Will David Folkenflik Do His Job?

“Mark—I know this is insanely late, but thanks. Feel free to share.”

That’s the text I got from David Folkenflik, the media reporter at NPR, on June 5. For the past several years I have occasionally DM’d Folkenflik. Most of the time it’s to ask him a simple question: Why won’t NPR have me on the air? In 2024 NPR interviewed Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who in 2018 falsely accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while I was in the same room looking on. NPR also ran a different piece reviewing Blasey Ford’s book One Way Back.

I’ve asked Folkenflik the same question for over two years: Why won’t NPR give me equal time? Folkenflik never answers the question. He will sometimes respond to something I didn’t ask him, like when he recently complimented me on something I wrote years ago about getting sober.

And now, suddenly, here’s Folkenflik giving me a green light to share. What changed? Graham Platner. The New York Times reported that three women who had been romantically involved with Platner, who’s running for a Senate seat in Maine, described volatile and “toxic” relationships with him. They said Platner “could be demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening.” One of them, Lyndsey Fifield, is described this way: 

Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that he “never hit me, he never punched me.”