For most people, a job as a reporter for National Public Radio would be a safe and prestigious vocation. But NPR’s national correspondent for abortion and politics believes it’s a hazardous war zone that requires a bulletproof vest.
NPR correspondent Sarah McCammon wrote on Twitter:
My bulletproof vest that I may need to be a journalist in America arrived and they sent me a Small and I had to adjust it to make it a little smaller and for a moment I was happy that I was too small for my bulletproof vest that I need to do journalism in America
She deleted her original comment, but not before others had taken a screenshot.
Why did you delete it? pic.twitter.com/IIODEkllnX
— neo_fish (@neofish3) May 4, 2021
“Having read the original tweet, I’d say your run on sentence writing skills are on point,” said one commenter.
McCammon did not delete her response to her original tweet, though: “Clearly, these things are made with big dudes in mind because I’m not a tiny person.”
A respondent said that the bulletproof vest probably did not fit her petite frame “because men are drastically over-represented in the most dangerous jobs (I don’t mean journalism).”
Another pointed out that McCammon’s beat is safer than the assignments of other journalists:
Stolen valor. Why not send it to a journalist who actually is in danger, but who can’t afford a vest? Our neighbors in Mexico who cover cartels for instance? #collegecreatesstupidity
Bulletproof vests are “made for people [who] might be shot,” said yet another. “Not narcissists who have been brainwashed.”
McCammon should not fear evangelicals, whose culture she knows intimately. She grew up attending a Christian school in Kansas City, Missouri, but said in 2016 that “I have come away with a different view of the Bible than what I was raised with … I still really value it, just in a different way.”
“I’ve sort of changed my approach to faith,” she said. “I’ve become much more comfortable with not always having firm answers,” including whether God exists.
She now provides taxpayer-funded NPR with less-than-balanced coverage of abortion and religion.
McCammon did not specify which of those two groups she believes will kill her.
Both the Obama and Biden administrations have tried to portray the pro-life movement as a hive of domestic terrorists. In April 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on “Rightwing Extremism” which claimed likely sources of domestic terrorism “include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” It also warned agents about “Disgruntled Military Veterans.” On March 1, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report warning of “abortion-related violent extremism,” which stemmed from “ideological agendas in support of pro-life or pro-choice beliefs.”
The nation’s pro-life leaders agree that the movement is firmly committed to nonviolence.
McCammon previously made news by tweeting that setting off fireworks on Independence Day seemed bizarre. “Isn’t it sort of messed up that we celebrate our freedom by pretending to blow things up? Like a strange, collective working out of trauma,” she wrote.
Isn't it sort of messed up that we celebrate our freedom by pretending to blow things up? Like a strange, collective working out of trauma.
— Sarah McCammon📻 (@sarahmccammon) July 4, 2016
NPR has not always been averse to violence and inflicting trauma itself. During the height of the BLM riots last summer, NPR invited author Vicky Osterweil to discuss the thesis of the book “In Defense of Looting.”
“A business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like modes of oppression,” Osterweil said on the public airwaves.
National conservatives launched a mini-campaign to abolish NPR after reporter Hannah Allam erroneously reported a wave of “right-wing extremists” ramming innocent protesters with their vehicles.
Many believe the federal government has no constitutional authority to operate media outlets. The late Congressman Phil Crane, R-IL, regularly introduced bills to defund, and then abolish, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
If McCammon feels threatened by covering the pro-life movement, she could comfort herself by realizing she’s not the only person involved in abortion who could use protection.
Ben Johnson (@TheRightsWriter) is the Media Reporter at The Daily Wire. He previously worked at the Acton Institute, FrontPage Magazine, and LifeSiteNews. He’s the author of three books, including Party of Defeat (2008, with David Horowitz).