What power pole?
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.
Liberals truly believe that the MSM and NPR are just as unbiased as they believe themselves to be, and that we conservatives are the lunatic fringe. My liberal friends mention what they heard on NPR or the MSM as though it was straight news with no editorializing, this while they are quite aware of my conservative view.
BWAHAHAHAH! This is just like Dan Rather saying he wanted to be the one to investigate whether his lies about Pres. Bush’s National Guard service were true. These libs are so far into denial that they’ll never find their way back.
They aren’t liberal.
They are socialist, communist, Marxist
Well, let's hear it for pubic broadcasting!
“”We are urban and rural ... red state and blue state,” she said.”
....no you’re not...you’re strictly inside the DC beltway.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see....I guess since everyone who works there is liberal therefore the whole country must be that way too?
My God! Has she ever watched Antiques Roadshow?
They must think like Dan Rather. Completely oblivious to reality.
What the hell?
I listen to NPR on the morning drive, and Schiller needs to listen no further than NPR morning show host Diane Rehm (the one with the shaky stuttering voice because something's F'ed up in her aging brain) because that crazy broad tries to tie absolutely everything to the "right wing" or "Bush".
A few weeks ago, Rehm had on some ridiculous woman who wrote a new book bemoaning that the megalomaniac Disney corporation has for generations been deviously implanting into little girls' minds that they should want to be fairy princesses (like Tinkerbell, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.) and that this is just the worst possible thing, since studies show that at least half of America's little girls should grow up to be craggy-faced volleyball coach lesbians with spiky buzzcut hairstyles and an ass that looks like both mudflaps on the back of an 18-wheeler --- and they WOULD be, if it weren't for the evil Disney corporation thwarting nature's plans for little girls.
Why, if it weren't for American culture's oppressive and unnatural societal gender/role assignment, little girls would grow up choosing to be heterosexual or homosexual with equal frequency, rather than unnaturally and overwhelmingly heterosexual. And it's Disney doing it! Just insane.
Naturally, Diane Rehm sputters out some claim that "What role does the right wing play in gender-specific role assignment?".
I wanted to punch the radio. NPR needs to be defunded.
Then you won't miss it right? Instead of having one of your fund drives every other week you could just have them every other night.
It's amazing how liberals don't seem to live in the same world as sane people do.
lol. what bias.
Their bias is what stopped me from listening when they were literally the only thing on the radio 10 years ago.
easier to switch it off than to listen to their liberal spew.
Same with PBS. Normal people don't watch PBS. They were turned off of it long ago for it's political leftward bias. now only the leftest ideologues listen to either NPR or PBS.
feh...
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