NPR: “Fox News 'Nazi' Rhetoric Starts At The Top”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
A November 19 National Public Radio article titled “Fox News 'Nazi' Rhetoric Starts At The Top,” reported on Fox News President Roger Ailes' recent comment that NPR executives “are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.” The article pointed out that “Ailes offered an apology of sorts, but his remarks were hardly out of character for [Fox News],” noting that “On his TV and radio shows, Glenn Beck has attacked the Obama administration and its liberal allies as Nazis several times.” From NPR:
Fox News and NPR once again found themselves in the news Thursday, this time driven by the comments of Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who in published remarks referred to NPR executives as “Nazis” for terminating the contract of news analyst Juan Williams.
Ailes offered an apology of sorts, but his remarks were hardly out of character for the network.
On his TV and radio shows, Glenn Beck has attacked the Obama administration and its liberal allies as Nazis several times.
[...]
Beck and Ailes are by no means the first to call others Nazis. But Fox News does stand out amid mainstream media outlets for its ferocity and frequency in doing so. [Washington Post columnist Dana] Milbank found Beck had referred to Hitler or Nazis on his Fox News program several hundred times.
[...]
In remarks published in the Daily Beast on Thursday, Ailes said this of NPR executives: “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.”
Former Fox News Chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, who is now at the National Journal, has only positive things to say about Ailes. But when he first heard about Ailes' comments about NPR, he said: “I don't even know -- I don't even know where that comes from. It's um. Wow.”
Ailes apologized, not to NPR, but in a letter to a Jewish advocacy group, saying he should have said “nasty inflexible bigot” -- not Nazi.
NPR officials say he's missing the point -- and that his rhetoric off the air, too, is an insult to NPR's journalists and listeners.
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