Did a fundraising executive confirm the long-held suspicions of conservatives that National Public Radio is liberally biased?
Ron Schiller, who in a secretly-taped video called Tea Party members gun-toting racists and implied the media was a Zionist mouthpiece, gave a a staggeringly intemperate performance.
Which was also the polar opposite of the tone of programming currently found on NPR.
Read also: James O'Keefe: What Kind of Journalist Is This?
A spokesperson for NPR declined to be interviewed for this article, but Jennifer Ferro, general manager of NPR-signatory station KCRW, said she was horrified by Schiller’s comments.
“The journalists at NPR were sick to their stomach about this. They spend their days being fair and impartial and trying to get the story,” Ferro told TheWrap. “When this blows over, journalists should speak to O’Keefe about what was motivating him, because in the grand scheme of things, nothing we air is that controversial.”
Also read: 'NPR CEO Vivian Schiller Ousted in Wake of Video Sting Scandal'
According to O'Keefe's media mentor and collaborator, Andrew Breitbart, the conservative activist arranged the meeting with Schiller with pretty solid pre-conceived notions of what he might hear.
"There's nothing like seeing something before it happens," he told TheWrap.
For Breitbart and O’Keefe, NPR and the network of federally funded stations it feeds are a hotbed of liberal bias.
“What you are listening to on NPR are the incredibly articulate views of the liberal elite in America,” Breitbart told TheWrap. “ I do not like federal funding for news organizations period, but I especially do not like funding for news institutions that are part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign by the left.”
How about specifics? Breitbart didn't have any to offer off the cuff. It's the "tone," he explained.
Journalists and analysts say that the shows NPR produces are rigidly apolitical to the point of being bland. Aside from the issue of federal funding, NPR seems a poor whipping horse for the right.
Even as it strives to remain above the political fray, NPR’s response to the Schiller tape with the ouster of CEO Vivian Schiller seemed to validate the complaints of Breitbart and his army of political "Punk'd"-sters.
Compounding the problem and the perception of partisanship was NPR’s decision to fire analyst Juan Williams over anti-Muslim remarks he made last summer.
“Mainstream media organizations have put themselves in this impossible situation by claiming to be impartial when that sort of impartiality is impossible,” Marc Cooper, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, told TheWrap. “NPR's response is hyper sensitive, because they are apostles of the church of objectivity, and when a sinner appears or pops up they literally can’t deal with it.”
The current public flogging aside, it is difficult to comprehend just why NPR remains such a venerable target.
Though Breitbart says the tone of the shows is liberal and elitist, there is no stated bias in any of NPR’s news programming.
