Posted on 10/26/2010 9:01:37 PM PDT by JLWORK
Behold above the benign-appearing face of the aspiring 21st Century minister of propaganda.
Over at www.TownHall.com Tara Servatius is reporting on a planned government takeover, through National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, of all national for-profit national news services. It’s all been engineered by NPR’s CEO who recently fired Juan Williams and suggested that he discuss his nervousness about boarding planes with Muslim passengers with a psychiatrist. Vivian Schiller’s master plan, which she has named the Public Media Platform, will involve taxing all news outlets to raise funds for the project, which has been seeded by a 1.8 billion dollar donation from leftist billionaire George Soros.
Schiller’s theory is that commercial news outlets are dying out and the new project will fill the void left by the dead companies. From Servatius’ report comes this:
"Last week, National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller took a break from her crusade for a government takeover of the media to swat a fly. With now-former NPR analyst Juan Williams suitably splattered across the evening news after politically incorrect comments he made on Fox News, Schiller can return to her real passion – the creation of a national network to ensure that in the future, you get your news from the government in general and NPR in particular.
Schiller could barely contain her rage at Fox News and at Williams last week, saying he should discuss his fear of boarding a plane with Muslim passengers with “his psychiatrist.” Those who understand what is at stake saw the Williams/Schiller dust up for what it really was – a declaration of war by one of the most powerful women in journalism against for-profit, non-liberal media. If Schiller and her liberal friends have their way, Fox and its viewers will pay the bill for her new government news network.
As Schiller explained in a speech to the NPR board of directors in 2009, it is public radio’s responsibility to fill the gap in journalism left by dying local television stations and newspapers.
Schiller, a former New York Times executive, is one of a few dozen power players working with the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and a leftist group called Free Press to “reinvent journalism.” That’s how the FTC describes it. The FCC calls what they are doing the “Future of Journalism.” Free Press, a think tank funded by leftist billionaire George Soros, among others, calls it “the new public media.”
It’s all the same thing, a plan to take over local news coverage from for-profit television, radio and print media, which Schiller and her friends claim is in danger of extinction. These “friends” get together regularly with the heads of the FCC and FTC to brainstorm the details in government and congressional meetings. These meetings include the leaders of all the country’s public broadcasting outlets, including PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and American Public Media.
They are beefing up their staffs in local news markets with herds of public news reporters to “take over” coverage as commercial media fails. Nationwide, this will cost $40 billion to $60 billion over a decade, they believe. Their plans, according to the FCC’s Future of Media report, are to raise this money by taxing for-profit news organizations – the ones whose reporting Schiller is supposedly trying to “save.” They want to charge “spectrum fees” of five percent of broadcast station revenues for use of the public spectrum and airwaves, which the government controls. They figure that could bring in $1.8 billion a year. A one percent tax on all electronic devices like cell phones, televisions and laptops could bring in billions more. So would a monthly fee on internet subscriptions.
While conservatives were busy arguing that NPR should be defunded in the wake of the Williams debacle, Schiller was putting the finishing touches on the national infrastructure NPR has launched to deliver this new government news product to cities across the nation. A decade ago, defunding NPR would have sufficed. To stop Schiller now, Republicans would have to defund PBS and CPB as well to have any hope of torpedoing her plans to build a nationwide news delivery system in the style of the BBC, but on steroids. Schiller imagines a national public print, television and radio news leviathan that would compete with the top five news companies in the news industry.
“We can create a national network around all of public radio that provides the kind of public service that is being not provided by other media companies that are suffering,” Schiller told Cyberjournalist.net. Never mind that her planned confiscation of their revenues will cause them more suffering and possibly send them to an early death.
Schiller calls her creation the Public Media Platform, and the left is very excited about it. It’s a digital network in partnership with all the nation’s public news providers, built to distribute their news locally, regionally and nationally. NPR has already built a state-of-the-art internal “wire” service in the style of the Associated Press to carry and distribute the news. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded seven multi-million dollar regional journalism centers with news teams to produce and distribute the new public news product.
Finally, NPR’s Project Argo has launched news sites at 12 NPR stations in major cities staffed with local reporters. That’s where Soros’s recent $1.8 million donation to NPR comes in. Those are start-up funds for the reporters to generate the public news product.
A May Free Press report describes NPR’s Public Media Platform as a first step in their plans for a government media takeover. The platform is in the early stages, and its purpose is to attract billions more in government funding. “We are going to strengthen and bolster our representation to Congress and to other entities that can help fund all of us,” Schiller told the NPR board in her 2009 speech about a public media takeover of news reporting.
All of this makes Schiller’s very public drop-kick of Williams far more than a hissy fit that got out of hand. It was a declaration of war against commercial media in general and Fox in particular. Who wins will be determined by what voters do at the ballot box in the coming years."
We already had TASS and Volkischer Beobachter as stenographers for long-deceased totalitarian governments. But the idea of complete control of the information we receive from news services lives on. Congress should immediately de-fund NPR and CPB.
Ping.
FreePress is an organization run by avowed communists, one of whom is the spokeswoman for FCC chairman Genochowski (another leftist czar-like creature).
Look up FreePress on the internet and see what is there. Look for a column at www.newzeal.blogspot.com about it.
This is what Obama and Van Jones and Bill Ayres and Arne Duncan are up to. Welcome to “1984” a few years late.
I read all of the Public Media Platform stuff when it was being discussed last spring. I don’t remember seeing anything about taxing privately owned media, which in any event Congress, not CPB, would have to do. In which document or documents did you find that taxing plan?
Once the dust settles, we can start looking forward to the 2012 elections, and finding conservative candidates to run for the next wave of patriot replacements as the old batch of career politicians.
And repeat the process every two years!
Servatius wrote it in her report. It’s about half-way down the column, which is rather lengthy.
Best,
JW
One of many totalitarian measures being plnned for after the Democrats’ big loss next week.
That could be achievable IF they shut down all Cable News networks and the Internet. Not going to happen though...even with Government help. If tried, a revolution would result.
So... NPR is just another station and hopefully will go bankrupt after government de-funding. If that does not happen, then we can blame the Republicans - again! That will mean it’s Third Party time...
Having read that, I feel a little better. I don’t believe that will ever go anywhere in Congress, and their reward for trying to push it would be the complete de-funding of CPB. It is a plan only Algore could love.
Starve the beast.
I hear that.
J
It has been at least 15 years since I turned off Nauseating Public Radio.
Jerry Brown? What say you?
8^D
So Vivian Schiller wants to be America’s version of Goebbels ! And shape NPR like the old TASS News Agency in the old Soviet Union. More appropriate name would be to take the T off of TASS ! I would love to run across this stupid broad and give tell her how I really feel about NPR and her grandiose plans.
Tim Conway wearing a wig?
Don’t just defund NPR, the TV channels and radio stations, cancel their licenses, bankrupt all shows that are partnerships with government.
Keep the government out the media. We have 500 channels now. We don’t need to subsidize media and/or news.
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I agree. The piss-stream media and the Democrat party can kiss my butt.
The enemy is definitely from within and it wants total control. They hate anyone not like them and are only interested in spouting their propaganda.
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