NPR CEO resigns

The chief executive of National Public Radio has resigned, in the wake of a kerfuffle involving a James O'Keefe video sting. I am baffled by the whole affair, but the core crime that set all of this in motion appears to be the fact that another NPR executive had the audacity to use the word "xenophobic" in relation to the Tea Party. WaPo, NYT, more NYT. (disclosure: I am a proud freelance contributor to the radio network).

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Business • News

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

Crashing the world economy for profit is a scandal.

No, that’s a crime against humanity, and ought to be dealt with as such. But the rest of what you said is true.
George William Herbert

Fully funded Public Broadcasting which is in any way politically activist is a serious problem, though.

I don’t want either party funding its media and thinktanks out of my taxes. They can go raise donations for that from willing donors, thank you very much.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Disinterested reportage ain’t political activism.
  - George William Herbert
    
    I see many things of value in NPR. Disinterested reportage is a part of it, but there are also occurrences of interested reportage.
    
    The fundraisers’ comments and implied NPR organizational biases (see Anon@51′s commentary, and scattered ones above) are a real problem.
    
    There’s a difference between disinterested reporting and the less savory parts of the far left that become antisemitic and so forth. Expressing that degree of sympathy for the extremes, by a VP, to someone claiming to be an Arab representative of an often fairly extremist Islamic organizaton? That’s not neutrality. It might legitimately merely be fawning for a large check – a common occurrence among those who pull salaries from others’ donations. But it seems more than that.
goldmineguttd

Gasp- he calls the tea party xenophobic.

The fallout better end here. But something tells me the Fox news echo chamber has a new enemy of the state.
Anonymous

First off: NPR needs to find their own funding. If they were free of federal funding, they could do and say whatever they wanted without worrying about what the right says. They are only a convenient target because they get the federal funds in the first place. They could indeed do without the Fed funds. They already get huge corporate sponsorships: even if they call them “underwriting messages”, we know they are commercials), and I’m sure ADM and Monsanto would be happy to cover the difference.

But how about seeing the hipsters and activists and Whole Foods shoppers come up with some cash to back up their words? If they gave NPR a dime for every outraged post about “teabaggers” “Repugs” and “Christian Taliban” NPR would be funded better than FOX. BB alone would be a decent revenue stream. Hell, I’m a conservative and I support my local station despite my many disagreements with their news programs. They provide better arts and literature programming than anyone else.

Second: The Tea Party comments were not the problem. It was the snickering and tacit agreement with the anti-Jewish undercurrent, the “nudge nudge wink wink” they gave to the “National Palestinian Radio” and “Jews own the media” things. They obviously felt culturally at home with these people, felt a common vibe, even though they thought they were a fundamentalist Jew-hating religious group determined to spread religious law.

It is damaging to NPR because it shows that that sort of talk is culturally ok within the NPR community. If they had been anti-Black comments, it would have been seen as a dumbass personal opinion by Schiller, but would not have reflected on NPR because it would have been so wildly out of character for them. Oddly enough, the worldview these comments betrayed does NOT seem out of line for NPR.
- piminnowcheez
  
  it shows that that sort of talk is culturally ok within the NPR community
  Inference fail. I don’t even know exactly what the “NPR community” is supposed to mean, but whatever approval for anti-Jewish sentiment you’re reading into Schiller’s failure to express outrage at the punker’s comments does not imply anything at all about what any other employee of NPR thinks about Israel, Jews or Palestine.
  
  They could indeed do without the Fed funds. They already get huge corporate sponsorships:
  
  Right. And I can’t imagine there’d be any benefit to having a channel for news transmission that wasn’t entirely dependent on corporate funding.
  
  But it’s clearly the fault of hipsters and Whole Foods shoppers for not supporting NPR enough. After all, what is news for if not supporting our own political biases? Conservatives can have Fox, and the hipsters and commies can make NPR their Fox. Everybody wins. (where by “everybody,” I mean “nobody.”)
Lagged2Death

O’Keefe has pulled enough of these stunts by now to make it clear that he’s got no one’s best interests at heart. He’s like The Joker: some men just want to watch the world burn. Grown-ups everywhere should ignore him.
Thorzdad

We really need to stop slapping the term “scandal” on every effing mistake or slip a person makes in public. Embezzling operating funds is a scandal. A politician meeting boys in bathrooms is a scandal. Crashing the world economy for profit is a scandal.

He called tea-partiers scary and xenophobic. He told the truth. They are! They only scandal here is that the media machine treats it like it’s a scandal.
- Wally Ballou
  
  What Ron Schiller also said was that NPR could get along without federal funding, and he agreed with a comment by the planted interviewer that “NPR isn’t run by the Zionists like the rest of the media”
  
  If he’d confined his comments to taking shots at the tea party the fallout might have been different.
  - Fragtrade
    
    Yup. And he was nodding and playing along with some folks who claimed to be from the “Muslim Brotherhood” who wanted to do something about the Jews and their influence on the media. While he was careful to say many things were his own opinion, he was playing right along with some folks who promised to give NPR a big check. It sure would make it hard for NPR to talk about Congressmen taking bribes. It’s more than just using the word “xenophobic.”
    - jacques45
      
      He may have been “nodding and playing along”, but they repeatedly turned down the “no-strings-attached” money.
      - Brainspore
        
        Yes, and that particular fact is being woefully under-reported by the “gotcha” crowd. O’Keefe’s folks may have succeeded in getting an NPR exec to say stupid things on tape but the sting operation they set out to do was a failure.
        
        Not to mention that the exec in question and the CEO of NPR are both gone now. Good luck seeing that kind of response from Fox News next time someone from that organization gets caught showing political bias.
penguinchris

That’s awful, he’s invited to explain his personal opinion – not to explain the official position of NPR, or anything like that – and it’s going to be used to discredit NPR as far as the republicans dare to push it.

I mean, I personally don’t think it should even be necessary for him to resign, but I understand that in most cases like this that’s the only thing that can be done considering the pressure that would be placed on him (by idiots) if he didn’t.

Also, he’s right about the tea party (I didn’t watch the video or anything so I’m just going by the summary in the NYT article). So it’s not like he’s slandering them or anything. And it’s also not like NPR expresses that bias against the tea party or the republicans in their news coverage – NPR is generally thought to be left-leaning, but while most of their non-news personalities are clearly left-leaning, their news coverage always seems very balanced to me. They just don’t do the “balanced reporting” that cable news does, which apparently equates to having one person from each side give their opinion, even if the best person one side can come up with is a total idiot because that side is idiotic in general.

So, there may in fact be a natural bias against the tea party, because the tea party is composed of idiots and NPR doesn’t give air time to idiots.
sparklemotion

Just so it’s clear, the one who resigned yesterday was Vivian Schiller, the CEO.

Ron Schiller, the dude in the video, was previously a chief fundraiser for NPR. He had already planned to leave when this meeting happened — the fact that it went public made his resignation more immediate.

I agree, this whole thing is ridiculous.
- Tatsuma
  
  Actually, just so it IS clear, Vivian Schiller resigned today, Wednesday the 9th.
  - sparklemotion
    
    Thanks for the clarification — I got confused about when exactly she left.
    
    And I’ve never doubted _your_ commitment. Some of these other jokers though…
- Tatsuma
  
  Oh and I also wanted to add that you shouldn’t doubt my commitment to “sparklemotion”
  
  :-)
Lee Phillips

The full, unedited video is available here: http://vimeo.com/20786470 .
I watched much of it, and the context does not soften the impact of any of Schiller’s grotesque comments or behavior. In other words, the originally posted, heavily edited version does not misrepresent, in my opinion, Schiller’s intent or meaning. And there is something else. A lengthy segment of audio has been erased to protect the safety of an NPR reporter operating in a foreign country. If the NPR executives were saying things that put this reporter at risk, why were they saying them in a restaurant, to people they had just met and whom they obviously didnâ€™t know anything about?
cinemajay

Sick. An obvious hatchet job by Tea Party loons to get federal funding cut for public broadcasting.

I wonder if they realize how fair public media has actual been to them.
Jupiter12

I don’t see any problem with comment regarding xenophobic tea partiers. The real issue here is that an NPR representative basically stated that they have no need for federal funding. That was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Will the Republicans use this as an incentive to cut funding? Absolutely.
- pauldavis
  
  [he] stated that they have no need for federal funding.
  
  Ron Schiller didn’t say that. He said they would be better off without federal funding which is a subtly but very important difference. My son would be better off without my funding him (and even he would agree with this), but right now, he needs those funds. Got it?
mn_camera

Calling teabaggers racist and xenophobic? Really?

If the exec had lied, that might be something to get upset about. Teabaggers racist and xenophobic? Here in Minnesota we call that “Tuesday”.
imag

Damn liberuls are making it so we can’t even speak in our own country. No, it all has to be about political correctness. It’s gotten to the point where a body can’t even make an honest comment without being in fear.

What happened to freedom of speech, I say?

Oh.
Ugly Canuck

Meh.
You wouldn’t need these money-grubbers and their stinky politics around if the system were properly funded.

And I think it is worth having – and preserving – systems providing information to the public as to public affairs which are not entirely beholden to purely commercial interests.

As a matter of fact, I think a fully, nay, a lavishly funded Public Radio system would serve as an occasion to display the magnificence and wealth of the (to my eyes) great and exuberant spirit of the American people.

The public radio system of the USA allowed because of the cheapness of politicians to be reduced to begging in the streets for nickels and dimes!
For shame!
KateZeGreat

All the other “undercover” tapes by this idiot have come out as heavily doctored…not surprised if this one is as well.

Either way – it’s hardly the doodie-storm the Right Wing is making it out to be. NPR should take at least one leaf from the GOP book: Just hit “Ignore”.
imag

Someone should walk around Tea Party gatherings and ask people questions which determine the level of racism.

If the vast majority do, in fact, turn out to be racist, then perhaps Vivian should be exonerated.
Deidzoeb

This guy’s statement seemed justifiable, not something outrageous that deserved firing/forced retirement, just as Helen Thomas’s words seemed justifiable, not something outrageous that deserved firing/forced retirement.
silkox

Now we can put ourselves in the shoes of those poor, hardworking, CAFO-operating Florida farmers who need protection from unauthorized photography.
Doran

This is a big drag, especially for public radio in general, but not a big surprise given NPR’s history of appeasement. As Jay Rosen said: “Today is high point for ‘please don’t hurt us, we’ll be good’ journalism.”
- Tatsuma
  
  You have no idea how right you are.
Anonymous

Hi -

Just another classic example of a “Kinsley gaffe”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsley_gaffe

I am a big NPR fan but have long felt they should _not_ take federal money, just so they will not have to kowtow to the various red state nuts in D.C.

- TWR
Redondo Beach, California
Anonymous

From what I read, the problem is less with Messr. O’Keefe, and more with NPR authorizing an illegal public advocacy campaign:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/7/npr-pbs-campaigns-to-keep-federal-funds-called-unl/
Anonymous

What I don’t get is why NPR takes 2% of it’s funding from the Feds. They ought to give up that paltry amount just so they can have true independence and tell complainers to F off.
Heisenberg

‘Tea Party supporters are â€œseriously racist, racist people.â€

-NYT

Xenophobic != Racist
codesuidae

Could anyone figure out from the article why Vivian resigned?
- TEKNA2007
  
  Not from the article, but NPR’s own coverage today said she was forced out by NPR’s board — allowed to resign.
Cowicide

Who knew tea baggers were suddenly so sensitive to name-calling?

Maybe we should all just live a lie for the rest of all our lives… just so we never offend idiot tea baggers, God forbid.
Anonymous

way to go coward. notice how the wingnuts never resign and instead fight?
jphilby

AHA. That explains the NPR piece on xenophobic sci-fi films of the 50s this morning.

So how about it, BB readers? Are T-Partiers more like Triffids, The Blob, The Thing, the giant ants, Godzirra, Gort, The Beast, Them, Body Snatchers … take your pick.

(Helpful memory jog: http://www.cinemacom.com/50s-sci-fi-BEST.html )
ultranaut

I have been so confused by this story. My understanding:
1) There are two Schillers, a CEO and a VP. They are not related.
2) VP Schiller got a job at the Aspen Institute and submitted his resignation to NPR, he has spent the past several months commuting from Aspen to DC while finishing up his work at NPR.
3) VP Schiller was clandestinely recorded by an undercover team of right wing activists disguised as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, he met with the group because they made an offer to donate $5,000,000 to NPR.
4) VP Schiller made comments which right wing activists find provocative during his clandestinely recorded conversation.
5) CEO Schiller issued a public statement condemning VP Schiller.
6) CEO Schiller resigned today, effective immediately.

Am I missing something?
Lee Phillips

I think you’re being disingenuous, as it is clear you must understand that the scandal is not due merely to Ron Schiller’s characterization of the Tea Party as “xenophobic”. Have you seen the covert video? It chilled me to the bone.
- piminnowcheez
  
  Dude, if that video chilled you to the bone, you may need to turn the heat up in your apartment.
  
  Good god, but this whole thing is silly. What a couple of development suits say to a potential donor during lunch does not in any way reflect on the editorial policy of the news unit of NPR. The only people who are shocked and outraged here are tribal conservatives who are looking for any excuse at all to say gotcha.
  
  That NPR would actually cede power to a juvenile prankster like O’Keefe by treating this at all seriously just kills me. I *wish* we had a liberally-biased broadcast medium in this country, but all we have are establishment-appeasing milquetoasts done up in objectivity drag.
- pauldavis
  
  what do you think its due to then?
ill lich

It’s weird that this caused the guy to resign– find me a spokesperson for the Tea Party who thinks Muslims and Mexicans are not a threat to America. They will insist it’s not xenophobia, but common sense, but then they don’t offer logical explanations of how our crops will get picked without Mexican labor, or how a law-abiding Muslim born here in the US is actually a terrorist threat (whereas a guy parading around in public with an assault rifle is actually a patriot.)
TooGoodToCheck

You know, if Ron Schiller was, say, in change of news gathering, or if he had been an editor, or if he was working as a professional interviewer, I could see this scandal being actually scandalous. But, when the “scandal” is that a professional fundraiser was caught playing nice with potential donors who say crazy shit. . . that’s not a scandal – that’s his job. If he had been schmoozing rich right-leaning potential donors who said that the Tea Party is a breath of fresh air in America, you can bet he would have gone along quite happily with that too.

The job of a fundraiser is not to advocate a position.
- Lee Phillips
  
  Then I suppose this Ron Schiller was exceptionally good at his job, as you define it. The part where he volunteers that it’s a big problem that the newspapers are owned by Jews, but that fortunately NPR doesn’t have that problem, was a particularly deft performance. But wait, isn’t that advocating a position? Namely, the fascist, paranoid, anti-Semitic position? And if he was just doing his job, why was the NPR CEO so upset by his videotaped remarks, and why did she get canned, too?
  - ultranaut
    
    Wait, Ron Schiller is a paranoid anti-semitic fascist?!
    - grimc
      
      Wait, Ron Schiller is a member of the Tea Party?!
RevWubby

While I’m sure he was idiotic for saying these things to people he barely knew, I’m kinda at a loss to find where he said anything that wasn’t true? To be clear, when someone is asking to donate $5million to your organization, you’re not likely to call them out on something stupid they said (and he didn’t), but as Fox news call liberals fascists, un-patriotic, baby-killers on a near daily basis, why is this news?

Ok, he is charge of an organization that accepts federal money. Are the tea-party loonies suggesting that his personal views should be subject to review because of that? If so, lets have a whack at the “faith based funding” with the same stick, shall we.

The conservative movement HAS been hi-jacked by a bunch of xenophobic loonies calling themselves the “tea party”. How is this not a naked fact by this point?
Stefan Jones

It would be very interesting to see the unedited video.

O’Keefe’s as-released video of his ACORN punking left out everything that didn’t fit the narrative.

Really, it’s time to fight back. Infiltrate tea bagger meetings and conservative think tanks, interview creationist school board members, get tea party politicians to bare their squalid souls.
- Brainspore
  
  Really, it’s time to fight back. Infiltrate tea bagger meetings and conservative think tanks, interview creationist school board members, get tea party politicians to bare their squalid souls.
  
  No need, they already state their idiotic beliefs in public.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    For which they are to be much thanked, for providing such clear demonstrations and proofs, that common sense and coherent thinking may not simply be taken for granted as existing in our fellow citizens.
lubertdas

Stefan Jones@42,

O’Keefe’s full video has been released, and is available for your viewing pleasure.

Please let us know what you think after viewing the whole thing.

I think NPR is due to get what Mr. Schiller wanted–no government funding.
lubertdas

Whoops! I forgot to include the link to the entire O’Keefe NPR footage:

http://www.theprojectveritas.com/nprjudge
Ugly Canuck

If you force NPR to go begging for cash, why do you act surprised when they act venally?

This would not have happened had the Public broadcaster been properly and fully funded – rather than forced to beg their funding, to such an extent that they would need to even countenance any support from the likes of those these rightists pretended to be.

The right wingers are complaining of the results which their own policies have been entirely responsible for bringing about.

Fully funded Public Broadcasting is the answer.
Modusoperandi

Weird:
Fund raiser agreeing with nuts for $5M = anti-semitic
Supporting Israel so that it can be ground zero for the Apocalypse (where most of them will die horribly) = pro-semetic
â€¦
Find me a liberal who calles Jews “kikes”, and there might be something. Heck, if “Jews control the media” catches on with liberals all that means is that it covers the whole spectrum.