So apparently some lame-ass conservative group sets up a “sting” to try to get NPR to look bad. During the meeting between senior vice president for fundraising, Ron Schiller and men posing as members of a fictitious Muslim Education Action Center Trust, Mr. Schiller made the following statements:
— “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 move.”
— “Tea Party people” aren’t “just Islamaphobic, 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.”
— “I think what we all believe is if we don’t have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air … it’s the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn’t have female voices.”
He also suggested that public radio might be able to survive if government funding were cut off. Hmmmm, those sound like fairly reasonable assessments. The first two are observably accurate. I’m not so sure about the muslim voices since I don’t personally think we need more religious voices, but I certainly wouldn’t make any efforts to stifle them.
It seems that the powers at NPR don’t like their people to go around saying things that are true about Tea Partiers. Heaven forbid that journalists tell the fucking truth about a bunch of frigging lunatics. No, that would demonstrate bias or something. I don’t know about you, but being biased towards objective reality sounds like a pretty damn good bias to me.
Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior vice president of marketing, communications and external relations, released the following statement:
We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.
So telling the truth about the Tea Party is “appalling” and “contrary to what NPR stands for”? Fuck that noise. Grow some gonads, NPR. Stand up to the lunacy that is “fair and balanced” journalism and start telling the truth.
Oh, what’s that? NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has just resigned been kicked out over this? Never mind.
