The rationale for public funding of NPR is that money from corporate advertisers is somehow unpure. Now we see the hypocrisy behind that proposition. NPR is perfectly happy to solicit $5 million from a group that says it was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has terrorist ties.
In an 11-minute video surreptitiously recorded by conservative activist James O’Keefe, Ron Schiller, the head of NPR’s fundraising arm, courts the fictitious group by disparaging Christians, Jews, Republicans, and the tea party.
In the video, Schiller, who resigned after it came out on Tuesday, says that members of the tea party movement are xenophobic and racist and that NPR would prefer to do without subsidies provided by the federal government.
“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,” Schiller says.
He says that “tea party people” aren’t “just Islamophobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”
Ironically, Schiller, who was senior vice president in charge of NPR’s fundraising, goes on to describe liberals as more “educated, fair, and balanced than conservatives.”
When the man pretending to be a Muslim suggests to Schiller that “Jews do kind of control the media or, I mean, certainly the Zionists and the people who have the interests in swaying media coverage toward a favorable direction of Israel,” Schiller does not rebut his assertions or stop eating lunch at Café Milano in Georgetown. He nods his head slightly.
Schiller says in the video that he is “very proud of” how NPR fired Juan Williams. “What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news, and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist,” he said. “They can no longer fairly report.”
With that statement, Schiller again underscored NPR’s hypocrisy.
When other NPR analysts like Cokie Roberts and Nina Totenberg express their personal views, they are not considered controversial because NPR executives agree with their liberal outlook. Thus, NPR had no problem with Totenberg making outrageous left-leaning comments, such as her observation that if there is “retributive justice,” Jesse Helms will “get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”
As noted in my story
"The Juan Williams I Know," NPR picked on the wrong person when it fired Williams. He is one of the most respected journalists in Washington. In contrast, we now see how seamy the leadership of the organization that fired him really is and how much contempt it has for most Americans.
The sooner Congress defunds NPR and its affiliates, the better.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.