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NPR: tripped up by its own elitism
NY Post ^ | March 14, 2011 | Juan Williams

Posted on 03/15/2011 4:16:02 AM PDT by Scanian

It just keeps happening. NPR's leader ship keeps tripping over its microphone wires and then asking everybody else to plug them back in.

I know everybody thinks I must be in a vindictive mood, celebrating the sudden departure of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller after her handpicked personal fund-raiser was caught on tape disparaging Tea Party activists and Jews and taking more shots at me. I'm human and do have some thoughts, but it's OK to keep them to myself: Schiller's very public missteps allow everyone to draw their own conclusions about her.

I'm not being vindictive when I say that NPR's leaders had become ingrown and arrogant to the point that they lost sight of journalism as the essential product of NPR. People like Schiller and Ellen Weiss, the head of news for NPR, who made it her life's work to fire me, came to think of themselves as smarter than anyone else.

They felt no need to answer to any critic. Any approach at variance with their own was considered traitorous and a basis for exiling them to the Gulag -- or, in my case, firing me.

The recent videotape showing NPR chief fund-raiser Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller) is just an open microphone on what I've been hearing from NPR top executives and editors for years. They're willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money, and then they'll turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view.

Ron Schiller's performance on videotape -- which included lecturing two young men pretending to be Muslims on how to select wine -- is a "South Park"-worthy caricature of the American liberal as an effete, Volvo-driving, wine-sipping, NPR-listening dunderhead.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: elitists; jamesokeefe; jews; juanwilliams; liberalmedia; npr; ronschiller; teaparty; vivianschiller
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To: bray

I male a point of it daily.

Thanks for the info. Not surprising at all.


41 posted on 03/15/2011 5:45:13 AM PDT by Scanian (i)
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To: Scanian

-——is a “South Park”-worthy caricature of the American liberal as an effete, Volvo-driving, wine-sipping, NPR-listening dunderhead.——

Sounds like he might be looking for Rush’s job with that string of descriptives.


42 posted on 03/15/2011 5:54:51 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. N.C. D.E. +12 ....( History is a process, not an event ))
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To: Scanian
"When Juan got canned, I thought he was acting like a petulant child."

Juan IS a petulant child. When he debates, he simply argues. He responds to the latest statements from others, rather than making cogent debating points. He never gives his opponents time to fully develop their statements. He ALWAYS has to get in the last word.

43 posted on 03/15/2011 6:00:55 AM PDT by norwaypinesavage (Galileo: In science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of one individual)
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To: norwaypinesavage

When you consider that Juan’s maturation level is about as good as it gets for a liberal, it’s rather sobering.


44 posted on 03/15/2011 6:06:49 AM PDT by Scanian (i)
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To: CORedneck

The listeners of NPR are even MORE condescending.


45 posted on 03/15/2011 6:13:54 AM PDT by Le Chien Rouge
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To: Tax-chick

Yeah, the typo in the first ‘graph was a cringer.


46 posted on 03/15/2011 6:30:20 AM PDT by Fido969 ("The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax." - Albert Einstein)
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To: Scanian
Juan closes with the following:

I'm still an NPR fan, but I'm no fan of the self-serving, self-righteous thinking that is at the top level of NPR in Washington and that has corrupted a once-great brand.

Those things exist at all levels, including at the member stations, IMO.

47 posted on 03/15/2011 6:43:14 AM PDT by Loyal Buckeye
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To: Scanian

No problem here.

I actually listen to NPR sometimes because the stuff the opposition tells itself is often very helpful to know. You should have heard the twits on “On The Media” poo-pooing the idea that NPR has a left-wing bias. They had Ira Glass from “This American Life” on as a guest, and he was apoplectic—”The right-wing is trying to rebrand us!”

Even more fun was a guy from the New America Foundation (to be fair to the folks at “On the Media,” he was on right after a guy from Reason Magazine who said public broadcasting is a joke and should be zeroed out) saying we should double down on public funding of NPR and PBS because public broadcasting clearly produces a more informed electorate, thpough he provided no evidence to back that up; it’s just fact in his mind that commercial news will be less informative. He said we could do it without deficit spending by increasing TV and raido license fees and sending the increase on to public broadcasters. Yeah, private businesses funding their competitors through the government...that’s America!


48 posted on 03/15/2011 8:56:45 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Anyone who says we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won't do has never watched "Dirty Jobs.")
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To: Scanian
Journalists should not be doing news to please any party or any elected official -- out of fear of losing funding. Over the last several years, NPR's leadership had become so obsessed with the money issue, as evidenced by Ron Schiller's behavior, that it had started to corrupt the newsgathering process because non-profit fund-raising has devolved into an underworld cesspool.< /I>

Juan's right on this...

49 posted on 03/15/2011 9:04:24 AM PDT by GOPJ (http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php - It's only uncivil when someone on the right does it.- Laz)
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To: Scanian
Here's a quote from Juan:

This just confirms my belief that it is time for our government to get out of the business of funding NPR. The idea, to me, of government-funded media doesn't fit the United States.

Journalists should not be doing news to please any party or any elected official -- out of fear of losing funding.

He points out something I've been saying for years: One of the main premises for those who support public broadcasting is that hundreds of millions of government dollars make PBS and NPR feisty government watchdogs. Sure, they don't say it that way, but when they question whether Fox or CNN can provide good journalism as long as they're taking money from advertisers they're saying that commercial money corrupts and government money doesn't.

Which brings to mind a rhetorical question: When's the last time NPR and PBS reported on misconduct at, say, Proctor & Gamble, that was ignored by Fox and CNN because Proctor & Gamble buy ad time on their shows? I can't recall anything like that, but I can recall plenty of times that NPR made excuses for or ignored government malpractice or malpractice by Democrats.

50 posted on 03/15/2011 9:54:47 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Anyone who says we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won't do has never watched "Dirty Jobs.")
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To: GOPJ

Yeah, well, that money “obsession” and nonstop hustling is largely a function of not having a product that anybody wants to buy.

My Jewish friends call it being a schnorrer.


51 posted on 03/15/2011 11:23:54 AM PDT by Scanian (i)
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To: Scanian

Why is one of this Thread’s keywords “jews?”


52 posted on 03/15/2011 5:57:07 PM PDT by papabrody (Proud member of the International Jewish Conspiracy)
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To: papabrody

“disparaging Tea Party activists and Jews”

Schiller is Jewish but was yapping about “Jewish domination of the media” during the sting.

The system has room for 4 key words initially in the News section. I could have gone back and added more because there were others but in this case I simply went with the first 4 I noted.

Problem?


53 posted on 03/15/2011 6:31:38 PM PDT by Scanian (i)
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