PrintOctober 22, 2010
The Baehr Essentials
The Juan Williams story is not going away. NPR member stations are holding their annual pledge drive this week. Reaction to the firing has been generally negative among listeners, and the Washington Post says 80% of its readers who have responded objected to the firing. It appears that not only conservatives are unhappy with how shabbily NPT treated Williams- firing him over the phone, after ten years of service to NPR. Has Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson been heard from? Or for that matter, Barack Obama?
Some NPR defenders are arguing that calls to defund federal support for NPR are misguided- that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) does not give money directly to NPR. That is true- though NPR got about $700,000 last year year in federal grant money. But a far bigger chunk of federal support- $93 million, goes from CPB to NPR member stations , and this money is used by those stations, along with money from the public, to buy NPR programming. So, I think it is hard to say NPR does not receive federal support. If Saudi Arabia gave directly to CAIR local chapters, and not to CAIR's national organization, and the local chapters then paid for services from national CAIR, would you say that Saudi Arabia was not funding CAIR?
The monster who runs NPR, who joked that Williams needs to discuss his views with a psychiatrist or publicist, still has a job today. Why? Do journalists or executives who mock blacks as mentally unstable, normally hold their jobs?
NPR just received a $1.8 million gift from George Soros so that NPR can hire reporters to do more of the kind of fair and balanced reporting Soros likes. That gift was announced the day NPR fired Williams for allegedly violating the objectivity standards of NPR.
NPR's ombudsman circled the wagons today, and concluded the process may have been flawed, but the decision to fire Williams was just. This level of incoherence is hard to grapple with.
Given the ombudsman's standards, why does Nina Totenberg still have a job?
Could it not be clearer that when NPR reporters express an opinion-either on NPR or on another network, that is in the service of the station's left wing agenda, that NPR has no problem with this? Problems arise only when NPR reporters (even if they express liberal opinions) show up on the hated Fox News Channel.
Particularly embarrassing in this episode is the role played by liberal Jewish women -- Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR (a big fan of the former Soviet Union) and Ellen Weiss, the Executive VP of the news division of NPR, who fired Williams over the phone (Weiss is the wife of Rabbi David Saperstein). I guess their actions fall under the heading of Tikkun Olam.
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The White house has pulled back from its absurd claims that foreign money was being used by the Chamber of Commerce to pay for campaign ads this cycle. But the Democrats' media mouthpiece, the New York Times, cannot let the story go -- today with a front page article on the big bad corporations who are giving this cycle to the Chamber. I could have sworn that just the other day, the White House and the Times were complaining about the lack of transparency as to who was giving money to the Chamber this year. I guess they were able to find out. We are still awaiting for some expose in the Times on the money that is being spent by public employee unions, the same ones who have been doing their part to bankrupt so many cities and states. The Wall Street Journal looks at the role of one such union, the biggest campaign spender this year- AFSCME. The Times, in its article today on the Chamber, does not even mention AFSCME in its graph of big campaign contributors. All the news that is fit to print?
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So far, the Obama administration has dissed Israel, Britain, India, and Honduras. Now add Canada to the list. Looks like the U.S sat on its hands in the battle between Canada and Portugal for a Security Council seat.
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Bookworm has it right- Tom Friedman is an idiot. He may be able to get a new job at NPR, however. He loves China's authoritarian government almost as much as as Vivian Schiller loved the Soviet Union. Of course, Schiller had to learn her Stalinist approach to management and free speech somewhere.
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More hatred of Israel in another leftist newspaper.
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Dexter Van Zile takes a close look at James Carroll's series of articles on the Middle East conflict.
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Many times in the last decade, the Florida Gators have "caned" the Florida State Seminoles. Now Singapore gets its chance.
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The lone Arab soldier in Israel
