Fox News' Roger Ailes Calls NPR Execs "Nazis"

Roger Ailes

/ Getty Images/Peter Kramer

Updated 5:01 p.m. Eastern Time

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is characterizing executives at NPR as Nazis.

"They are, of course, Nazis," Ailes told the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz. "They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."

Putting aside the Nazis comment, the claim that NPR (previously known as National Public Radio) uses government funding to "keep them alive" is questionable at best: Even when indirect funding is included, less than one tenth of NPR's budget comes from taxpayer dollars. It receives no direct federal funding for operations.

NPR reemerged as a lightning rod for conservative criticism thanks to the decision to fire contributor Juan Williams in part for his comments that he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on his airplane flights.

The firing prompted Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, among others, to call for NPR to be stripped of federal funding.

Ailes later semi-apologized for his comment in a letter to the Anti Defamation League.

"I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word, but I was angry at the time because of NPR's willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough," he wrote, as TV Newser reports.

"I'm writing this just to let you know some background but also to apologize for using 'Nazi' when in my now considered opinion, 'nasty, inflexible bigot' would have worked better," he added.

House Republicans announced Wednesday that they planned to force a vote on cutting funding to NPR in response to the Williams firing.

"When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed," House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) said in a statement, as The Hill reports. "Make no mistake, it is not the role of government to tell news organizations how to operate. What is avoidable, however, is providing taxpayer funds to news organizations that promote a partisan point of view. Eliminating taxpayer funding for NPR is precisely the kind of commonsense cut that we have to begin making if we want to fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in Washington." (UPDATE: House Democrats today shot down the effort.)

Conservative Republican Senator Jim DeMint announced plans last month to put forth a similar bill in the Senate. 

NPR wasn't Ailes' only target in his interview with Kurtz: He called Comedy Central's Jon Stewart "crazy" if "really smart" and said Stewart "openly admits he's sort of an atheist and a socialist."

He also said President Obama "had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with" and said the president "just has a different belief system than most Americans."

In response to the Nazi comments, left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters sent reporters a list of instances in which Fox News hosts have used Nazi imagery to criticize opponents. The list includes more than eleven instances of Glenn Beck using such imagery as well as multiple examples from Bill O'Reilly.

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Brian Montopoli is senior political reporter for CBSNews.com. You can read more of his posts here. Follow Hotsheet on Facebook and Twitter.

[Whitter5]

Roger Ailes, widely known as one of the greatest practioners of Hitler and Himmler's propaganda maxim of the Big Lie, did NOT apologize to NPR. He indicated that he may have poorly chosen his words ... when he deliberately chose those words to describe NPR's firing of a far-right-wing commentator/reporter who was on Ailes' own False News payroll.

[Whitter5]

Roger Ailes, widely known as one of the greatest practioners of Hitler and Himmler's propaganda maxim of the Big Lie, did NOT apologize to NPR. He indicated that he may have poorly chosen his words ... when he deliberately chose those words to describe NPR's firing of a far-right-wing commentator/reporter who was on Ailes' own False News payroll.

I can only imagine the room from a Vincent Price movie where Ailes, Lamebrain, Beck, Insanity and fellow travelers of the Big Lie Express concoct their weekly red meat bait.

[cbs3200]

Roger Ailes - You are nothing but garbage.

[Shibbol]

You've got to feel for the future of the country. Have we reverted to the McCarthy era where there's a Nazi under every bush? Folks, read books more. Listen to radio less, and watch TV almost never, and you will find your mind growing and broadening.

[Patriotson]

Nothing could drive home the truth of NPR except a national boycott of NPR. I will never give another dime to the left leaning media.
Boycott NPR!

[Londubh1]

Boycott NPR ? For what? My car radio has been tuned to NPR for years. The wonder of NPR is that you can count on a neutral voice. Even the entertainment programs,such as "Wait,Wait don't tell me!" have an educational bent.
My guess,is that you have never been a contributor or a listener.

[Whitter5]

"Left leaning"?? NPR is "Right leaning"! What are you talking about? How far out in the Wrong field weeds are you? Maybe you need professional help?

[hhandyman]

Roger Ailes takes one to know one and Fox is as close to a commie style leadership as any Murdoc is your hitler.

[Multi-Basking]

Simple Rule of Thumb. Do NOT forget this... Ever. When someone is painting "others" as Nazis, or whatever the flavor is this week, simply turn that pointing finger around 180 and you will see who the True Nazi really is. It is the oldest trick in the book. Blame the other guy/party of being this or that first before they can be labeled exactly what they are accusing others of being.

[34sender]

Correct.

[RobAla]

I don't know about the NAZI comparison, but NPR is certainly nothing but left wing propaganda. How often do we hear a conservative point of view? Taxpayers should not be expected to pay for this.

[34sender]

You obviously don't listen to NPR.

What IS a conservative point of view, anyway? Does that mean it is a view that hates liberals and is very narrow minded and indoctrinated?

The taxpayers that pay for NPR -- for the most part, being somewhere between 90% and 98% of the NPR budget -- pay willingly from their checkbooks in the form of donations.

Please, try to get some facts.

[RobAla]

34sender: I have tried to listen to "Left Things Considered", but I almost get sick to my stomach. I listen to a variety of things, and I read left leaning CBS and CNN each morning. I figure that if I listen and read stuff from both left and right media outlets, I may read a glimpse of the truth somewhere. NPR is like the flip of "Rush Limbaugh", it is the left side of radio. The only thing is that Limbaugh take no taxpayer money.

[teflondonn]

Cooking, auto repair, breast cancer, nano-technology, American troops, small farms, nutrition, etc. All subjects that are covered on NPR and obviously the face of Nazism

[brian_norwood]

Well, the good news is that some of these folks will turn on to NPR, tune in to "All Things Considered" and drop out of the Rush Limbaugh "dittohead" machine.

[js1945]

I see 50% of you get your news from the cartoon network. For those of you who like to quote "facts" please name your sources.