NPR in a Nutshell

The New York Sun predicted back on October 23, 2010 that the current Republican effort to defund National Public Radio just may succeed even though previous attempts at cutting off NPR from the public trough have failed and despite the fact _the recipients of taxpayer funding will try to make a constitutional case that they can not be cut off for content._

NPR and its primary money supplier, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CPB, which itself is itself federally funded, have yet to make that freedom of the press/speech case but give it time. As of now, NPR is boasting that it doesn_t need government subsidies. We should take it at its word and end them.

The latest brouhaha over NPR began with the firing of political commentator Juan Williams who had worked for NPR for a decade and years later began making appearances on the Fox News Network. NPR considered that treasonous mutiny, in direct conflict with NPR_s leftist programming, although it couldn_t quite say that.

Instead, NPR waited for more substantive justification to send Williams packing.

Williams, who is far from conservative, furnished that justification on October 20, 2010 during a guest appearance on _The O_Reilly Factor_ when he spoke a truth with which any thinking air traveller would concur: _Look, Bill, I_m not a bigot, _ Williams said. _You know the kind of books I_ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous._

Notwithstanding his incongruous non-sequitur of comparing the civil rights struggle with Muslim terrorism_Williams subsequently called NPR _an all white operation_Juan had given NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and her cronies the ammunition they needed, a pretext to dump him. Insensitivity to Muslims was inconsequential; daring to appear on the vile Fox network_and on O_Reilly!_was Williams_ unforgivable sin.

Five months down the road, after Williams unaccountably snagged a plum multimillion gig at Fox and after Schiller took heat even from liberals, she conceded that, _We handled the situation badly_ and the Williams episode was a breakdown in _personnel processes about who calls who when._ Without identifying those processes, she said those issues have been _fixed_ and that NPR has _undertaken a thorough review_ of its news code.

Schiller didn_t clarify that code, either.

Her die was cast after other NPR scandals hit the fan. Schiller herself was fired, which shouldn_t terribly upset her. If Keith Olbermann could find another job, so will she.

This isn_t about Juan Williams or Vivian Schiller, however. It is about NPR. The upper echelons of NPR were surely in agreement with Schiller on jettisoning the renegade Williams and nothing has really changed at NPR, certainly no revamping of its code of ethics.

Schiller_s replacement CEO Joyce Slocum was quick to denounce Vice President of Finance Ron Schiller_s comments caught on video that, _The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people_s personal lives and very fundamental Christian_I wouldn_t even call it Christian. It_s this weird evangelical kind of move._

Fanatical? Weird? Evangelical? Christian?

I don_t know if Mr. Schiller, who NPR also fired, is a Christian, although I somehow think he_s not, but _fanatical_ and _weird_ as descriptions of the Tea Party hardly demonstrate a public radio corporation_s ethical responsibilities. Nor does the sting operation conducted by Michael O_Keefe that revealed that NPR was happy to glom a five million dollar bribe from a supposed Muslim Brotherhood front group show that NPR can distinguish ethical exigencies from cold, hard cash.

See the video and story on NPR and its most recent ethical lapses here:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was unimpresessed with all the NPR firings and announced the Republican Party would continue to try to rid the nation of the pestilence that is National Public Radio or at least force the NPR into total dependency on the generosity of its leftist fans.

Based on the failure of AirAmerica, NPR could be gone shortly. Based on the need for ethics in broadcasting, the demise of NPR would be the greatest advance in news radio since Rush Limbaugh hit the airwaves.

See all sources at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3846