Opinion: No More Totenberg At The Trough

From Karen Lee Torre, Connecticut Law Tribune

It is high time for Congress to cut off tax dollars to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and not because either is a propaganda arm of the left, or because NPR fired and smeared commentator Juan Williams – coincidentally with its acceptance of a million dollars from George Soros. Taxpayers should not be funding news organizations, period, no matter what their ideological leanings.

As a political and economic reality, however, the need for taxpayer subsidizing of news and commentary is confined to the American left, whose propensity to mooch is its condicio sine qua non. And in center-right America, that ideology needs artificial limbs to move about in the marketplace of ideas.

Liberal programming and public policy perspectives thus face a competitive disadvantage in the free market. But much as the government should stay out of religion, it should not fund the broadcasts of partisan ideologues. First of all, that is not the proper business of government, at least not in the United States. (There is a reason why the term “agitprop” originated in Bolshevik Russia). Second, it contravenes free market principles, among them a law of economic nature: you should and will survive only if people buy your product.

Read more here.

Now to Nina Totenberg, who covers the Supreme Court for NPR, and who somehow managed to gain status as a nationally prominent legal affairs correspondent and analyst, even though she has neither a law degree nor even a journalism degree. (Totenberg dropped out of journalism school because she did not “perform brilliantly”– her words, not mine, but I do not contest them.) Her vitae does include getting fired by a newspaper for plagiarism, and surviving controversies over hateful remarks directed at some conservatives. Her reporting is considered by many in conservative legal circles to bleed liberal bias.

Of course, having a liberal bent may well explain how one who did not go to law school gets to analyze Supreme Court opinions for public consumption.

When reporters clamored for me (during the New Haven firefighters’ case at the U.S. Supreme Court), I agreed to interview with Totenberg on NPR despite having been strongly advised against it. I knew who and what she was. But I wanted a go at her. I did it to amuse myself. Sure enough, the interview felt more like a deposition (by a pro se opponent – Totenberg’s lack of a law degree showed).

An oft-used tactic of left-wing lawyers (and their allies on the bench) is to argue (or decide) points of law based on contrived or distorted facts. As I expected, Totenberg challenged me based on factual premises that were simply untrue. At every step, I reminded Totenberg that she didn’t have her facts right and suggested she didn’t know what she was talking about.

Wanna guess how much of that tape Nina Totenberg shared with the public?

I find it offensive that the government subsidizes the like of Nina Totenberg. She is free to be a mouthpiece for the legal left, but why should taxpayers fund her? It’s time to cut NPR off from the public trough.

Karen Lee Torre, a New Haven trial lawyer, litigates civil rights issues in the federal courts. Her e-mail address is thimbleislands@sbcglobal.net.