NPR Hates Fox: Media Reporter Airs Two Bad Stories Touting Suit of 1/6 Riot-Pusher Ray Epps

Taxpayer-enabled NPR isn’t shy about its hatred of Fox News. Media reporter David Folkenflik’s reporter page begins with this braggadocious tidbit:

David Folkenflik was described by Geraldo Rivera of Fox News as “a really weak-kneed, backstabbing, sweaty-palmed reporter.”

Now that Geraldo left, this won’t have the same punch. Five of Folkenflik’s last seven reports are critical of Fox News. He wrote a whole book called Murdoch’s World. Rupert is his white whale. 

While NPR couldn’t find time on its programs for a full story on the failed Secret Service investigation of cocaine found at the White House, it ran two Folkenflik stories promoting January 6 protester Ray Epps suing Fox News for defamation. NPR adores lawsuits against Fox News, both for the financial burden and the negative publicity. 

Folkenflik’s reports on the Epps suit strenuously avoided any conservative rebuttal, which would include mentioning two obvious points that have put Epps at the center of January 6 speculation.

First, Epps was caught on video standing in a crowd of Trump supporters on January 5 and January 6, 2021, urging the people around him to “go into the Capitol.” Second, the FBI originally put Ray Epps’s face on its Capitol riot “Most Wanted List” on January 8, 2021. They offered a cash reward for information leading to his arrest. But he was never arrested or prosecuted. Why?

The leftist media didn’t look for an answer. Epps was a nobody to them, left out of all the Pelosi-Picked Panel narratives, until….suddenly, after the Democrats lost the majority, Epps starred in a sympathetic 60 Minutes story. Only those right-wingers were investigating the Epps mystery, until Epps became a sympathetic figure, that Fox News ruined his life.

But on Friday’s Morning Edition, Folkenflik hyped that Fox and Tucker Carlson “lied” about Epps: 

FOLKENFLIK: According to his attorney, Epps believed the lies on Fox that Trump was cheated in 2020 and attended the rally protesting that election certification. And then Fox lied about him….For more than two years, Carlson drew on material from extreme right-wing conspiracy sites to suggest Epps instigated the violence and was prompted to do so by the FBI or some other federal agency. Here’s Carlson on Epps in January, 2022.

CARLSON: He urged protesters to riot. Video from January 6 shows him at the forefront, right in front of the Capitol, appearing to usher others inside. So he wasn’t just someone who was there, he was maybe the central figure there.

FOLKENFLIK: There’s no proof anything Carlson says there is true other than that Epps was present. Fox and Carlson did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.

That’s simply false. Epps wasn’t just “present”! He was constantly urging people to enter the Capitol. On Thursday night’s All Things Considered, the same theme: 

FOLKENFLIK: Well, there are two kind of central claims that he presents Tucker Carlson having made on the air through his own statements and through the guests that he had on to amplify. And these were claims that Epps was at the core of the instigation of violence at the January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, starting the night before, and that somehow Epps was an undercover either FBI asset or working with some other federal agency to do this, that there was some sort of false flag operation to discredit those Trump supporters who felt that there had been fraud – I want to be clear, there’s no hard evidence to support that.

Folkenflik is at best trying to merge the two claims: there’s no hard evidence that Epps worked for the FBI, but there’s obviously hard evidence of him pushing Trump fans to resist the certification inside the Capitol. Why didn’t he and NPR play audio of that? 

I hope Tucker’s lawyers force Ray Epps to explain why he was never arrested by the FBI despite literally telling people to go into the Capitolpic.twitter.com/rh0ydFdzBE

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 12, 2023

We should point out the Epps lawsuit didn’t sue Tucker, but Tucker is at the center of their complaint against Fox.

You don’t have to buy the theory that there was a “Fedsurrection,” that the riots were a federal plot, to accurately describe what Epps did and what Fox reported about it. NPR doesn’t value accuracy. It values damaging Fox News, and pleasing its leftist base of support.