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James O'Keefe and [NPR]
rndmhero
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So James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has made another of it's now-infamous undercover "sting" operations, this time targeting NPR. Two individuals posed as members of the fictitious Muslim Educational Action Center Trust and approached Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley under the guise of making a $5 million donation to the news organization. Over the course of their meeting at a prominent Georgetown restaurant, the two steered the conversation towards the station's opinions on the Tea Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the American media's treatment of Israel.
The video posted by Project Veritas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd9OYJMX9t4&feature=topvideos
Some notable quotations:
“The current Republican Party, particularly 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,” declared Schiller, the head of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, who last week announced his departure for the Aspen Institute.
...
The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the 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.”
Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.
At their lunch, the man posing as Kasaam told Schiller that MEAC contributes to a number of Muslim schools across the U.S. “Our organization was originally founded by a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America actually,” he says.
Schiller doesn’t blink. Instead, he assumes the role of fan. “I think what we all believe is if we don’t have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air,” Schiller says, “it’s the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn’t have female voices.”
When O’Keefe’s two associates pressed him into the topic, Schiller decried U.S. media coverage of Egypt’s uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak, especially talk of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on the protests and future of Egypt. Schiller said that is what he is “most disappointed by in this country, which is that the educated, so-called elite in this country is too small a percentage of the population, so that you have this very large un-educated part of the population that carries these ideas.”
When the ersatz Islamists declare they’re “not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR,” Schiller responds by saying he doesn’t find “Zionist or pro-Israel” ideas at NPR, “even among funders. I mean it’s there in those who own newspapers, obviously, but no one owns NPR.”
Liley chimes in at this point to add that, “even one of our biggest funders who you’ll hear on air, The American Jewish World Service, may not agree with us. I visited with them recently and they may not agree with what we put on the air but they find us important to them and, sometimes it’s not that easy to hear what we say and what our reporters say, but they still think NPR is important to support.”
Schiller added that “they [the American Jewish World Service] are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not.”
Later in the lunch, Schiller explains that NPR would be better positioned free of federal funding. “Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding,” he says. “The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark.”
When one of O’Keefe’s associates asked, “How confident are you, with all the donors that are available, if they should pull the funding right now that you would survive?,” Schiller answered this way: “Yes, NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive.”
- NPR's initial response to the story can be found here.
- As of today, NPR's CEO Vivian Schiller has tendered her resignation following two years of service as the news organization's head. Ron Schiller is also no longer accepting his new position at the Aspen Institute.
All this comes as NPR is at the center of a national debate over Republican efforts to defund public broadcasting, originally prompted by the firing of Juan Williams in January over comments he made about Muslims while on Fox News.
This thread is for discussing the recent "sting" against NPR execs, their handling of this and the Juan Williams scandal, and the current debate over public funding of the organization. I'll continue to update the OP with new/better info as it arrives.
rndmhero on
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In America circa 2011, the truth gets you fired, while smearing everyone and everything you can think of and getting caught lying gets you a job on television.
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Unless you're a liberal.
At all.
"Today James Okeefe posing as a pizza delivery man caught an NPR exec insufficiently praising the tea party."
NPR exec: I have no opinion on that group.
O'Keefe: How can a person who is in charge of such a news organization have no opinion on the group? What is he hiding?
Why the hell the guy's resigning is beyond me.
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This is someone else now who's resigning specifically because she is being forced out.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Right. We've now moved on to "if ANY of your subordinates ever express an opinion on their spare time, you're fired."
Right. Ron Schiller was going to leave NPR this month away. He just resigned earlier.
But Vivian Schiller (no relation), the CEO, has resigned as well.
Oh, and the place that Ron Schiller was going to start next month (the Aspen Institute) has told him not to bother. So, technically, he's out of two jobs.
Yeah. I think few people would argue that NPR is run by liberals. Their reporting on the other hand is relatively free from bias. If anything, as mentioned in the other thread, they go easy on Republicans to make sure people don't think they're being dirty liberal media.
Except for that profile of Christine O'Donnell and her opponent. That basically felt like a hit job. I mean, the things they said were all true. It was just pretty lopsided.
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At some point you have to understand that being fair to both sides is being unfair to the truth, Christine O'donnell was deserving of nothing more than a hit job
"OMG! YOU ARE FIRED!"
Fox News, publically: "Obama is a racist!"
"Yay! have some more money! We love you, Fox News!".
Considering half of the tea party is legitimately honest to goodness racism, it's a fair goddamn point. This is, of course, me assuming that every birther has racist motivations for their beliefs, because my brain can't process any other potential motivations.
"Liberals might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives." Well, yes, post-secondary and especially graduate-level education does have a long history of being the domain of liberals - for every Chicago School conservative economist who grinds through the system, there are probably half a dozen left-wing liberal arts gadabouts flitting through sociology degrees and English MAs. (I should know, I'm both!)
"The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is [. . .] very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move." Also true: religiosity, particularly fundamentalism, is highly correlated with conservative political beliefs. And the brand of Christianity practiced by many religious right fundamentalists these days is a far cry from "love thy neighbour."
"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." Educational and informational inclusiveness intended to allow a variety of viewpoints from previously marginalized or silenced sections of society? In my America? WHARRGARBLE HOW DARE THEY.
"You have this very large un-educated part of the population that carries these ideas." Yes, most of the population is uneducated and possessed of cripplingly backward ideas about religion, history, politics, and even basic geography. I know it's not exactly popular to say such things about "middle America," because they're used to being pandered to and praised for their "realness" and "Main Street values" and "down-to-earth common sense," but seriously, when your Main Street values encourage things like tying gay men to fence posts and pistol-whipping them to death, calling you anything other than a gibbering dumbshit hick is too generous.
I wish NPR and its execs had had the balls to stand behind what was said. Unfortunately, doing that would be political suicide, because most of the population does fall into the gibbering dumbshit hick category.
Yeah, pretty much.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
HE should stand up for what he said, not a single thing he said is unsupported by evidence, and everything that can't be tested against evidence is just opinion
They do a pretty good job of being unbiased but they shouldn't accept federal funding, it just looks weird for a news agency to get money from the government.
Hell, the Tea Party can pretend all they want that a large part of their members aren't ingnorant and racists, but deep down, they know it's true. They know it's true but they have the gall to be offended when called on it.
AGGH. It's just so frusterating.
Yeah, government-sponsored news organizations can never be taken seriously.
Its wierd when they get it from making a profit too.
But they can't just get funding out of thin air.
The truth has never and will never be economically viable. Today the truth is going to piss of a liberal and tomorrow the truth is going to piss off a conservative. Without federal funds to back them up NPR is going to have to start pandering to their base to stay in business.
Yeah, it's so weird. Nobody else has public news broadcasting.
Except the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Canada,, [tiny]Italy, Spain, Argentina, the Netherlands, Ireland, India...[/tiny]
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
edit: Juan Williams, I believe
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yay, one of the more glaring reasons why Democratic supporters aren't motivated. We want freaking fighters, not "Give-em-head Harry Reid."
My fiance's mother is one of them. She is a charming woman, a gracious host, a loving caregiver to her children, she has welcomed me warmly into her family and treats me with affection and respect and frequently asks me for my advice... but she also listens to and believes everything said by both her fundamentalist pastor and Glenn Beck - the former because he speaks for God, the latter because he's on television and on the radio so what he says must be true!
She's no more racist than any other white Midwesterner - in fact, she's probably less so: she thinks her eldest daughter's Mexican husband is a thoroughly wonderful young man, and she didn't bat an eye when one of her sons dated a black girl for a year. But she's a rabid birther, and she seriously thinks that Obama is not the legitimate President. Also, she thinks that the NEXUS program is the first step in the North American Union conspiracy to destroy the United States by infecting it with Canadian socialism and Mexican poverty, and she's very concerned at the fact that I carry a NEXUS card. Which I got to make my frequent border crossings between Canada and the US easier. So I could visit her son.
That is the level of crazy stupid we're dealing with here.
But god forbid you ever tell them they're crazy, or uneducated, or racist, because WHARRGARBLE YOU CAN'T SAY THAT ABOUT REAL AMERICANS.
Isn't Al Jazeera funded by Qatar?
Wait, that probably won't help the argument with conservatives.
I can make Youtube videos showing anyone saying anything if you give me enough footage, that does not mean that video should be having an impact on political discourse.
Also it amazes me that these guys can get meetings with high level people just by claiming to be members/leaders of some fictitious organization.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Yeah, organizations really need to be better at vetting organizations. How hard could it be to Google the organization?
No one does anymore. Fox just trumps it up into something huge.
Clearly people do since both people resigned over it (sure one was going to resign anyway, but he resigned early due to the "scandal" and then apparently lost the job he was resigning to) and Im watching MSNBC right now in an attempt to cheer me up (its not working) and theyre also covering the issue (granted, they havent gotten to the segment yet so who knows what theyll say about it).
Although, total side note, theyre discussing what a school in Massachusetts is doing to get kids to school on time - theyre calling habitually tardy/absent students at 6:15am to get them up for school. They make it out like a bunch of parents are saying the school is over stepping its bounds, but the VP gave the response I wish more people would give "They're going to hold us accountable for the results, and we need to hold them accountable for their end of the job". Apparently the VP has also been making home visits to see why the kids are always late. Awesome. And Im someone who was always late to school after I got my license.
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Sullivan admits he's liberal? You can find those opinions on his blog pretty much every day.
So when can we expect to see Scott Walker's resignation?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Seems strangely fitting, for some reason. Just walking into that place automatically makes you a douche if you weren't one already.
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