Thought Police Pressure NPR Reporter over Fox Appearances

An NPR reporter who has appeared regularly on Fox has been pressured by the NPR higher ups to not appear on Fox:

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, Dick 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.

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A Fox spokesperson declined to comment on specific questions about Liasson. However, the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said in an email: “With the ratings we have, NPR should be paying us to even be mentioned on our air.”

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“This has been a building thing. There has been a concern in the upper regions of NPR that Fox uses Mara and Juan as cover” to defuse arguments that the TV network is populated with right-wing voices, said the source, who asked not to be named.

Personally I love the agument that having liberal commentators is just a smokescreen. So by airing diverse views (which many of the major networks actually don't do) they are actually hiding the fact that they don't have diverse views? Clearly an argument that makes no sense. Either you air diverse views or you don't. If you air diverse views, arguments of bias kind of go out the window.