NPR Head: Org Better Off in the Long Run Without Taxpayer Funding
I agree with HotAir's Ed Morrissey that the most-interesting takeaway from the latest vid from James O'Keefe (he of ACORN fame) is that Ron Schiller of the NPR Foundation suggests that the media operation would be better off without taxpayer subsidies. I suspect many if not most Reason.com readers will disagree with much of what Schiller and his colleague say, but they don't come off so bad.
O'Keefe's confederates represented themselves as representatives of a group dedicated to spreading sharia law worldwide. More at Project Veritas.
Update: Jesse Walker points toward the constantly updated Twitter feed of NPR's David Folkenflik, which is essential reading for all sorts of NPR news, including discussion of Ron Schiller leaving his fundraising post at the organization. According to Folkenflik, Schiller was leaving to head to the Aspen Institute (will start there in April) before the video was released. And he quotes an NPR exec: "We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for."
Regarding the case against taxpayer funding for NPR, here's a snippet of a past conversation I had with Brooke Gladstone of WNYC's excellent On the Media show:
Why should the personnel choices of NPR be of any interest to the Congress of the United States? The short answer is that they shouldn't….I am confident that NPR's nonprofit ethos would survive any cut in federal funding. In fact, it may even grow stronger….The federal government is broke, and it's only going to get more and more broke. And at this point, we have to say, what are the core functions of government?…The idea that we have an inalienable right to Car Talk or Sesame Street to be piped in over tax-supported airwaves strikes me as a stretch….
We have never lived in a better time for journalism and information and public discourse that we have right now….Screw the "public interest" if you're going to define to it as some kind of 1965 "best and the brightest"mentality. That's an old and dangerous version of the public interest. The public interest [is served] everytime someone goes online or turns on the TV or the radio and gets information and we're going gangbusters.
