NPR Admits It Scrubbed Clip of Mara Liasson Separating 'Educated Women' and 'Stay-at-Home Moms'

Newsbusters.org ^ | April 25, 2012 | Tim Graham

[KarlInOhio]

NPR's Mara Liasson outraged female listeners on Weekend Edition Sunday on April 15 when she said Mitt Romney's political problems aren't with "stay-at-home moms," but rather with "educated women."

Seven days later, NPR admitted it scrubbed the clip and the transcript for the website. On April 22, in a letters segment, Liasson claimed "I misspoke and that's one reason why we corrected the interview for later feeds of the show." Maybe she didn't "misspeak" as much as she betrayed her own opinion. She's never stayed at home and her biographies list no children. At least NPR returned to the scene of the self-censorship:

RACHEL MARTIN, anchor: Time now for your letters. Last Sunday, I spoke with NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson about the week in politics, and part of our conversation focused on a political the war of words. It started when Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, quote, "has never worked a day in her life." Many listeners took issue with Mara's analysis of the gender gap between Mitt Romney and President Obama.

Debora Hoard of Greenwood, Virginia, wrote: As I got ready to go to work this morning - work I do in part so I can have some flexibility to be home during the week - I heard Ms. Liasson say Romney's problem is not with stay-at-home moms, but with educated women. Ouch. She writes: Are these really separate categories?

And Allaire Diamond of Williston, Vermont, adds: These groups are not mutually exclusive. I proudly count myself among the large group of college-educated women who have chosen to dedicate ourselves, full- or part-time, for a year or a lifetime, to the work of raising our children. A woman's life and career, especially when children are involved, is extraordinarily complex and it's insulting to have it reduced to these rough categories, especially by someone that I normally hold in high regard.

We asked Mara about the point she was making and here's her response.

MARA LIASSON: Our listeners are right. I misspoke and that's one reason why we corrected the interview for later feeds of the show. What I was trying to say was that while Romney has an overall deficit with women voters, his biggest disadvantage is with college educated women - wherever they work, at home, in an office, a store or a factory.

MARTIN: As Mara said, we re-recorded our interview for later feeds, and that is the interview of record at NPR.org.

The blog My Joy for Today reported her outrage on that day. She could not believe NPR was hiding its arrogance:

I attempted to find the transcript and audio file of this morning’s broadcast. The file that is available for the 8 am show does not contain the quote that I have discussed. Ironically, the audio file and transcript are simply not the same as the one we heard in the car this morning. I do not claim to understand the intricacies of radio broadcasting and realize that there may have been many versions of the broadcast that we heard. However, the quote by Ms. Liasson was certainly part of at least one version of today’s program, and many comments on NPR’s website show that we are not the only listeners who caught this outrageous comment. If Hilary Rosen owed women an apology, it seems only fair that Ms. Liasson and NPR do the same. In the spirit of honest journalism, why not admit your mistake and apologize to your faithful listeners? Do you assume that stay at home mothers are so uneducated that they were not even listening and therefore are not even owed a response? Please do not continue to belittle us with your silence.

[haircutter]

I believe she has two kids and had them close together and very late in life...mid forties I think...

I bet if she let her hair grow out she would be snow white..when she lets her ‘touch ups’ go to long she shows a lot of Gray matter..when you want to remain a brunette and it gets late in life, then you need a touch up at least every three weeks or change colors...JMO

[Yaelle]

Bite me, Mara.

The state of our future is destroyed because of selfish women like you who leave raising of children to the same person you feel is appropriate to clean your toilets.

We also lose our individual thinking spirit if all kids are raised in government institutions.

A lot of stay at home ( misnomer, that) moms are like me, with plenty of degrees from your so-called higher institutions of learning. Educating children to be decent people is not respectable? Or is it only “respectable” when it’s a precious illegal alien doing it?

[wbill]

I’ll send this along to my stay-at-home wife. She’s more educated than I am.

[MrB]

Oh, it’s just a symptom of the sheeperals’ visceral need to feel superior.

The women that support the left, invariably, are bitter, unmarried or divorced women. They are still “wired” to seek a protector and provider, but are bitter towards men, and replace a man with the government, because the gov’t doesn’t “require” so much of them.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Liberals don’t hate women. They hate women who don’t follow their party line. They hate women who don’t abort their babies. They hate women who have functional relationships with men. They hate women who don’t think of themselves as being oppressed. They hate women who have joy in their lives and find great satisfaction in raising the next generation of people who think for themselves.

So they hate women.

[Godwin1]

What's really galling about this is that we have to subsidize it through tax money extorted from us through threat of imprisonment. One can hear/read the same liberal claptrap on/in the networks/national newspapers: but we don't have to pay for them. Let's pressure Congress and the new president to kill the NPR subsidy.

[skinkinthegrass]

bm

[jimfree]

My stay-at-home, home-schooling mom daughter got her degree from Florida after scoring a 5 on AP Calculus.

[jazzlite]

...”Mara let her true feelings slip. Stay at home moms are stupid.

Should not surprise anyone. All media professional women inside the Beltway think this way”...

The left, of which Mara is a member, does not want there to be left any examples of bright, educated women electing to do what nature intended..Isn’t it interesting that these blind people love Mother Nature if their cause is Global Warming but if it is the well being of our children, they look the other way..Hypocrites!

[married21]

The stay-at-home moms I know are college educated. We are smart enough to know that we can do a better job with our own kids than an illegal immigrant nanny with a 3rd grade education or a daycare operator.

I’ve seen how nannies care for kids at the park. They are not invested in the kids’ well-being. They are killing time and collecting a paycheck. The kids are safe enough, but not loved, not challenged, not RAISED. They are babysat.

It’s an ignorant “educated” woman who would be satisfied with that for their children.

[wbill]

Yep, the amount of flak that my wife gets from her "friends" and (mostly) co-workers (she teaches parttime, mostly for fun) is never ending.

I blame guilt (for those women who have kids but don't stay home) and jealousy (for those women who never bothered).

With a few, including her old supervisor, it obviously bothered them to no end that my lovely wife "effortlessly" had achieved everything that they so desperately wanted - great kids, (ahem) a good husband, nice house, work when she wants to, etc etc etc.

If only they knew how much work it really was, for both of us. It's been worth every second of it, I don't regret a single choice.

[ntnychik]

I remember the TV announcement of the birth of her son, Elias.

[MadelineZapeezda]

I remember her being pregnant close to the same time I was....I was staying at home watching her!

[Pecos]

Only the ones that are not overtly Liberal.