Posted on 03/16/2011 5:38:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the public policy conversation today, there is nothing funnier than hearing the leadership of National Public Radio deny there's a liberal bias at play over there.
Even when the Daily Caller posted sting video of their top fundraiser Ron Schiller describing America as remarkably undereducated and the Republicans as ruined by racist, gun-toting, phony Christians, NPR's reaction was repeating Sentence One: Who, us, biased?
Schiller resigned, and then the NPR Board ousted CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), who hired him. She was only a sacrificial lamb. Nothing has changed, policy-wise. The new interim CEO, Joyce Slocum, picked up exactly where the last boss left off.
"I think if anyone believes that NPR's coverage is biased in one direction or another," she suggests, "all they need to do to correct that misperception is turn on their radio or log onto their computer and listen or read for an hour or two."
This is some serious denial -- like arguing that if anyone doubts that Japan is a terrific spring vacation spot right now, they should just observe the TV news and see how wonderful it looks.
This anti-NPR sting video reveals an NPR fundraising drive that's clearly focusing on financiers that are hostile to conservatives. Last year, leftist philanthropist and hedge-fund billionaire George Soros announced a $1.8 million donation to NPR and days later, Juan Williams was canned for offending liberals by appearing on the Fox News Channel.
The same week that NPR unveiled that donation, Soros announced another million-dollar contribution to the censorious left-wing thugs at Media Matters for America, to "more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse." Their campaign slogan to advertisers and cable companies is "DROP FOX." (Am I the only one who finds it curious that the "Open Society" folks want Fox closed?)
The reporters at NPR are in even more denial than the executives. NPR rushed to interview Susan Stamberg, hailed as a "founding mother" of NPR, who insisted that executives have caused some "terrible, terrible hits," but the "news" product is superb: "The work that we do has been so consistently extraordinary, the strongest news organization in electronic broadcasting, and that has been untarnished."
Since NPR lives in a bubble of their own arrogance, their media reporter David Folkenflik sought no opposing view. (He didn't even fish through NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard's box of listener complaints, such as NPR's recent erroneous on-air declaration that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was dead.)
Folkenflik allowed for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to say NPR doesn't need federal funds, but that's not an evaluation of NPR's professionalism. It implies Republicans are indifferent to a liberal political slant.
Most Republicans do want to focus simply on how NPR is an unnecessary federal expenditure because it's truer today than ever. In response, public broadcasters predictably cry that rural stations will shut down -- as if NPR really cares about those people they consider uneducated, less-than-Christian, gun-toting hayseeds.
Anyone who looks at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant budget knows the government offers scads of money to multiple NPR and PBS stations in urban areas. In the Baltimore-Washington TV market, there are three stations -- why three? -- that took almost $7.5 million in "community service grants" in 2009. The $4 million-plus given to D.C. superstation WETA is more money than TV stations receive in 19 states.
The public radio situation has even more pots in the fire, with three D.C. stations -- why three? -- and four Baltimore stations -- why four? -- taking another $2.2 million in 2009. If poor rural stations were so precious to CPB, couldn't they limit themselves to one station per market?
And why is allegedly suffering NPR building a 330,000-square foot headquarters in downtown D.C. right now, complete with roof terraces, a fitness center and a theater for live performances?
But NPR is also in denial about how evolving technology has ruined the argument of "scarcity" of news. Take NPR anchor Michele Norris asserting on Sunday's "Meet the Press" that if Republicans defunded the CPB, people in small towns in Indiana would no longer have news.
"These are small stations where people don't necessarily have access to news because a lot of the news stations and radio have fallen away. Take the state of Indiana. We just heard from Gov. Daniels. If public broadcasting went away, there are people in small towns, small stations, that would not have access to news."
Apparently, people in small-town Indiana don't have television, cable, satellite, newspapers or access to the Internet. Everyone's on a starvation media diet of nothing but NPR.
These are about the most insulated and arrogant elitists anywhere. No wonder George Soros likes them. Fine. Take his money. Do his bidding. Leave the taxpayer alone.
I remember that. For instance, she didn’t think there were any specialist MDs outside of huge cities like NYC and LA.
They probably sincerely believe that NPR is "middle of the road". When the people you hang out with are in the spectrum from liberal to militant Communist, then yes NPR seems moderate.
Meanwhile, to us on FR, NPR is extreme left wing, and Rush and Beck are squishy moderates.
Your PBS station is state owned.
Don’t write the station, write the governor and your local state representative. They have control over the station if they will just exert it.
There are some programs carried by NPR that I would miss if the network went away...but the really good programs that have commercial appeal would be picked up by other networks.
I would miss, but find elsewhere, Doc Martin, MI5 and Sherlock Holmes...even though I’ve seen episode I love Jeremy Britt.
Yeah, we’re 14 trillion dollars in debt. If we need to cut anything, it’s subsidies to radio and TV stations.
BTW, a couple of years ago my local NPR station was running ads during a fundraising drive telling people that they shouldn’t assume that the government would take care of funding, because the percentage of their budget received from the CPB was rather small. But now that government funding is on the chopping block, every NPR station in the country is trying to mobilize tote-bag types to lobby Congress for those dollars.
“we're yeasty, we're foaming, NPR”
bump
I don’t think they would be dead and gone.
Look, Schueller said what NPR has been saying behind closed doors for a long time. NPR does not need and does not want federal funding. The NPR *board*, which is made up of local NPR affiliates, needs federal funding to keep stations open in areas where the population is too small or where the public does not want it.
NPR is happily streaming content online. If you have the internet, you don’t need your local affiliate station. NPR would be very happy to get rid of some of these local stations that are nothing more than “replay” stations.
Individual NPR programs get plenty of funding directly from listeners as well. I have personally donated money to one music program to which my wife and I listen. I don’t want to fund their news, but some of the music programming is great. I’ll pay for what is good. That is as it should be.
Will NPR survive without federal funding? Absolutely. Pacifica Radio (I call it the commie station, because many of their commentators are self-described communists) is doing well here in Houston. Pacifica has five stations nationwide. That’s it. If NPR has to sell itself, they will not be able to move more left. That space is already taken by Pacifica, and it’s donors are not likely to switch. The space in the right is pretty well taken by AM radio and Fox. NPR will continue to be left of center and will finally sell itself as such.
I think the folks at NPR are dying to say they are lefties, but they can’t with the current board and federal funding. I think that if we dump federal funding some will jump ship and head to Pacifica, which would be awesome. Why would it be awesome? I love to see socialists fighting each other in the marketplace, using market principals to get ahead. The irony would be delicious.
I’ve been listening to NPR lately some, and I think I have diagnosed a portion of their problem. Not only that, but I think it applies to most liberals as well.
Listen carefully to an NPR segment, and notice how much fluff is in it. How much emotional and needless descriptive verbiage.
The NPR reporter is telling a story. And like all good stories, they require more than just the facts. In fact, a story requires no facts, or truth, at all. See “fiction”.
The point is, they get so involved in their wonderful story, that they don’t think that it is necessary that the story match up with reality.
Escapism for the morally superior (in their own minds) is what it is. Thanks, I’ll stick with Louis L’Amour.
And any kind of art.
It’s a luxury, not a necessity. and the wrong kind of artists also seem to wind up with the cash.
Yep!
I think most libs (rank and file types, not the Soros types) secretly believe that if we conservatives had the chance we’d take all the NEA money and use it to fund art that agrees with our ideology. But they’re about to see us throw it out completely. I think they’ll be shocked.
On three different days, I heard Diane Rehm say "Hasn't Sandy Berger been exonerated of stealing documents from the National Archives?" All three times, I emailed her that he had not been. She still kept blathering the same line time after time until he finally was convicted. She had to shutup then.
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