Back on an earlier post, after I had been wringing my hands (but in a light-hearted manner) about the difficulty these days in finding a way to pay for good journalism in the 21st century, Phillip took occasion to praise the public model, giving us a link, headlined “Public media put millions into investigative work,” about how NPR and PBS are trying to take up some of the slack left by the declining (and, on state and local levels, moribund) MSM.
Wow, that was a long lede sentence. Back in the heyday of the MSM, that would never have made it past the copydesk. But I digress.
I responded that hey, y’all know how I love NPR — it’s as good as any print medium, and I can’t say that about anything else in the broadcast arena.
But the embarrassing news today about a soon-to-be-former executive at NPR sort of illustrates the special tensions of being a public medium.
Did you see the story? Here’s how NPR itself reported on it. But if you prefer another source, here’s the WashPost version:
The former head of NPR’s fundraising arm says in a surreptitiously recorded video by a conservative activist that members of the tea party movement are xenophobic and racist and that NPR would prefer to do without subsidies provided by the federal government.
In the video, released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, NPR executive Ron Schiller disparages conservatives in general and tea party members in particular, saying some of its followers are part of an “anti-intellectual” movement.
Schiller and another NPR fundraiser, Betsy Liley, believed that that two of O’Keefe’s operatives were representatives of a Muslim philanthropy. The video was shot at Cafe Milano in Georgetown during a lunch meeting set up to discuss a $5 million contribution to NPR by the equally fictitious Muslim Education Action Center, which one of the men tells the NPR executives is connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization with suspected ties to terrorists.
On the video, Schiller, who formerly headed the NPR Foundation but left the organization last week, says: “The tea party is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of movement.”
He adds that “tea party people” aren’t “just Islamophobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”…
And for another source, here’s ABC’s report.
For the report of the group that pulled this stunt and got this poor Schiller schmo fired, follow this link. The group’s video is above.
And what this makes me think is this:
Hey, it’s great that NPR does such fine work. That’s why I listen to it every day. But boy, this business of being funded partly by the gummint and partly by contributions sure does have its drawbacks. Think about it:
- If NPR didn’t get some public funding, it wouldn’t be the big, fat target that it is among anti-government types, and this group would never have pulled this stunt.
- If NPR didn’t also depend upon grants and contributions, it wouldn’t have a development executive, and wouldn’t send anybody even to listen to such a pitch from a group allegedly affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, much less grovel as embarrassingly ineptly as this guy did. (I’ll give him credit for one thing only: He didn’t quite let them bait him into antiSemitism, try as they might.)
So… there are indeed drawbacks to this funding model.
Let’s hope that the guy who replaces this guy at NPR is a little smarter. The really embarrassing thing about listening to this, as the fan of NPR that I am, is that this guy is so … unsophisticated. Yeah, I realize he’s not a journalist, and he’s not expected to have a nuanced understanding of politics. But anybody in NPR’s news department has to be mortified to hear anyone even remotely connected with them blathering in such a knee-jerk, bumper-sticker manner. I mean, did this guy ever even listen to NPR?
The old business model of the MSM — journalists do their thing, while the entirely separate business side goes out and sells ads — had its challenges, but it worked more smoothly than this. Of course, that’s dying out, and we still have to find something else if we’re to meet the demand for reliable news (which seems to be as great as ever).
But as we hunt about for a new method of paying for newsgathering, we see that the public/donor model has its problems.
Related Posts
The most damaging part of the video, I would think, would be the part where Schiller says NPR would actually prefer to do without federal funding, which A) I find hard to believe, but which B) bolsters the GOP pseudo-budget-cutters who in reality have an even LOWER opinion of their Tea Party constituency than Mr. Schiller does, insofar as they believe that constituency will so gullibly swallow cuts to NPR (or in Nikki Haley’s case, cuts to ETV and the Arts Commission) as serious deficit-reducing measures rather than the merely politically punitive and symbolic ones they are.
Mr. Schiller of course is over-generalizing about an entire movement. But let’s face it: is the modern conservative movement “anti-intellectual”? Does “a large, uneducated part of the population” hold monolithic views of anything associated with Islam, e.g., basically equating the Muslim Brotherhood with Al-Qaeda?
Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear, yada yada yada?
Phillip, anti-intellectualism is a powerful strain permeating American politics, and each end of the political spectrum can, with some justice, fling it at the other end.
It just tends to manifest itself differently. Yes, it seems right now that the right is PARTICULARLY, proudly stupid. That’s the influence of the Tea Party, which is an emotional phenomenon. And there’s just been so MUCH emotion on the right since the 08 election that it’s what you hear the most about.
But the left is just as guilty of emotionalism. It’s just that the right tends to manifest anger at government and other large institutions, while the left tends to value touchy-feeliness over reason.
This ex-NPR doofus is a good example of the worst kind of anti-intellectualism on the left. Like the angriest Tea Partiers, he is a mass of ill-considered, little-examined prejudices and generalizations. He’s just one oversimplification and Culture War stereotype after another. Which, as I said, is what I would find most embarrassing if I worked at NPR. Hey, attack the Tea Party in a PRIVATE conversation (which he had every reason to believe this to be) if you must. But give a little THOUGHT to what you’re saying, nevertheless.
Something I find myself wondering about — did the O’Keefe group target this guy because they had been exposed to him and knew what a caricature he was, or was it just that they saw the development door (in keeping with the chosen cover story) as the best one to knock on, and got lucky with this particular guy?
I also find myself wondering how many of these “stings” this group has attempted that have produced nothing.
One more point: It’s interesting to see how journalism — or the fringes of it, anyway — is returning to its roots.
As the MSM fades, particularly on the state and local level, you see these well-funded ideological groups rushing into the vacuum, and exploiting the low technological barriers to publishing and dissemination, to use something masquerading as journalism to push their agendas.
In South Carolina, you have the SC Policy Council, with its organ The Nerve, presenting exposes and other stories that just happen to always, without fail, show everything about government to be a horrible waste — without the slightest context or balance.
Fortunately on the one hand, these publications haven’t seemed to get a lot of traction among the public — although of course there are some NATIONAL ideological programs that have huge followings on radio and TV. On the other hand, what this teaches them is that they have to be sensational, employing ambush strategies that the MSM would not use (in the media world I worked in, misrepresenting yourself was a cardinal sin).
But again, I wonder how often it works. How much effort is necessary to get a payoff like this one?
Oops, didn’t bring that point full-circle. My original point was that this is how journalism in America started — extremely partisan rags pushing one faction or the other. That continued through the 19th century. The independent, “objective” model that I came up in hadn’t really fully emerged until the middle of the 20th century.
The simple solution is for the government, at any level, not to fund or work with, and agencies that use speech or print to advocate a political position. It isproper for organizations to state what they want, and risk problems if accuracy is not adhered to, but not at the expense of taxpayers who may not agree with the espoused positions.
Brad,
I agreed with you about your postings, but then you did this huge equivocation,
“But the left is just as guilty of emotionalism.”
Really, “Just as guilty?”
I don’t see anything remotely resembling the raging, emotional hypocrisy of the Tea Party on the left. That is like claiming that gold pieces and pennies have equal value because they are both coins.
tjc27,
Not so long ago there was this guy named George W. Bush (“43”) who could reduce a large slice of the Democrats to a frothy sputtering…
Yeah, jfx provided an example of it over here, attacking Tony Blair in terms that are highly indicative of Bush Derangement Syndrome…
Sorry, jfx, but it’s true. That was an emotional response.
Also, I didn’t say the left and the right were the SAME. I said they were equally emotional, just in different ways.
And each side thinks IT is the clear-thinking, rational one, and the other side consists entirely of idiots.
Both are wrong.
NPR DOES NOT AND NEVER HAS ADVOCATED ANY POLITICAL POSITION!!!!
Now, for those to whom objective reporting seems to be political because they are so steeped in the “fair and balanced” Faux News, I realize this may come as news….
While there are certainly many on the left who could have wiped some spittle off there lips, you didn’t see the mainstream, high profile commentators or leading pols on the left dip into the trough like we are seeing now. Maybe some, but not to this degree. The leading GOP presidential candidate has practically gone birther on us. And he looks mild compared to the other nest of loons hoping to take back their country from themselves.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50965.html
Some call me Tim
I hear you, tjc27. (I sort of feel like a character in a sci-fi movie addressing someone that way… just call me Equality 7-2521…)
I thought Huckabee was one of the more reasonable alternatives to John McCain in 2008. But he has this penchant for stooping to conquer now and then. I remember he even did it back then. I’m not remembering the details now, but he said something pretty disturbing about our Confederate flag problem back then… I didn’t even have time to do more than take brief note of it at the time, as it happened during what may have been the busiest week of my life in the last decade. But here’s where I took note of it.
Nice reference, Tim!
Y’know, I agreed with Huckabee on the Natalie Portman unwed mother flap. It was wrongly blown out of proportion, and what he said was totally true: Movie stars make it look easy because they have millions of dollars to make it look easy.
I agreed with Huckabee’s comment that without government assistance those babies would starve. No one seemed to have latched onto that.
That said, I don’t think Natalie Portman thought “Hey, wouldn’t it be super cool for me to get knocked up for the Oscars?” She got preggers, which is her business.
There is no “Confederate Flag Problem” in South Carolina.
As for Huckabee, he is doing just what John McCain did before him drifting into the loonie right of the GOP in order to not offend Rush and the rest of the blathering conservatives. The whole Obama in Kenya nonsense discredits him as anyone to take seriously. I’ll take a hard look at any Republican who says something that he or she knowingly will offend Rush Limbaugh. Haven’t seen it yet. When they actually do offend Rush they go out of their way to appologize.
Kathryn, why did Huckabee pick out Natalie Portman to criticize? She is afterall engaged to the father of her child and plans to marry him. Sounds like a resonable family values mom to me.
… each side thinks IT is the clear-thinking, rational one, and the other side consists entirely of idiots.
-Brad
I couldn’t disagree more. The right in this country has just gone completely insane. Did anyone ever question whether Bush was born in the USA? Did anyone on the left question Bush’s faith? Did anyone ever call Bush a liar? Well, actually they did, but it was true. Sorry but the left is far more sensible than the right in 2011.
I think I have it straight, now: if you disagree with Brad’s position, you are guilty of being over-emotional. If you agree, you are being rational. Brad, you really need to let this one go. You like to talk about “left and right” and position yourself as someone in a calm, unemotional, rational center, but the truth that you have opinions on various issues just like anybody else. They tend not to divide in a partisanly-predictable way, which indicates that you think for yourself on each issue, and that’s certainly admirable. But we are all human, and every considered opinion by every truly thinking citizen (and you certainly are that, as are almost all the commenters here) is a combination of emotion and reason, at least as that individual sees it. You’re not immune from that combination of factors, and it’s argumentatively lazy to just dismiss someone’s disagreement as saying, in effect, “well you’re just emotional and I’m rational, so the argument’s over.” You were off base on the other thread on jfx’s comment, which was no less a combination of emotion and reason than your own reasons for endorsing our invasion of Iraq. Most conservatives who criticize Obama are NOT nutty “birthers” and practitioners of Obama-Derangement-Syndrome; and most who think Blair was a slick prevaricator on the war can’t be dismissed as purely emotional BDS-ers. (That would be at least half the planet in that case.)
I certainly don’t pretend that my opinions are devoid of an emotional basis: and for the record, going back to Mr. Schiller, my point was not that the right wing or the left wing is more prone to emotionalism or even rhetorical over-the-top-ness; but that anti-intellectualism per se is (at least at this moment in American history) a cudgel wielded in particular by the right. It’s inexact for you to say that Mr. Schiller was equally guilty of “the worst kind of anti-intellectualism”: that would mean he would be doing such things as criticizing Tea Party leaders for “sounding like a professor,” just one of the gibes (meant to be an insult, I guess) directed at our current President. Schiller was guilty of a lot of things, stereotyping and overgeneralization among them, but anti-intellectualism is a very different and very specific thing.
Why do you allow bud to badmouth the Republicans and right-wing conservatives, yet you delete posts if someone even remotely blasts the Democrats or left-wing liberals?
bud– I think Natalie Portman was singled out by the Huckster because of her very public comments, such as her acceptance speech for the Golden Globes (if I have the award right). She is old enough and, more than smart enough, to realize that she is putting herself out front and center.
Being engaged to the parent of one’s fetus is not the same thing by a long shot as being married. In Maine, they’d call those “fiance/fiancees” a “spose”–because they were “sposed” to get married. In many communities, a “fiance” is merely someone with whom one is going steady, it seems. There are no wedding plans.
Why don’t Natalie and Millepede [sic] just tie the knot already?
Phillip has earned his gold star for the day, I believe.
Yeah, yeah, Burl. I realize that to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all those upright buildings are slanted.
ARRGGGHHHHH!
I was only in the office for about 10 minutes this morning between out-of-office meetings, and I spent that time writing a response — medium-length — to Phillip’s comment above (agreeing heartily with part of it, disagreeing with another part), and just before I finished, the browser shut down, my laptop also shut down and restarted itself, and THEN decided to run a CHKDSK. I left to go to my next appointment (this one over at Harvest Hope) while that was still running.
Turns out ol’ Hal here had decided to treat itself to a makeover, choosing that moment to download the following:
— Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
— Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
— Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter
— Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
I felt like a husband in a 50s sitcom, waiting impatiently while his wife tries on clothes at the store. Only way more ticked off. And I just went ahead and left her there.
As for what I was going to say… well, maybe I’ll reconstruct it later.
Sheesh.
Sure, blame it on Windows.
Actually, that is usually a fair cop.
KF needs to realize that being objective and non-political is also a political position.
As for the guy’s comments about government funding, he was speaking as a fund-raiser. It’s just more difficult to raise funds for things that are partially supported by taxpayer dollars. Ask any museum.
Oh, and he was totally pandering to his (fake) guests.
Yes, it is — and I hate to mention it around ADCO, since everybody else here uses Macs (and iPhones, and iPads, etc.). They regard me as eccentric for bringing my own laptop every day.
I HAVE a Mac laptop ADCO provides me with here, but I don’t use it. I’ve tried to make myself do so many times, but can’t get into it. There are too many things I do automatically on a PC, which are hard-wired into my muscle memory, that don’t work like that on a Mac…
Phillip really knocked that one out of the park. Great response.
Let me just add that it is probably impossible for me to be completely unemotional when it comes to evaluating political issues. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t think about the suffering and pain caused by the actions of my government on issues that I oppose.
But the real pain that is born by these actions should be considered in quantifiable terms rather than in purely emotional terms. In other words it seems reasonable to attempt to translate the war in Iraq into costs and benefits based on dollars. The costs of the war are fairly easy to value. There are various estimates for the loss of human life. Plus we know the treasury costs to pay the soldiers and for the equipment. And of course there are the medical costs to treat the wounded. The bottom line economic costs in this rather cold, calculating fashion are considerable, probably in excess of $3 trillion. Perhaps considerably more.
But it is vastly more difficult to quantify the economic benefits of our actions. And that’s where I believe the war supporters are the ones who elect to simply engage in an emotional appeal. With all his eloquence Tony Blair’s defense of the Iraq war really boils down to a serious of emotional appeals aimed at convincing people that unquantifiable security benefits will accrue if we go into places like Iraq. That kind of appeal leaves me empty. It’s an elegance without substance and certainly no justification for going to war. So I would maintain that it’s the pro-war folks who are appealing to pure emotion. The anti-war folks at least have some semblance of an argument based on quantifiable facts.
On the other hand, there’s Newt: “Driven by how passionately I felt about this country, inappropriate things happened in my life.”
That “inappropriate thing” is how he refers to his wife?
Actually, if you’d bite the bullet and give it a try, you’d be surprised how easy the conversion would be. Apple has really gone a long way to make PC users comfortable. Really.
Bud says, “Phillip really knocked that one out of the park.”
No, he didn’t. He hit a nice, hard line drive. Once I got back to the office and had a functioning computer in front of me, I snagged it after it bounced, and held him to first….
It’s kind of like… he got on base on an error. And my blasted shortstop (my Windows-based operating system) committed the error, leaving me fuming on the mound.
Enough baseball metaphor? OK…
Apple computers are for people who don’t know anything about computers.
No, Apple computers are for people who actually use computers. PCs program the users instead of the other way ’round.
Apple is THE computer for the art community. My daughter has invested quite a bit in her equipment. I’m more like Brad – I’m too impatient with the learning curve to want to switch, but my daughter swears it is easier and more versatile.