Why NPR Refuses to Have Me on the Air

    A little more than a year ago, Christine Blasey Ford published a book, One Way Back.

    Ford was featured on NPR three times. One Way Back was given a positive review. Ford was then interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, featured on Morning Edition, then showcased as the NPR Book of the Day.

    In 2022, my book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi was published. I have been completely ignored by NPR - including several messages sent to NPR media reporter David Folkenflick.

    In the current battle over the funding or de-funding of NPR, my case is a clear and very specific example of public broadcasting’s bias. NPR featured Christine Blasey Ford three times. They ignored me.

    In 2018 Ford claimed that Brett Kavanaugh — nominated for the Supreme Court and about to be voted out of committee — had sexually assaulted her in high school at Georgetown Prep in 1982. Ford claimed that I was in the room where the assault allegedly took place. The whole thing was a set up. In my book and in several articles since 2018, I have brought up serious questions about her story, named names, and called people out. My work has been defended by Pulitzer winner Kathleen Parker.

    Yet NPR will not have me on. Last week President Trump issued an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives and distributes over $500 million in taxpayer money to public TV and radio stations every year, to eliminate millions of dollars in federal funding. As the New York Times put it, “it amounts to perhaps the most significant threat in a decades-long campaign by Republicans to weaken NPR and PBS.” Patricia Harrison, the chief executive of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  said that the White House had no legal authority over the company. NPR called the order “an affront to the First Amendment.” Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, called the order illegal: “The president’s blatantly unlawful executive order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” Ms. Kerger said.