NPR Downplays Chicago Priest’s Extreme, Left-Wing Activism

Recently NPR's Morning Edition aired a segment on Chicago’s “gun violence” featuring taped comments from local Catholic Priest Father Michael Pfleger. Unfortunately the taxpayer-funded radio show presented Pflager as a benign “social activist” and never informed listeners of just how radical this man is.

The segment focused on President Obama's Friday, February 15, visit to Chicago that was meant to highlight his anti-gun policies. Without fully informing listeners about their radical ties, NPR played taped comments from the long-time, left-wing priest and two other Chicago-based activists to speak to what Chicagoans were thinking. Chicagoans are likely to know all about Father Michael Pfleger, pastor of Saint Sabina's Catholic Church on the city's South Side. It's hard to miss him as he interjects himself into the news as often as he can. But NPR listeners outside the Windy City aren't likely to know what an extremist the man is.

At the end of the segment, NPR's Cheryl Corley played some tape of Father Pfleger who talked about the city's plague of gun violence as he saw it. Corley introduced him only as "a social activist who lost a foster son to gun violence." Naturally, Father Pfleger is all in favor of Obama's gun-ban ideas. But he is far more than a mere "social activist." In fact, he is quite extreme in his "activism." For instance, Pfleger has repeatedly come to the support of fellow Chicagoans Reverend Jesse Jackson, in his many crusades and shakedowns, and racist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The priest has also made himself such a thorn in the side of the Church that in 2011 he was suspended as Pastor as St. Sabina's while Cardinal George assessed whether to remove him completely from dealing with parishioners. Sadly, Chicago's top Catholic official failed to fire Pflager even though the priest has made a career out of attacking the policies of his own church. You might also recall Pfleger's outrageous "sermon" he screamed from the pulpit in 2008 where he mockingly said that Hillary Clinton was a “privileged white person” and accused anyone that would vote against Barack Obama of being a racist.

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Back in 2007 Pfleger once threatened the life of a suburban gun shop owner saying the merchant should be "snuffed out" for daring to sell firearms. Pfleger even came out in support of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. A Chicago Sun-Times article in 1994 reported that the priest said that Nation of Islam leader, "raised serious questions regarding Jewish power, Jewish influence, that people do not want to ask or answer, in particular Jewish power in the media, and with racism and white people and what’s been done." Father Pfleger wasn't the only extremist that NPR's Corley highlighted. Corley featured two other activists without telling her listeners just how extreme they were. On the same show Corley played tape of Cathy Cohen, who Corley merely labeled the founder of the Black Youth Project. Cohen is better known for serving on the board of the Arcus Foundation, a radical homosexual activist group. The third activist Corley introduced to her audience was one Jens Ludwig. Corley said that Ludwig was the University of Chicago's crime lab director, which is certainly true. But Ludwig is also a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution. That was something Corley didn’t seem interested in telling her audience. Corley failed to give her listeners all the relevant information about those she favorably quoted about Chicago’s violence. She failed to inform listeners that Pfleger had been such a hard-core rabble-rouser nor that Cohen, and Ludwig belonged to such extreme organizations. But even more inexcusable was her failure to identify the instigators of Chicago’s “gun violence.” Not once did Corley note that nearly all the murders occurring in Chicago is a result of gang warfare. It isn’t a “gun violence” problem that Chicago has. It is a gang warfare problem. For a full transcript of the segment, see Matthew Balan's post.

Warner Todd Huston——Bio and Archives

Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.

He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.