Hugh Hewitt wrote an excellent piece about NPR’s attempt to make it look like they’re cleaning up their “mess”. They want to show us that they’ve learned their lesson, after their idiotic decision last year to fire Juan Williams for having the audacity to appear on Fox News.
This is nothing more than a brazen dog and pony show, to attempt to show that change is on the horizon, to avoid being defunded, now that we control the purse strings.
To which I say, as politely as possible, screw that, losers! Too little, too late, too bad. Looks like you’ll have to have more beg-fests to fund your crappy shows once the taxpayer-funded spigot is turned off. Good luck getting the libs who listen to your garbage to contribute.
Of course, with liberals being liberals, after throwing one useless lib exec under the bus, they replaced her with yet another useless lib exec, and NPR/CPB will appoint a panel to do, well, I’m not exactly sure what.
Well, other than wasting more of the taxpayer’s money. They’ll do that. Libs are excellent at spending other peoples’ money, especially when it can be used to push their socialist propaganda crap.
I’ll tell you what they won’t do. They won’t change their stripes one bit. They’ll still have the same far-left ideologues idiots on the air pushing their lib propaganda that appeals to maybe 20% of Americans.
Defunding NPR and CPB
By Hugh HewittOn Thursday NPR released the results of its internal review of the firing of Juan Williams. A New York law firm pronounced –surprise– that the taxpayer-funded radio network’s actions had been “legal”. The sole casualty was the network’s head of news, Ellen Weiss, tossed under the bus and off the payroll. NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller lost her 2010 bonus as a sort of make-weight to a hilarious episode in faux corporate governance.
Read all of NPR’s own reporting on the shakeup at HQ, including this wonderful takeaway at the very end of the piece: ‘[Weiss] will be replaced temporarily by Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s vice president for programming. The two executives joined NPR on the same week in 1982.”
Change is in the air, eh?
NPR is a hard-left organization run by hard-left ideologues who haven’t changed their tone or core political beliefs in more than thirty years, though I confess surprise that the head of news and the head of programming are both veterans of the early anti-Reagan years. Those two with Nina “forgive-the-expression” Totenberg must make up the longest serving triumvirate of the left in a major news organization, and between them have worked out the party line response to five presidents and countless crucial national events.
This “shake-up” is a desperate attempt to try and hold off the defunding demands that surged in the aftermath of the PC police’s slams at Williams last year. Suddenly, with a clarity that is rarely achieved, a massive number of people said at once “We are paying for this?” At first NPR tried to respond with claims of consistent application of standards, an effort which fell apart immediately. Then defenders of state-sponsored propaganda from the left fell back to the “It isn’t that much money,” and now they are offering up human sacrifices to the Beltway gods of the appropriations committees. The bell is tolling for the left’s breakfast club. The View is so low brow. What will they do without the bits of classical music interspersed with the reporting, telegraphing intellectual and cultural superiority.
The next flailing gesture will be a very interesting one as a new panel is to be established comprised of NPR insiders, “respected journalists and others outside of NPR.” This panel is going to look at the ethics of the NPR operation.
Anyone want to guess who will be called to serve? They will need a couple of big name semi-retired commercial network types, a couple of retired senators, an acceptable Republican and someone from Harvard. A home run would be former Secretary of State Rice, though she is far too smart to be dragged into this charade. Together they will labor and decide that nothing like this should happen again and that the money should of course keep flowing.
Does anyone inside NPR see the irony of the use of the term “respected journalists?” Are they aware of the farce? Respected by whom, exactly? How self-important can one organization be?
It won’t work, or at least it shouldn’t. Speaker Boehner knows as does Chairman Hal Rodgers of Appropriations that the Tea Party now attaches enormous significance to the funding of NPR and of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and with very good reason. Why in an era of government austerity should even a dime of tax money be spent on the care and feeding of liberal elites? Why should Nina and Vivian and Margaret get a subsidy (and perhaps Ellen’s retirement as well) when the rest of the country is being told the era of limits has arrived.
