Free Republic

The former head of President Joe Biden’s defunct Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board found a new gig by registering as a foreign agent to fight so-called “disinformation." Former DGB Executive Director Nina Jankowicz said in a Nov. 18 “foreign agents” filing with the Department of Justice that she would be hired as a “disinformation expert” with the U.K.-based Centre for Information Resilience. Jankowicz’ role involves acting as an “ambassador for CIR on the Hill, within the Federal Government, media, among tech companies / Silicon Valley, on ‘K Street’, and among potential philanthropic organisations.” It appears the self-proclaimed “Mary Poppins of disinformation”...

A subsidiary of a taxpayer-funded radio organization co-produced a podcast segment with the liberal New Yorker magazine that actually promoted “eco-terrorism.” WNYC Studios co-produced an eco-extremist segment with The New Yorker that was headlined, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” The segment, headed up by magazine editor David Remnick, was the nexus of the entire Sept. 24 edition of The New Yorker Radio Hour. The podcast had an asinine headline: “Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?” Remnick fear-mongered how “the effects of climate change are already here and they’re catastrophic” before it gave a platform to the crazy views of...

“You look great,” said Don Marsh, the 80-year-old host of the radio show “St. Louis On the Air,” to recently retired St. Louis news anchor Karen Foss (75 years young) when she entered the studio for an interview. The two veteran journalists then went on to have this pleasant and collegial conversation aired by KWMU, National Public Radio’s St. Louis affiliate. The next morning, Foss learned that Marsh, a St. Louis institution, was leaving St. Louis Pubic Radio. Why? Someone at the KWMU studio had overheard Marsh’s complimentary greeting to Foss, perceived it to be inappropriate, and tattled to the...

Humorist and long-time radio host Garrison Keillor, of A Prairie Home Companion fame, says he might have to move out of the country after being ousted from the Minnesota Public Radio for inappropriate behavior. Keillor, the 75-year-old veteran broadcaster who is married, confirmed his firing on Wednesday, claiming that it stemmed from an incident from years earlier in which he says he accidentally touched an acquaintance’s bare back while attempting to console her. Keillor later took to Facebook, bemoaning his downfall after five decades of ‘hard work’ and lamenting that he was feeling ostracized everywhere he went. The post has...

Whad ya know cancelled.Tom Taylor:" Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?” weekend quiz show is canceled after 31 years. Feldman tells hometown Madison TV station WISC it wasn’t his choice and he’d prefer to keep on hosting the two-hour weekly show for public radio. But Wisconsin Public Radio cites the drop-off in the number of affiliates (which at one time numbered more than 300). And they’re giving Feldman plenty of time to say goodbye, with a final live show scheduled for June 25 in Madison. Feldman’s act has always been interactive, with audience participation, and it’s been Midwestern to its core, gently...

Here's what we know: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union after one of the most sensational Cold War-era espionage trials. They were convicted in 1951 owing, largely, to the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Here's what we don't know: How credible Greenglass' testimony was in court. Greenglass himself spent nearly a decade in prison for his role in the conspiracy. The Army sergeant stole nuclear intelligence from Los Alamos, N.M., and said he passed it on to the Rosenbergs. At the trial, he said Ethel Rosenberg typed...

Coal miners and gay activists — two groups that, in 1980s England at least, you might have figured would steer clear of each other — partner surprisingly effectively in the real-life story that's affectionately fictionalized in Pride.....

Consider this warning that recently greeted viewers of ABC's political soap opera, Scandal: "The following drama contains adult content. Viewer discretion is advised." That label was slapped on the episode because of scenes like the moment when trained torturer Huck prepared to ply his trade on colleague (and soon-to-be girlfriend) Quinn Perkins. "Normally, I'd start with the drill or a scalpel," he told Perkins, who was bound and gagged, looking on in terror. "Peeling off the skin can be beautiful. Or removing fingers, toes; I like the feeling of a toe being separated from a foot. ... I'm so sorry,...

NPR and Sen. Ted Cruz are natural enemies. On Friday's journalists' weekly roundup on The Diane Rehm Show, Politico reporter Alex Burns mocked Cruz for acting like a stereotypical bar bully and a man who always seeks to go "as far to the right of his party as possible." Rehm thought he sounded ridiculous. DIANE REHM: And what about Senator Ted Cruz and what he had to say yesterday? ALEX BURNS: Well, this is sort of a moment tailor-made for Ted Cruz, right? [Laughter.]There's nothing better for him than a moment where he can go as far to the right...

Tom Magliozzi, one of public radio's most popular personalities, died on Monday of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77 years old. Tom and his brother, Ray, became famous as "Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers" on the weekly NPR show Car Talk. They bantered, told jokes, laughed and sometimes even gave pretty good advice to listeners who called in with their car troubles. If there was one thing that defined Tom Magliozzi, it was his laugh. It was loud, it was constant, it was infectious. Tom and Ray grew up great friends despite a 12-year gap between them. Both...

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...

...The announcement comes a day after word that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is withholding funding to Pacifica's five stations for insufficient accounting practices, misreported revenues and failure to comply with CPB rules on open meetings and financial transparency

While the old media still act as gatekeepers to promote the failed policy of gun control, people are finding ways to spread the alternative message of freedom and responsibility. My brother heard a retired police officer call in to Wisconsin Public radio yesterday. The officer said that they trained hard, but they were always too late. The answer was not more gun control, but to adopt the Israeli solution of arming teachers and older students. Then listening to a national public radio program, onpoint.wbur.org, that has a special on the Connecticut school shooting, he heard a different officer make almost...

New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) conducted a gubernatorial debate on 19 September 2012. One of the questions had to do with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an effort to limit greenhouse gases by auctioning CO2 allowances (sounds like cap and trade to me). Republican Ovide Lamontagne favors repeal of RGGI, while Democrat Maggie Hassan favors keeping it. Watch and listen to their answers at about 32 minutes into the debate. They are in a lightning round, with a ten-second limit to answers. Ms. Hassan's answer, from the previously linked video, follows: ***** "I was proud to be a sponsor...

Catholic Bishop Schools Anti-Catholic NPR HostBy Tim Graham. When NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross conducted an "I feel your pain" interview with radical-feminist Sister Pat Farrell on July 17, she promised a rebuttal from Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo. But Gross was much tougher in that interview on July 25. She laughably said "I don't mean to speak on their behalf here," but that's exactly what she did throughout the interview. Gross said her "ultimate question" was why wouldn't the Catholic Church bend to changing times and liberalize on female priests, contraception, and homosexuality? "Churches change," so why won't...

The activist actor who campaigned against working conditions at Chinese factories that make iPads and iPhones now admits he fabricated much of his "reporting." Mike Daisey went on NPR's This American Life and theater stages and TV talk shows with emotional tales of shocking hardships. Now Tim Minton says moral outrage is against him.VIDEO

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) - It's your money and even in these hard times City leaders are finding unusual ways to spend it, like a $250,000 loan to keep a radio station on the air. KCPW would default on a loan without the help. Listeners promised $230,000 in pledges, but they were never paid. KCPW is the only public radio station to focus on only on Salt Lake County. It has 11 reporters and reaches a potential 1,000,000 listeners. Its coverage would have ended without a loan from Salt Lake City, one of the very groups it...

When Sarah Palin talks, people listen. They might not always agree, but they certainly hear the former Alaska governor loud and clear. Recently the hockey mom was a guest on the Sean Hannity show and like many conservatives, Palin took aim at National Public Radio and several other federally funded arts and educational agencies. "NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things that government shouldn't be in the business of funding with tax dollars -- those should all be on the chopping block as we talk about the $14-trillion debt that...

NPR Board Member Admits It Serves 'Liberal, Highly Educated Elite,' Wonders How to Justify Public Funding in Light of This By Lachlan Markay Created 03/11/2011 - 1:31pm By Lachlan Markay | March 11, 2011 | 13:31 At least one National Public Radio board member has a firm grasp on arguments against the organization receiving federal funding. Criticisms of NPR "do have some legitimacy," she noted, and "we must, as a starting point, take on board some of this criticism." Sue Schardt, director of the Association of Independents in Radio and a member of NPR's board, noted during the board's Feburary...

Byron York offers the good news this morning that Republicans on Capitol Hill remain committed to ending subsidies for public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS. The defeat of the House budget bill in the Senate last night sets back that effort, but the high-profile meltdown at NPR and a potential embarrassment looming at PBS will keep momentum for the push: After the release of the James O’Keefe sting video Tuesday, National Public Radio officials rushed to fire NPR head Vivian Schiller in hopes of slowing Republican efforts to cut federal funding for public broadcasting. But GOP leaders in Congress are...