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,” and 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’ve been completely ignored by NPR—including several messages sent to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik. In the current battle over the funding or de-funding of NPR, my case is a clear and specific example of public broadcasting’s bias. NPR featured 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 I was in the room where the assault allegedly took place. 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 won’t 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 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.”
What’s the genuine threat to the First Amendment is NPR censoring my voice, research and book. There’re a lot of moving parts to the story, but the basic plot’s simple. Working with the FBI, the media, opposite researchers who threatened me and others, corrupt lawyers and old DC friends, Ford set up Brett Kavanaugh and me. She attempted to tie my young life, which included a struggle with alcoholism, with Kavanaugh’s. Because her premise was false, she had to work around it. That’s why Ford couldn’t name the place of the alleged assault, or even the time—her years kept changing. It’s why everyone she said was at the party where she was allegedly attacked denied it happened, including her close friend Leland Keyser. The plot had been in the works for months or even longer before the story broke in September 2018.
Again, I name names in The Devil’s Triangle. All Terry Gross or David Folkenflik has to do is have me on the air and ask me.
Instead, they gave a nice ear bath to Ford. Here are some of Terry Gross’s penetrating questions:
GROSS: Christine Blasey Ford, welcome to FRESH AIR. How did you write your book without retraumatizing yourself?
GROSS: I think part of their concern was not everybody understands therapy and that you would be considered mentally ill—mentally unstable by a lot of people after they heard that you'd been in therapy.
GROSS: You weren't expecting all these attempts to discredit you.
GROSS: What was the impact on you of telling the story so many times to the lawyers, to the press at the hearing, the lie detector test?
Gross does flirt with challenging Ford on her ridiculous fear-of-flying story. Ford claimed she was afraid to fly and asked for a long delay in testifying in D.C. Investigator Rachel Mitchell asked Ford about this, which both Ford and Terry Gross didn’t like. Here’s the exchange on Fresh Air:
GROSS: She was trying to show that you weren't being completely honest about your fear of flying. And you write about your fear of flying in the book, although you did fly when you really needed to get someplace, when you really wanted to get someplace. But you were initially reluctant to fly to Washington to meet with your lawyers, and you were reluctant to fly to Washington, you know, for the Judiciary Committee. So she was trying to point out, hey; you've flown in all these places, yet you say you have a fear of flying. The theory, I think, was by your legal team that she was trying to discredit you by saying, clearly, you're not being really forthcoming on this. You're not being completely honest about your fear of flying if you've flown to so many places. And your reaction was to think, why are we talking about this?
BLASEY FORD: Yeah, I didn't really get it. I assumed that the audience and the senators understood that some people don't love to fly, and some people even take medication for long flights or employ other coping strategies that are known to be efficacious for fear of flying. So I was thrown off because I assumed that she knew that. And so I didn't understand how to respond to her, thinking of her as a person that would know. I assumed a lot of knowledge that day from the senators and from her that I wouldn't need to recap, like, or go into.
Mitchell was asking about the fear of flying because Mitchell knew it was a scam to buy time because I was refusing to testify. The entire plot was to accumulate oppo research on me, drop the payload, and watch me destroy my high school friend. When I said no, they needed to buy more time. Thus the fear of flying. Like the rest of Ford’s story, it was a lie.
I'd be happy to come on NPR and talk about it.