Posted by
Mike Bates on Monday, December 07, 2009 11:28:05 AM
The Obama Administration isn't the only government-funded entity
campaigning against Fox News. "NPR reporter pressured over Fox role"
headlines an article by Josh Gerstein on Politico's Web site. It begins:
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the
network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her
regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the
network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by
NPR’s executive editor for news, Richard Meyer, and the network’s
supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives
said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan,
and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.
At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen
no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue
appearing on the network, the source said.
NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special
Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White
House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by
painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.
One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during
the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO
that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news
outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal
discussions at NPR.
Later in the article, an NPR spokeswoman is quoted:
"There’s no relationship between the White House’s criticism of Fox and any discussions about Fox that we’re having.”
Liasson has appeared
on Fox News for a dozen years. Has the concern over her relationship
with Fox News been building over all this time and did it take this
long for NPR executives to take action? And possibly a bigger
question: When did NPR become so concerned about media bias?