Posted on 03/07/2011 1:30:31 PM PST by Sub-Driver
NPR chief asks critics: What liberal bias? By Sara Jerome - 03/07/11 01:42 PM ET
NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller defended taxpayer funding for public broadcasting Monday and challenged critics to find any evidence of liberal bias in NPR's coverage.
Schiller said the accusation that public broadcasting has a liberal bias is just a "perception problem" that doesn't accurately reflect NPR's journalism.
"We are urban and rural ... red state and blue state," she said.
But Schiller also said the effort to cut public media dollars is linked to concern about the deficit and not being driven by the perception that NPR has a liberal tilt.
"I believe this is driven mostly by an attempt to find cuts to the deficit, and that is certainly understandable," she said.
Schiller's speech at the National Press Club comes amid a Republican push to slash public media from the federal budget.
House and Senate Republicans are working to defund public media this year. Democrats have been vocal about defending public broadcasting, and President Obama did not make any cuts to public media in his fiscal year 2012 budget request.
Schiller said it is "right and necessary to" question all aspects of federal spending, but argued that if "public value" is the standard of scrutiny, then "pubic broadcasting stands strong."
She said taxpayer funding for public broadcasting has been an "investment" by the American people in journalism over the past 40 years.
Public media "should not fall victim to the turbulence of these times," she said.
Taxpayer funds make up about 10 percent of the average public radio station budget, but up to 60 percent of the budget at rural outlets, Schiller said.
NPR has "gradually been able to leverage that investment to grow other sources of support" from corporations, philanthropic groups, and listeners, Schiller said.
Only a "small, small amount of money goes to public broadcasting," according to Schiller.
Republicans disagree with that assessment, citing the $4 billion that has gone to public broadcasting over the last decade.
Schiller also addressed two recent NPR controversies: the firing of NPR news analyst Juan Williams, who is now a columnist for The Hill, and the outlet's erroneous report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) had died after she was shot in January.
"It was a mistake; there was no excuse," she said of the Giffords report.
As for Williams, she said "a lot of ink" has been spilled on the issue and made it clear she wants to move on.
"We handled the situation badly. We made some mistakes. I made some mistakes," she said.
This highlights just another example of how the so-called arbiters of speech designate themselves un-biased and how they should be thrown off that pedestal.
Defunding NPR would be just another leg kicked out from underneath the MSM’s biased world view.
Mao never thought of himself as anti-intellectual.
This guy is so blind, just like the MSM!
What color is the sky in their world I wonder?
Fish don’t notice water.
Prior to leading NPR, Schiller was a senior vice president of NYTimes.com.
Yup. No leftist bias at all.
Listening to PBS while walking my dog I have several times heard a pogrom, pardon me, program called “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” A faux gameshow format it absolutely drips with liberal contempt for conservatives and Republicans. Ms. Schiller must think us serfs can’t tell a pony from a pantload.
Would be nice if the commie media could find a new word besides “slash.”
Your comment is right on target.
My personal theory is that the colleges and universities (and high schools) for that matter have been infiltrated by Progressives (Marxists) while we were out earning a living, tenuring and unionizing themselves for decades.
Morons like this guy have been told, preached, beaten and graded on the COLLECTIVE, SOCIALIST ANSWER being correct since HS, college and now, every one of their friends and they beleive the Communist Lie.
NPR shows the utter bias and insulting patronizing tone these taxpayer funded media elites take.
De-fund these maggots now, Soros and Bill Gates and other legacy foundations taken over by their Commie Boards of Directors (see Ford, Rockefeller, etc.) will pick up the slack.
It’s Lefty, pro-Islamic, anti-US drivel, I hate NPR.
The giant irony is “All Things Considered” which is effectively taking a story and seeing it through the eyes of both parties (Arab/Jew, Black/White, Union worker/private sector worker, fat/skinny, D/R)
These is what Cass Sunstein and the Progressive Left (Alinsky/Cloward/Piven/Woody Wilson/Axelrod) does, they take the “right” answer and move it to the Left and attach emotion and the person who opposes the ____ (enter Liberal program/position/argument) is heartless and selfish.
They also pre-suppose that global warming is real, Islam isn’t repressive, gay marriage is normal and all US foreign policy is bad.
They move the needle to the left, so the argument always ends up with the Socialist reply being the right one.
De-fund this Marxist mouthpiece TODAY!
It is amazingly like a DNC fundraiser for all the “unwashed and un-enlightened Right Wingers” that are so...well, oppressive and evil capitalist moose killers...
Wasn’t it this fagged out scumbag Vivian Schiller who canned Juan Williams from NPR because he appears on Fox News?
My cable system got Fox News just a few days before L’Affair Lewinsky broke. I vivdly remember Alan Colmes saying that Clinton would have to resign just for having an affair in the Oval Office, never mind the perjury. A few days later he was singing a different tune. Not that I was surprised.
When his main reaction to Palin being the Veep pick was to question whether she was a virgin on her wedding night because Track was born so soon after the wedding, I just about busted a gut.
All Things To The Left of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky Considered...
This, my FRiends, is not living in denial. No, nothing so innocent.
This is a committeed, polled,and pre-meditated LIE.
.
Whatcha wanna bet she believes in anthropogenic global warming?
PBS actually has some sort of news broadcast? Last I saw they were begging for money for This Old House and some concerts.
WWDTM comes on right after Car Talk. I cannot stand that show. My finger is always poised over the radio button, ready to change staions immediately after the last fraternal insult is passed between Click and Clack.
My wife and I have been longtime viewers of PBS TV. We love Masterpiece Theater, British comedy TV, Dr Who, Nova, and Frontline has some worthwhile stuff from time to time. First time I ever saw James Brown perform (a seminal musical moment for me) was on PBS in the late 60’s. We would simply ignore all the socialist claptrap that passed for “political analysis and commentary” and justify our regular donations on the grounds of the programming we did like to see.
But the day we learned that PBS had provided its donor list to the Democratic Party, my wife turned to me and very matter of factly stated that we were never sending another penny to PBS - and we have not to this day.
Seaplaner wrote: “This, my FRiends, is not living in denial. No, nothing so innocent. This is a committeed, polled,and pre-meditated LIE.”
..... Exactly right.
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