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NBC News chief Vivian Schiller is moving closer to the top news job at Twitter. Schiller, 52, is in negotiations with the microblogging service to become its first head of news, The Post has learned. -snip- Schiller, who has held jobs at CNN, NPR and the New York Times, certainly fits the job description.

Public-broadcasting fans love to proclaim that PBS and NPR are bravely “independent” of the government. But sometimes, the facts suggest a close symbiotic relationship. Terence P. Jeffrey of CNSNews.com reports that on the first day of the government shutdown, the Daily Treasury Statement revealed no money for clinical trials for cancer, but the administration awarded $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Pay the publicist first!

Tucked within a release naming its new president and CEO, NPR announced today that it would seek to reduce its staff by 10 percent through a voluntary buyout plan. (The Washington-based organization employed 840 people in 2012.) NPR's board of directors just approved a budget for fiscal year 2014, which includes a deficit of $6.1 million, or 3.1 percent of its $178.1 million in revenue. The buyouts are intended to help plug the spending gap and, according to the release, will be offered "broadly across the organization." The board named Paul G. Haaga, Jr. as acting president and CEO effective...

NPR's Emily Kaiser tweeted out a portion of Esquire's website Wednesday morning. Though it has since been fixed, on the twelfth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, this is what Esquire readers woke up to -- the unforgettable photo of a World Trade Center worker who has just leapt to his death next to a cutesy blurb about "Making Your Morning Commute Look More Stylish".

The background of the Syrian conflict can seem obscure to outsiders, but the spark that started it all is often traced back to the city of Dara'a, in February of 2011. A group of young people writing Arab Spring protest slogans on a wall are arrested and beaten. "When that news broke there was a massive demonstration on the street, and that was the first spark one can call of the Syrian uprising," Nayan Chanda tells NPR's Jacki Lyden. But long before a single shot was fired in Syria, there was drought in Dara'a, laying the groundwork for social unrest....

Bread and Puppet Theater has been a familiar presence at political demonstrations since the anti-war protests of the 1960s. Its giant puppets and raucous brass band also marched against wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1982, Bread and Puppet led a parade in New York that, according to police estimates, consisted of more than a half-million anti-nuclear protesters. Though massive street protests may be a thing of the past, Bread and Puppet's work is still unapologetically political as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. is based on a farm in northern Vermont, about 25 miles from the Canadian border....

I met Edna Monroy — a young, undocumented activist from Mexico — at her neighborhood park in South Los Angeles. It's a historically black part of LA that has seen a huge demographic shift over the past several years. It's now mostly Latino. Monroy is one of the newer arrivals. She chose Jesse Owens Park for our interview because, she says, it's symbolic. "it's on the borderline," says Monroy. "Since we're talking about borders, this park is on the borderline between South Los Angeles and Inglewood." The park is named after an African-American Olympian, but most of the visitors on...

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list. Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim. His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio. Aslan is not a trained historian.

NPR’s gleaming new headquarters building in the shadow of the Capitol in Washington has soaring ceilings, a “wellness” center, an employee gym and a gourmet cafe staffed by a resident chef. This, as it turns out, could be a political problem. NPR showed off the 400,000-square-foot complex, which has been open since April, to members of the media earlier this week. It immediately began drawing some grumbles from those who see the edifice as far too luxe for a nonprofit radio and digital-news organization that depends, in part, on taxpayer support. In effect, the building briefly became a new club...

Between his trip to Europe last week and his travels to Africa next week, President Obama is doing a lot of gift exchanges with foreign leaders. In the past, he has gotten mixed reviews. Four years ago, for giving the queen of England an iPod. Other presents have gone over better. But the president does not personally select these gifts — a staffer does. And there's a well-kept secret at the White House: When Obama wants to choose a gift himself for someone in his inner circle, he sets a very high bar. Last November, Valerie Jarrett, one of the...

NPR’s gleaming new headquarters building in the shadow of the Capitol in Washington has soaring ceilings, a 24-hour “wellness” center, an employee gym and a gourmet cafe staffed by a resident chef.

...The announcement comes a day after word that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is withholding funding to Pacifica's five stations for insufficient accounting practices, misreported revenues and failure to comply with CPB rules on open meetings and financial transparency

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 Angry Liberals in America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is staring at me with the uncontrolled intensity usually reserved for serial killers and time-share salesmen. "We know how to get the country back to work. The government needs to lead the way." He folds a napkin in what looks like some expensive oyster bar, but is probably just a television studio backdrop. "The government has to get us back to work." O'Donnell already has a job. His job is to yell angry things on MSNBC. Most of his listeners...

NPR recently moved from Chinatown into its new 400,000 square-foot home on North Capitol, and they’re excited about it. Eager to show off the new facility, the organization offered a tour to members of the media Tuesday morning, starting with breakfast from their in-house chefs, along with some talking points from CEO Gary Knell, who outlined some impressive features of the space.The goal in the new building was to have plenty of open space to promote collaboration, something that was difficult in the smaller, closed-office building NPR used to operate out of. The newsroom is a good example of this....

Employees defied the government shutdown and continued to broadcast live coverage of the protests online after over-the-air transmissions were blocked. The Greek government's decision to pull the plug on its national public broadcaster has sparked major protests with media workers, politicians and members of the public gathering outside offices of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, the ERT, in Athens. Greece's conservative government shut off ERT's signal Tuesday night, hours after announcing that the public broadcaster, which costs Greek taxpayers around $400 million (€300 million) a year would be closed as part of national austerity programs. Greece has already drastically slashed public...

What’s so bad about the IRS investigating nonprofit applications? That’s their job. The real scandal is that the ensuing hubbub will discourage them from doing it again, writes Ken Stern. Over the last week, commentators have expressed great outrage over the handling by the IRS of applications by Tea Party groups and others for 501(c)(4) status. In the haste to trigger the next administration-crippling “gate,” these analyses have largely ignored one of the most surprising aspects of this entire episode—that the IRS was actually trying to do its job. A little context is warranted. There are more than 1.5 million...

The IRS was in the hot seat Friday, with its outgoing acting commissioner . A Senate panel is scheduled for Tuesday. Congress is prodding to find out why the agency singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. Attention has focused on the IRS' flagging of these groups starting in 2010. But some liberal groups and journalism organizations say their applications for tax-exempt status also faced long delays and were closely scrutinized during the same period. The year 2010 began a busy period for the IRS office in Cincinnati, the home of the tax-exempt determinations unit. That January, the Supreme Court...

Two years ago on Memorial Day, Nashville songwriter Connie Harrington was driving in her car, listening to a story on the public radio program Here & Now. And she heard a father remembering his son — a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan. "He mentioned that he drove his son's truck," Harrington says. "And he went on to describe the truck." Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was 30 when he was killed in action in 2006. In the radio broadcast, his father, Paul, said his reasons for driving the truck Jared left behind were simple: "What can I tell you?...

NPR’s popular “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” trivia show gets its fair share of big name political guests (Bill Clinton called in once, for example), but host Peter Sagal knows that there’s a specific shortage he’d like to fill: Republicans. Asked by Vulture, “Is there a dream guest for you? Someone you’ve been trying to get that you think you never will?” Sagal responded, “I would love to get more Republicans on the show.” "One of the things I really envy about Jon Stewart is how many times he’s able to get Republicans on his show. And that’s to his...

Senior Director of Institutional Giving for NPR Betsy Liley said it is still a question of whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States. She clearly is heard talking about a coverup, keeping the birther issue out of the news because it was “political” and even indicating that there was monkey business going on in Hawaii concerning Obama’s birth certificate. Listen to the brief audio below and see for yourself. Birthers are not just on the right. There are clearly birthers on the left, they just want to cover up the truth.