A few days ago, against my better judgment, I listened to an extreme leftist radio show called 1A on our local NPR station. I wanted to hear the interview with the CBS report Norah O’Donnell who had done an extensive report on sexual assault in the military.
The initial story was excellent and needed covering. The military definitely had a problem with dealing with sexual assault. Commanding officers were prone to covering up the assault rather then prosecuting criminals. Reports were ignored if the CO thought the criminal was a good soldier, and those who reported the assault were often blamed. It is a definitely a topic that needed to be covered, and still needs to be fixed.
It was the last few minutes of the article where they left the useful information and became lost in leftist fantasy. O’Donnell spoke the normal platitudes about how she had always wanted to be a reporter. And how she always reported the facts without taking a side (right….). In the next sentence she explained that with the rise of Trump she had been compelled to take a side. Check. Then, within two sentences, she was speaking about how they routinely fact checked all politicians. Right. Still waiting on the Joe Biden fact check on how his build back better program won’t add to the deficit. The 1A interviewer and O’Donnell even today don’t realize how she belied herself within just three sentences.
Anyway, we all know the details here. But here is the problem, and I admit I have written on this before. O’Donnell is the anchor person for CBS evening news. She is supposed to be the epitome of the accurate reporter, ignoring all opinions in trying to get to the facts. Yet even she, the anchor of one of the most important news desks in the country, still doesn’t understand that you cannot both report accurately and take a side and attempt to arbitrate truth and falsehood. Her job, as a reporter, is to report what she sees and what others say. As soon as she steps out of the role of reporting the news and attempts to fact check she has sacrificed impartiality and taken a side.
No one who actually listens to or reads any of the so-called fact checks mistakes them for anything other than what they are, an expression of disagreement voiced as the liberal opinion being the correct opinion and the conservative opinion being wrong, regardless of the facts.
CBS of course is a privately owned company, so in theory they can report what they want. That is, If you ignore the laws that actually do require them to attempt to speak the truth. (Libel laws). But that brings us to NPR. NPR does receive public funds, and also receives donations from listeners and other groups. As a non-profit, it is exempt from income taxes, meaning it is supported by both public money, tax-deductible donations, as well as the advantage of no requirement to pay income taxes. With all this taxpayer support, perhaps it should attempt to represent more taxpayers. In the story today, not only did the !A interviewer accept with a straight face O’Donnell’s claim of impartiality, but she actually asked about how hard it was now that reporters did have to resort to advocacy with all the lies coming out of (right wing) politicians.
Now, we go to the next problem with NPR being a non-profit. Twice in the last two days NPR news has reported about how a Gilead study showed that a Gilead produced drug was ‘highly effective’ against COVID. The drug in question? Remdesivir. Evidently NPR can’t be bothered to do its own research, because there are literally dozens, perhaps even over a hundred studies at this point that show that far from being ‘highly effective’, any effect that remdesivir has on COVID is miniscule and possible non-existent. Would anyone care to guess if NPR gets some tax-free money from Gilead?
The next NPR story that caught my ear today was actually funny. They were talking about mask mandates, and how many places were finally eliminating them. Towards the end, the announcer commented that ‘conservative opposition to masks was driven by politics, and Democrat support for masks was driven by science.’ Really, she said that. I laughed out loud. Actually, she had it exactly reversed. Conservatives went to the trouble of examining the available studies and evidence on masking at the start of the pandemic, rather than passively accepting the idea that ‘father Fauci knows best’. And we found out quickly that there were lots of studies and analysis about masks. They came out every few years, and they all found pretty much the same thing. Only the K and N 95 masks were useful, and even those were only useful when the protocols were followed very carefully, which happens only in hospitals and other health care facilities.
The whole masking business reminds me of the claims that came out about how liberals were more highly educated than conservatives. Until the actual studies were done, and it was discovered it was just about even, with conservatives slightly better educated.
In truth, the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives moderate that education with a big slice of common sense. You don’t need a college education to know that when COVID is spreading across every state, mask mandate or not, that mask mandates don’t work. You don’t need a college education to know that men are bigger, faster, and stronger than women.
And then we come to gun control. NPR is a clear advocate of every gun control measure that is proposed. They continue to spread the fairy tales of ‘assault weapons’ in civilian hands. They refuse to publish the fact that almost all gun crimes are committed with illegal acquired pistols. And never. Ever, report on pistols being used for self-defense. There are very good reasons why I gave my daughter a pistol and taught her how to shoot it. A pistol doesn’t care how big you are. As a minor side note, the obvious sexism and actual misogyny at the core of the Democratic party has no clearer expression than in their support of gun control. The most effective way for a woman to defend herself against a man is with the pistol that Democrats want to take away from her. All of this is common sense. So obviously Democrats and their propaganda arm at NPR don’t believe it.
So, I am sorry if this has wondered around a bit. NPR is a publicly supported network, supported by both our donations and an exemption from income tax. They need to do better. At least attempt to report with accuracy.
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Thank you for teaching your daughter to defend herself. As a 25 year cop, I’ll say it, when seconds count, the police are only a few minutes away.