Free Republic

Just a few dozen stations now carry liberal talkers, as key affiliates in cities with active left-wing politics are falling like dominoes, going dark or switching formats. Detroit’s progressive outlet shut down in January, along with Seattle’s liberal talk station, which changed to sports. And after last year’s election, Portland’s progressive talk station ended its political programming. With the political battlegrounds of 2014 and 2016 on the horizon, reducing the whopping imbalance between conservative radio, with its huge fan base, and the left has become more important than ever, according to those in the progressive media world. POLITICO spoke with...

Enrolling in HealthCare.gov is not easy, and it's been particularly difficult in Alaska. Just 53 people enrolled Anchorage hair stylist Lara Imler is one of the few who got through, as we previously reported. "I don't even know how to feel about the whole thing anymore because I can't even get anyone who has an answer to help," she says. "It's just such a lost cause at this point." So on a recent morning, she sat down in her living room, with her laptop and a cup of coffee to try to resolve her difficulties—but not without frustration. "I've had...

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed up for a phone interview on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR to discuss shredding the filibuster for presidential appointees. A very polite Rehm asked if this might make partisanship worse. “I'm sorry to smile, as you can't see on radio, but more dysfunction? I mean, gee whiz,” Reid replied. But underneath the Nevada-nice routine came an attack out of nowhere on black libertarian judge Janice Rogers Brown as one of the “extreme right wing people” the Senate confirmed in the Bush years. **SNIP** Later, Reid added that “we put on that...

Greek riot police have cleared the headquarters of the defunct national broadcaster, temporarily detaining at least two journalists. The raid, ordered by the prime minister, began at 4am local time, causing a clutch of journalists and technicians guarding the facility to scramble. ERT was shut down in June when the government sacked the network's 2,700 staff as part of cost-cutting measures linked to Greece's €240bn (£202bn) bailout programme. Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said the eviction was "legal" and that a prosecutor had escorted police during the operation at the sprawling compound north-east of Athens.

The joke in question came from the Bluff the Listener segment of the show Saturday, in which an audience member was asked to identify which of three stories about an old joke coming true had been taken from that week's headlines. Peter Grosz, an actor and TV writer who has appeared as a panelist and guest host on "Wait Wait," offered a supposed news item referencing a joke asking how many Poles it takes to screw in a light bulb.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama administration says “Don’t believe what you’ve heard” from the following news sources On October 25, 2013, regarding the various criticisms of Obamacare, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius said:“Don’t believe what you’ve heard.”In other words, the Obama administration says we shouldn’t believe the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Politico, the Wall St. Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes, the BBC, Huffington Post, the Nation, Mother Jones, or New Republic.

October 22, 2013 NPR Reporter Probes Jay Carney: Will WH Provide Obamacare Updates Like They Would Natural Disasters? Noah Rothman On Tuesday, the White House announced that it was tapping former acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jeff Zients to head the team overseeing the repairs on the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange website. NPR Reporter Mara Liasson probed White House Press Sec. Jay Carney about whether he would be providing regular updates on those repairs as they did for disasters like the Deep Horizon oil spill in 2010. “In the past when you had a natural...

Fifteen years after tobacco companies agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines in what is still the largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history, it's unclear how state governments are using much of that money. So far tobacco companies have paid more than $100 billion to state governments as part of the 25-year, $246 billion settlement. Among many state governments receiving money, Orange County, Calif., is an outlier. Voters mandated that 80 percent of money from tobacco companies be spent on smoking-related programs, like a cessation class taught in the basement of Anaheim Regional Medical Center. "So go ahead...

Vivian Schiller, NBC News’ SVP and chief digital officer, is being tapped for Twitter’s head of news position, according to sources familiar with the matter. AllThingsD reported last week that she was the leading pick for the high-profile job. The deal is now “all but done,” according to sources, although Schiller will apparently take a significant period of time off between the end of her current position at NBC and the start of the new job at Twitter. -snip- Schiller’s NPR stint ended in controversy; she resigned from NPR in March following some very dicey snafus.

EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty slammed NBC News Chief Digital Officer Vivian Schiller, the person who shut down his start-up, by advising Twitter not to hire her for its Head of News opening. The tweet comes shortly after a report by AllThingsD that said Schiller is believed to be the top candidate for the position. Adrian Holovaty @adrianholovaty Attention @twitter management: hiring @VivianSchiller would be a huge mistake. Check your references!

NBC News chief Vivian Schiller is moving closer to the top news job at Twitter. Schiller, 52, is in negotiations with the microblogging service to become its first head of news, The Post has learned. -snip- Schiller, who has held jobs at CNN, NPR and the New York Times, certainly fits the job description.

Public-broadcasting fans love to proclaim that PBS and NPR are bravely “independent” of the government. But sometimes, the facts suggest a close symbiotic relationship. Terence P. Jeffrey of CNSNews.com reports that on the first day of the government shutdown, the Daily Treasury Statement revealed no money for clinical trials for cancer, but the administration awarded $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Pay the publicist first!

Tucked within a release naming its new president and CEO, NPR announced today that it would seek to reduce its staff by 10 percent through a voluntary buyout plan. (The Washington-based organization employed 840 people in 2012.) NPR's board of directors just approved a budget for fiscal year 2014, which includes a deficit of $6.1 million, or 3.1 percent of its $178.1 million in revenue. The buyouts are intended to help plug the spending gap and, according to the release, will be offered "broadly across the organization." The board named Paul G. Haaga, Jr. as acting president and CEO effective...

NPR's Emily Kaiser tweeted out a portion of Esquire's website Wednesday morning. Though it has since been fixed, on the twelfth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, this is what Esquire readers woke up to -- the unforgettable photo of a World Trade Center worker who has just leapt to his death next to a cutesy blurb about "Making Your Morning Commute Look More Stylish".

The background of the Syrian conflict can seem obscure to outsiders, but the spark that started it all is often traced back to the city of Dara'a, in February of 2011. A group of young people writing Arab Spring protest slogans on a wall are arrested and beaten. "When that news broke there was a massive demonstration on the street, and that was the first spark one can call of the Syrian uprising," Nayan Chanda tells NPR's Jacki Lyden. But long before a single shot was fired in Syria, there was drought in Dara'a, laying the groundwork for social unrest....

Bread and Puppet Theater has been a familiar presence at political demonstrations since the anti-war protests of the 1960s. Its giant puppets and raucous brass band also marched against wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1982, Bread and Puppet led a parade in New York that, according to police estimates, consisted of more than a half-million anti-nuclear protesters. Though massive street protests may be a thing of the past, Bread and Puppet's work is still unapologetically political as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. is based on a farm in northern Vermont, about 25 miles from the Canadian border....

I met Edna Monroy — a young, undocumented activist from Mexico — at her neighborhood park in South Los Angeles. It's a historically black part of LA that has seen a huge demographic shift over the past several years. It's now mostly Latino. Monroy is one of the newer arrivals. She chose Jesse Owens Park for our interview because, she says, it's symbolic. "it's on the borderline," says Monroy. "Since we're talking about borders, this park is on the borderline between South Los Angeles and Inglewood." The park is named after an African-American Olympian, but most of the visitors on...

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list. Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim. His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio. Aslan is not a trained historian.

NPR’s gleaming new headquarters building in the shadow of the Capitol in Washington has soaring ceilings, a “wellness” center, an employee gym and a gourmet cafe staffed by a resident chef. This, as it turns out, could be a political problem. NPR showed off the 400,000-square-foot complex, which has been open since April, to members of the media earlier this week. It immediately began drawing some grumbles from those who see the edifice as far too luxe for a nonprofit radio and digital-news organization that depends, in part, on taxpayer support. In effect, the building briefly became a new club...

Between his trip to Europe last week and his travels to Africa next week, President Obama is doing a lot of gift exchanges with foreign leaders. In the past, he has gotten mixed reviews. Four years ago, for giving the queen of England an iPod. Other presents have gone over better. But the president does not personally select these gifts — a staffer does. And there's a well-kept secret at the White House: When Obama wants to choose a gift himself for someone in his inner circle, he sets a very high bar. Last November, Valerie Jarrett, one of the...