Who Will Deprogram the Radicals at National Public Radio?

One of the grandest fictions of our leftist media is that somehow, championing “social change” is what makes you a “bona fide news organization.” Anyone who resists that siren song isn’t a professional, but a propagandist. One-sided coverage is great — if you’ve picked the right side.

On Feb. 19, National Public Radio displayed this fiction with an audaciously arrogant story headlined “Poland’s new government deprograms its once far-right public media.” Let’s especially giggle at the word “deprogram.” To restore something to the Left is like breaking out of a cult.

“Morning Edition” co-host A Martinez touted an “Iron Broom” of democracy restoring Poland’s public broadcasting, known by the acronym TVP. “Part of the new government’s effort to rebuild the country’s democracy involves returning a popular national TV broadcaster from a right-wing propaganda tool back to a bona fide news organization.”

Unless you speak Polish, it’s hard to know if this finger-painting is accurate, but we can assume that if NPR proclaims it as “bona fide news,” it’s soothingly socialist. The villains of this story were the “far-right” Law and Justice Party, which rudely took over the government broadcaster like they were in charge of the government. NPR is praising the socialists for cleaning house, doing exactly the same thing they accuse the conservative party of doing. But when they do it, professionalism is returning.

One Polish lefty uncorked this summary of the right-wingers (and please concentrate on how this fits NPR vs. the Republicans as you ponder it): “They were transformed into a propaganda outlet on the part of the ruling party whose main task was to attack and demonize the oppositional parties and politicians.”

Later, he added they were “fueling polarization.” Liberal media outlets never do that, do they?

NPR reporter Rob Schmitz announced that “the most notorious case” of bias under previous President Andrzej Duda came in the 2019 stabbing death of Pawel Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdansk. Schmitz said the mayor “was the subject of nearly 1,800 negative TV stories about him in one year alone. … The murderer took the microphone and blamed the mayor and his Civic Coalition party for imprisoning him, a sign to many in the party that TVP’s negative coverage about the mayor’s liberal policies shared the blame for his murder.”

Forget that the murderer was a paranoid schizophrenic. The people who are allegedly opposed to “fueling polarization” are once again blaming conservative media for someone’s violent death.

NPR can easily and shamelessly use “far right” to describe its opponents, but it doesn’t easily identify anyone as “far left.” These “public” broadcasters notoriously touted the book “In Defense of Looting” and another author who said riots against the police should be described as “rebellions.” They preposterously tried to deny the founders of Black Lives Matter were Marxists even as they self-identified as Marxists.

Terms like “radical left” only seem to air on NPR in soundbites from Donald Trump, in segments containing headlines like “If Donald Trump becomes president again, how authoritarian would his agenda be?” (Dec. 10), “Trump’s Rhetoric, Always Extreme, Is Getting More So” (Dec. 19) and “Trump Embraces Autocratic Language” (Dec. 21).

Trump had roughly talked of “rooting out” the “vermin” of the current government. Leftists don’t use “autocratic language” like that. Instead, as they root out the opposition, they call it “deprogramming.”