberal bubble is thick.
Given that Graham has so embraced the Berliner story while spreading worn-out talking points that NPR is a “slanted left-wing product” sorta proves the Post’s suggestion correct. Indeed, he continued to whine that right-wing attacks on NPR aren’t taken seriously by anyone outside his thick right-wing bubble:
But it grew worse: Ayesha Rascoe went for guilt by association, that any conservative critique of NPR is responsible for encouraging anonymous numbskulls on the internet:
[…]Izadi’s piece read like a long list of internal NPR complaints without any inkling of what all liberals know: NPR is a left-wing sandbox. It’s “public,” but it’s owned by the Left. Berliner betrayed his colleagues by assailing its “legendary” status.
Graham made no attempt to distance himself from those “anonymous numbskulls on the internet” — indeed, one quoted in the article called a black female NPR host a “DEI hire” who has “never read a book in her life,” a sentiment that pairs well with the MRC’s anti-DEI activism. And with that, Graham continues to prove the Post correct about the unseriousness of right-wing media criticism — made even more so by the MRC’s refusal to criticize the right-wing bias of Fox News.