Posted on 10/21/2010 9:58:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Call me lucky. I had a pre-scheduled interview this morning with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller this morning before her speech at the Atlanta Press Club Newsmakers luncheon at the 191 Club in downtown Atlanta.
So lo and behold, the entire Juan Williams firing blew up the past 24 hours. I happen to be the first person to talk to her about it. Here is an abbreviated Q&A:
Q: Okay. What happened?
A: Lets state a couple of facts. Juan is not an employee of NPR. Hes an independent contractor. Hes not NPR staff. Hes an NPR analyst. We have a contract with him for analyst opinions to provide news analysis. He is not a columnist or commentator. He also has an on-going relationship with Fox News. Mara Liasson is also on Fox News and is a full-time staffer. We accept thats a whole other issue. However, we expect our journalists, whether they are news analysts or reporters to behave like journalists.
Q: So did Juan really get fired over just those Muslim comments? [He said he was uncomfortable with Muslims dressed in traditional garb on airplanes on Fox News yesterday.]
A: There have been several instances over the last couple of years where we have felt Juan has stepped over the line. He famously said last year something about Michelle Obama and Stokely Carmichael. [The quote on Fox News last year: Michelle Obama "has this Stokely-Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going" and that she'll be an "albatross" for President Obama.]. This isnt a case of one strike and youre out.
Q: So this is obviously not an isolated incident.
A: Theres so much misinformation on the blogosphere, its nuts. This has been an on-going issue. When he does that, when anybody does that, it undermines their credibility as a journalist or in Juans case, a news analyst for NPR. Those two things cannot go together.
Q: Have you done this before with other analysts or reporters?
A: Its impossible to answer that. Every circumstance is different and would create false parallels.
Q: As you mentioned, Mara Liasson appears on Fox News. Is there an issue with Fox News?
A: No. She behaves on Fox as a journalists. I have no issues with anything she has said on Fox. This is not about Fox News. Its not about a political agenda. This is not about even validating or invalidating [Williams'] feelings.
Q: Mike Huckabee is now saying NPR has discredited itself and should have federal funding revoked.
A: Yes, I heard that. This has become a political issue. My God, Im shocked!
Q: Could NPR live without federal funding?
A: Lets go on a sidebar. Theres a misperception about federal funding and public radio. Theres the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They receive $90 million a year and a vast majority goes to member public radio stations. Those stations pull in more than $1 billion collectively a year. Its significant and important but not even close to the lions share of revenues for public radio. NPR gets no allocation from CPB. Zero. We are a private 501(c)3. Weve had journalists call up and ask what department of the government we report to. Thats laughable. Have you listened to our shows? We do apply for competitive grants from the likes of the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation. As a result, some money from CPB does come to us when we win grants. Depending on the year, it represents just one to three percent of our total budget.
Q: What is your annual budget?
A: $160 million a year from station fees and dues, corporate underwriting, philanthropic contributions from individuals and corporation and earned income and earnings from our endowment.
Q: How healthy are you?
A: We had some issues the last couple of years and went into deficits. But weve regrouped and were back on track.
More to come. The luncheon is going to start. Ill see what else I can get from that.
NOTE: I am a board member of the Atlanta Press Club.
Well, Hell’s bells. If they receive no significant federal funding, that’s great! We can cut everything they do receive with no harm! That way we can let them sail on their way with their liberal coverage and no longer fret over them. Thanks for the sidebar, Viv.
NPR host Garrison Keillor (Salon.com) rips Sarah Palin and the GOP a new one
By Gus Garcia-Roberts, Wed., Oct. 8 2008
And they say NPR is mild-mannered. Garrison Keillor recently proved that public radio hosts can rant just an emphatically — albeit with a bit more eloquence — as their conservative talk-show counterparts. His essay on Sarah Palin and this election’s determinedly forgetful Republican mindset, titled “George Bush with Big Hair” and penned for Salon.com, is the political cyber equivalent of “I’ m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” After the jump, the lede:
So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, “Throw the bums out!” They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.
They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn’t just fall off the coal truck.
It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part — forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be — and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigor.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/garrison_keillor/2008/09/10/palin/
Republicans Alienate Nevada Latinos With Immigration Ads
by Frank James (NPR)
Illegal immigration has popped up as an issue in campaign ads, with Republicans and even the occasional Democrat using it to charge their rivals with being sympathetic to law breakers.
But the issue, which can work to energize voters, especially conservatives in jurisdictions with relatively few immigrants, appears to be boomeranging in at least one place with many immigrants - Nevada.
Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle has run a controversial ad with black-and-white video of people with backpacks depicted as illegally entering the country along a border fence. Her point: that Democrat Sen. Harry Reid has been the “best friend” those who entered the U.S. illegally could have.
I wonder how many NPR reporters have expressed views on Journolist and if they always met Vivian’s standards?
What Won’t Get You Fired From NPR
Michael C. Moynihan | October 21, 2010
Wishing AIDS on your political enemies and their children. Check out this clip, from way back in 1995, of NPR’s Nina Totenberg telling the host of PBS’s Inside Washington that if there was “retributive justice” in the world the (admittedly loathsome) Jesse Helms would “get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.” Totenberg is still NPR’s legal affairs correspondent.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/21/what-wont-get-you-fired-from-n
BUMP
Deep in their secret harts Liberals believe that blacks are disadvantaged because they are inherently inferior to whites on a biologically level. They see “black” as a handicap that imparts the same limitations as something like Down Syndrome.
White Liberal “guilt” is really founded in contempt and in a search for a justification for their ruthless exploitation of African Americans.
They look at Black heretics like Clarence Thomas and say: “How dare one of these poor pathetic helpless people we’ve done so much to help deviate from the script we’ve given him! How dare this man have the presumption to have ideas and values of his own!”
Who knows? Lefties wouldn’t know logic if you wetted a book on the subject, froze it solid and beat them with it.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=138293
Before the 2004 election, NPR ran this series "On the Fence" where a supposedly undecided voter was interviewed periodically and expressed his views on who he was considering would get his vote. Of course, in the beginning he was 'totally undecided' but each week he leaned more and more for Kerry. Turned out that the guy was not just a resident from the midwest but was this movie producer from LA and a paid NPR consultant. After lots of heat, they quietly dropped the series two weeks before the election. I was contacting the Ombudsman daily till they took it off.
D.C. NPR Commentator Denounces Limbaugh as ‘Excrement In Broadcasting’
NPR Executives Send Memos: Employees Forbidden to Rally with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert
Oh good grief. There I was about to mail a check for $250 for the fundraiser and they go and do this! Guess I will have to send it to Barney Frank’s opponent, Sean Bielat, instead.
Good move NPR.
If Click and Clack were not on, I would not listen at all.
RT @ombudsman: Due to user volume, NPR Contact Us page is down. Please use FB/Twitter or post comments on last column. http://bit.ly/br3EPw
less than 5 seconds ago via TweetDeck
I think Juan Williams should sue Vivian Schiller personally and NPR corporately for violating his civil rights as an African American male fired by a rich white corporate oppressor in federal court under 42 USC 1981. He was clearly targeted for exercising his first amendment rights off the NPR cameras. Schiller clearly has a Simon Legree thing going about this, and it is from her own comments clearly a pattern of her own behavior that extends well beyond this incident.
Also NPR should be investigated by the IRS for violating their 501c3 status over the years, involving themselves in attempting to affect legislation and elections. As should the currently federal tax exempt foundations that provide NPR funding for their virulently anti-American socialist propaganda.
CAIR to elaborate?
No tote bag and Antiques Roadshow DVD for you!!
Why not send it to Free Republic?
Also Williams should name Barack Obama personally in his federal discrimination lawsuit since Obama is repeatedly pressuring Fox News in public to advance his own political agenda.
Also Rodney Ho may want to check his parachute color PDQ as should anyone else in the “journalism” industry who dares raise any question about this firing on what that IMHO white fatcat corporate racist Schiller considers “principal” (sic).
“How dare this man have the presumption to have ideas and values of his own!
It’s what they used to call “uppity”.
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