What, no thread about the NPR debacle?

[Cail]

Seriously, like this is a surprise?

chiller announced she is leaving only about 24 hours after a video surfaced on the Internet with comments by NPR's top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller), made during a luncheon meeting with two men who posed as wealthy donors from a Muslim charity. During the meeting, which was recorded by James O'Keefe, a well-known conservative provocateur, Schiller disparaged Republicans as "anti-intellectual" and tea party members as racists and xenophobes. He also suggested that Jews control the nation's newspapers and that NPR would be better off without its federal subsidy.

[sgt.null]

not surprised - also will not be surprised when the mass media ignores it.

thanks for posting - had missed the story.

[Vraith]

Seriously, like this is a surprise?

chiller announced she is leaving only about 24 hours after a video surfaced on the Internet with comments by NPR's top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller), made during a luncheon meeting with two men who posed as wealthy donors from a Muslim charity. During the meeting, which was recorded by James O'Keefe, a well-known conservative provocateur, Schiller disparaged Republicans as "anti-intellectual" and tea party members as racists and xenophobes. He also suggested that Jews control the nation's newspapers and that NPR would be better off without its federal subsidy.

Wait...so it's OK that she was forced to resign for something that someone else did? When she wasn't there? Or it's not ok?
[For the record...it isn't.]
But HEY! KUDOS to O'Keefe...he's still a scumbag, but at least in this case he wasn't a lying scumbag.

[Cybrweez]

Well, no reason not to defund them then.

[Avatar]

NPR?

--A

[Cail]

NPR?

www.google.com

[Cybrweez]

I think he was asking who to defund? Yes Av, defund NPR. They don't need it anyway.

[sgt.null]

stop funding most of what congress allows.

npr, pbs, planned parenthood.

all these businesses make plenty of money. and if the end up not making money - that is free enterprise.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Does anyone other than a liberal intellectual listen to NPR? I don't even know which stations carry NPR broadcasts here in the Metroplex and we have a lot of radio stations.

I concur--defund NPR and let it go the way of other liberal talk radio.

[sgt.null]

we actually listen to npr all the time. but if there is a market for it - it wil survive.

[Avatar]

NPR?

www.google.com

Why do you have to make my life difficult? You could have at least made it a link to the results for an NPR search...

--A

[Cail]

Does anyone other than a liberal intellectual listen to NPR? I don't even know which stations carry NPR broadcasts here in the Metroplex and we have a lot of radio stations.

I concur--defund NPR and let it go the way of other liberal talk radio.

It's on my Sirius rotation. I listen to it 'till I get pissed, then I flip over to Fox Talk 'till that pisses me off, then I go back to NPR. Talk radio of any stripe is just ridiculous theater.

[kevinswatch]

NPR?

www.google.com

That was awesome.

Personally, I love NPR. I just leave my car radio on the channel. Car Talk on the weekends is where it's at.

-jay

[sgt.null]

car talk, wait wait don't tell me (those two being my wife's favorites), prarie home companion, all things considered, engines of our ingenuity, says you (my favorite), the kids playing classical music (another julie favorite)

there is tons of quality programming, i am sure they can find quality sponsors.

same with pbs and the national endowment for the arts.

[Avatar]

That was awesome.

--A

[Damelon]

I think NPR could run and survive without the federal support. They could run like WFMT, the classical music station in Chicago; which doesn't run canned commercials, the announcer reads them. They also run pledge drives.

NPR's news is ok. They have predictable feature stories, but their news itself is generally pretty straight forward. I don't stick around to listen to call-in shows of any stripe, I could care less what Bob from Cicero thinks whether he's calling into Rush or Talk of the Nation.

NPR has entertainment shows that have few counterparts in commercial radio. Car Talk, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and This American Life are all good, but wouldn't survive in the narrow focus of commercial radio programming today. "All Talk", "Lite Rock", whatever. Of course, that pretentious turd, Garrison Keillor, on A Prairie Home Companion might not survive either. The lack of general interest commercial radio stations is the biggest problem in radio today, IMO.

[Rawedge Rim]

Does anyone other than a liberal intellectual listen to NPR? I don't even know which stations carry NPR broadcasts here in the Metroplex and we have a lot of radio stations.

I concur--defund NPR and let it go the way of other liberal talk radio.

I listen to it all the time, just don't agree with it's opinion pieces all the time. OTOH I love Electro-lounge

[SerScot]

Actually, I've heard more about this on NPR than any other news source including Fox. That says something.

[Zarathustra]

The opinions of this one man man not be representative of the entire organization, but there certainly is a feeling that our suspicions were confirmed here: they're a bunch of liberal elites who think we're all dumb racist hicks. His reasoning that universities aren't liberal was just hilarious. He said that conservatives only think that universities are liberal because we are anti-intellectual, and we suspect everything which is intellectual as being liberal. Such a petty, self-serving elitist attitude. Does the guy not realize that evidence actually exists on the political leanings of college professors? Here in Kentucky--certainly not a liberal state--my son just signed up for classes at the University of Kentucky. Before he even stepped into a single classroom, he was assigned one book to read, No Impact Man, The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet. Not liberal? You've got to be kidding me. I skimmed the book. It's hardly intellectual. There's a chapter called, How a Schlub Like Me Gets Mixed Up in a Stunt Like This. It's mostly this guy whining about how guilty he feels for living in modern society. Yep, that's what our university wants every incoming freshman to read before they step into their first class: liberal guilt. Let the indoctrinization begin.

[Kinslaughterer]

Probably worth mentioning

www.npr.org/2011/03/14/134525412/Segmen ... Of-Context

The Blaze — a conservative news aggregation site set up by Fox News host Glenn Beck — first took a look late last week and found that O'Keefe had edited much of the shorter video in deceiving ways.

"There was certainly a lot there for conservatives and people of faith and Tea Party activists to be bothered about — but we felt like that wasn't the whole story," said Scott Baker, editor in chief of The Blaze. "There were a lot of other things said that may have been complimentary to conservatives and to people of faith and Tea Party activists in the same conversations."

My review was conducted with several colleagues. I also relied on outside people, including Baker, who have expertise in analyzing video and audio to review the two tapes.

Broadcast journalist Al Tompkins said he was initially outraged by what he heard in that first, shorter video by O'Keefe. Tompkins now teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"What I saw was an executive at NPR expressing overtly political opinions that I was really uncomfortable with," Tompkins said. "Particularly the way the video was edited, it just seemed he was spouting off about practically everything."

But Tompkins said his mind was changed by watching that two-hour version.

"I tell my children there are two ways to lie," Tompkins said. "One is to tell me something that didn't happen, and the other is not to tell me something that did happen. I think they employed both techniques in this."

Sacramento, Calif.-based digital forensic consultant Mark Menz also reviewed both tapes at my request. He has done extensive video analyses for federal agencies and corporations.

"From my personal opinion, the short one is definitely edited in a form and fashion to lead you to a certain conclusion — you might say it's looking only at the dirty laundry," Menz said. He drew a distinction between that and a compressed news story.