Power

NPR Station Pulls Planned Parenthood Spots During Budget Debate

An NPR affiliate pulled ads purchased by the reproductive health group out of concern that "reasonable listeners" might question their editorial practices.

Is National Public Radio trying too hard to try and prove its “unbiased” stance by overreacting and bending over backwards for Republicans?  A station out of California may be doing just that, pulling ads from Planned Parenthood in order to not raise “questions” about their “editorial and sales practices” according to a leaked memo.

The full memo reads:

Given that the budget debate in congress is focusing today on abortion in general and Planned Parenthood by extension, let us suspend airing any Planned Parenthood spots effective immediately.

There is nothing wrong with the spots per se, or with our business relationship with Planned Parenthood, but for a few days their presence on our air might raise questions in the mind of the “reasonable listener” regarding our editorial and sales practices.

I expect this will be a short-term suspension. In fact, let’s go ahead and plan to resume the Planned Parenthood spots on Monday. If we need to extend the suspension, I’ll let you know.

Traffic, please work with the sales department to arrange makegoods or adjust the contract dates when we resume the schedule.

The Nation bring up some pretty serious questions that management really needs to address:

Questions for KPCC: did they pull the Planned Parenthood spots in response to a directive from the NPR network, or was this strictly a local initiative?

Was the station responding to Republican pressure on KPCC to drop its Planned Parenthood spots?   Or were they responding to something they imagined might happen?

Has KPCC ever pulled the spots of another nonproft organization because the Republicans were campaigning against them?

It’s rather ironic when you think that one entity caught in a faked video scam is over projecting and acting out against another entity that was attacked in a faked video scam.  You’d think NPR of all people would understand what it is like to become the subject of Republican debate and defunding for no other reason than conservatives just don’t like you.