NPR media reporter David Folkenflik was given the chance to promote his book “Murdoch’s World” in an interview for the latest edition of The Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. He tried the usual line that Rupert Murdoch deserved a whole book on his scandals because he’s so “unique.” (Read: somewhat conservative tycoon in a liberal media.)
Folkenflik said he was on a Fox News “blacklist,” and not for the first time. Then he made sure he said he had “a lot of respect” for the Wall Street Journal, unlike Fox:
Well, Fox News doesn’t even respond with a “no comment,” and hasn’t since about a week before the book came out. It appears I’m not for the first time on one of their blacklists. You report (stories) fully and fairly, and your hope is that they participate, and if they don’t participate, that’s on them. At the Wall Street Journal, an editor went to my publisher and begged for a copy ahead of time, and (my publisher) asked “Oh, are you going to review it?” And they said “No, we just want to get a copy. We’re not going to mention it in the paper.” And by the way, I have a lot of respect for the Journal, and I think the book reflects that.
Folkenflik showed he’s a typical NPR liberal when they asked if he goes home and disconnects from the media world. The “recreational” information tilts left: “Before I had the kid, I would watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report at night. I still read The New Yorker and New York Review of Books, but I try not to make it all meta-media, all the time.”
They just asked how he reported on his bosses. Oh, of course, they were amazing! “I’ve been incredibly impressed by how the top executives of this company have allowed me and my editors to do the stories necessary even when not reflecting favorably upon the network. It seems to me that whatever the controversies have been, the fact that I’ve been able to do this reporting is that NPR lives its values and embodies them. And that’s worth knowing. It’s different than what you would see at a lot of news organizations. It’s hard for news organizations to cover themselves, but NPR has allowed us to cover the ones of note, and to do it in an honorable way.”
In other words, “that was a tough four days, and then we moved on.” Again, The Quill didn’t ask “How does NPR look now to Americans after their executives were caught saying incredibly snide things about Tea Party conservatives and Christians?”
When asked if any story stands out as “the most difficult or otherwise memorable,” he again fell back on a left-wing rag, The National Catholic Reporter: “I did a story about how the National Catholic Reporter based in Kansas City really had been a leader on child abuse by clergy, even though it had been hard to do given its readership and its standing in the church. And they did it painstakingly from a position as almost a member of the family being critical.”
For conservative Catholics, this is a bit of a joke. The Reporter was founded to be harshly critical of church authorities from the Left, and there’s nothing “painstaking” in going on the attack on the child abuse scandal. It was for them, a golden opportunity to push its leftist agenda of female priests and an end to priestly celibacy. It's not a "member of the family" unless it's the rebellious hippie teenager always ripping on "Dad."
