Free Republic

Bye-bye, Ed Schultz. We'll especially miss your gigantic ego, unending rage and all-around delightful personality. Will Comcast tolerate this kind of behavior from one of its cable hosts, particularly on top of so many past antics? From yesterday's syndicated radio program: ED SCHULTZ (02:52): And what do the Republicans thinking about? They're not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They're just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they're talking about, like this right-wing slut, what's her name?, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she's a talk...

If the resignations at National Public Radio continue at last week's pace, there may be no need for Congress to defund the aging dinosaur, because there will be no one left there to turn the lights on. The latest is Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving. Conservative activist James O'Keefe secretly recorded phone conversations between Liley and a man masquerading as a potential donor from a fictitious group called the Muslim Education Action Center, which the man said had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The fake donor said his group was worried about a government audit. Liley told him...

New video released Thursday afternoon indicates National Public Radio intended to accept a $5 million donation from fictitious Muslim Brotherhood front group Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust – and that the publicly funded radio network might have helped MEAC make the donation anonymously to protect it from a federal government audit. When a man posing as Ibrahim Kasaam asked, “It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?” NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, responded, “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous....

Are you a white, middle class, gun-owning, church-going conservative? Then NPR hates you. This stark but unsurprising revelation came in an undercover investigative video by conservative activist James O’Keefe targeting NPR senior executive Ron Schiller. Mr. Schiller thought he was chatting up Muslim activists promising a $5 million donation to the embattled publicly funded network, and he sought to appeal to them by disparaging people who disagree with his liberal worldview. “The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved with people’s personal lives,” he said. They are “very fundamentalist Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian

If NPR is trying demonstrate in the wake of the video scandal that it embraces a diversity of viewpoints and is not the left-wing outlet it has been portrayed to be, its first move after the resignation of president and CEO Vivian Schiller isn’t a particularly good start. After Schiller announced her resignation on Wednesday, the NPR Board of Directors promptly named Joyce Slocum as NPR’s interim CEO. According to a statement from NPR, Slocum’s appointment was part of a CEO succession plan adopted by the Board in 2009. Slocum, however, appears to be just another Democrat. According to data...

LISA SHEPARD : I'm Alicia Shepard, NPR's Ombudsman. Glad to be here today answering questions. Q. NPR BIAS? Was Ron Schiller's offense his harboring of demeaning views of Tea Party members, or his revelation of his views? If the former, aren't there lots of people within NPR who'd likewise need to be ushered out? If the latter, isn't NPR just protecting concealment of bias? A. LISA SHEPARD : Hi there. Certainly he wasn't fired for harboring negative views about conservatives. it was the unprofessional manner that cost him his job. Who blabs to total strangers in public about their personal...

The Tea Party is boiling over the hidden-camera video of an NPR executive calling the organization a gun-toting and Islam-hating collection of dummies in what is now fueling a new round of calls for cuts to public broadcasting. In a statement sent to the Herald, the Tea Party lashed out at being blindsided by the radio boss calling his dinner-hour critique "baseless, hateful fiction." They are demanding an apology and sensitivity training for NPR brass. The counter-attack comes after Ron Schiller, an NPR senior vice president for development and key fundraiser, was videotaped at a swank Washington restaurant while dining...

The NPR executive caught on video bashing the Tea Party and saying that NPR didn’t need federal funding will not be heading to the Aspen Institute. Ron Schiller had been scheduled to start his new position as direct of the Aspen Institute Arts Program and Harman-Eisner Artist-in-Residence April 1, according to a glowing press release distributed last week. But now Aspen Institute communications director Jim Spiegelman says that Schiller will not be working there. “Ron Schiller has informed us that, in light of the controversy surrounding his recent statements, he does not feel that it’s in the best interests of...

In a way, the history of National Public Radio, now known simply as NPR, follows the slow, incremental creep of America toward socialism. Its very existence, in fact, serves as a milestone along the socialist path, since it was created by an act of government — the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the liberal Democrat who beat conservative Republican Barry Goldwater in a crucial presidential race in 1964. Actually, the idea for the legislation came from a 1967 report from the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television entitled “Public Television:...

(AP) -- NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller resigned Wednesday in the wake of comments by a fellow executive that angered conservatives and renewed calls to end federal funding for public broadcasting. The chairman of NPR's board of directors announced that he has accepted Schiller's resignation, effective immediately. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik said in a tweet that Schiller was forced out by the board. On Tuesday, conservative activist James O'Keefe posted a hidden-camera video in which NPR executive Ron Schiller bashed the tea party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic" and said NPR would be better off without federal funding....

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, ripped National Public Radio (NPR) on Tuesday after NPR foundation’s nonprofit president Ron Schiller was caught on video saying the radio network and most of its member stations would survive without federal funding. “As we continue to identify ways to cut spending and save valuable resources, this disturbing video makes clear that taxpayer dollars should no longer be appropriated to NPR,” Cantor said in an e-mail to TheDC. “Not only have top public broadcasting executives finally admitted that they do not need taxpayer dollars to survive, it is also clear that without federal...

As if NPR needed any more problems: the news organization’s senior VP for development, Ron Schiller, was allegedly caught on film making some very unflattering remarks about Tea Partiers, Republicans, and Zionists, the Daily Caller reported this morning: A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement. … In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing...

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...

NPR has terminated its contract with Juan Williams, one of its senior news analysts, after he made comments about Muslims on the Fox News Channel. NPR said in a statement that it gave Mr. Williams notice of his termination on Wednesday night. The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad,...