What Do You Think?

[Arianna_Ludlam]

It would be nice if this type of thing was an isolated incidence but unfortunately it goes on far more often than one might think. Unfortunately there is usually there is no proof outside of the reporting origination so there is no way to refute the false/misleading allegations. NPR just happen to get caught.

copied from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-npr-video-and-political-dirty-tricks/2011/03/17/ABbyMym_story.html

By Michael Gerson, Thursday, March 17, 7:58 PM

James O’Keefe’s guerrilla video attack on NPR has led to the resignation of its chief executive and an ethical debate: When are lies justified in pursuit of a political cause?

It is now clear that O’Keefe’s editing of the raw video from his interview with NPR’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller, was selective and deceptive. The full extent of this distortion was exposed by a rising conservative Web site, the Blaze. O’Keefe’s final product excludes explanatory context, exaggerates Schiller’s tolerance for Islamist radicalism and attributes sentiments to Schiller that are actually quotes by others — all the hallmarks of a hit piece. Schiller’s comments were damaging enough without O’Keefe reshaping them into a caricature. Both Ron Schiller and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who is not related, resigned.

But the controversy also raises deeper issues about the ethics of undercover journalism. In this case, O’Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie. The interviewers posed as representatives of a Muslim organization that wanted to donate $5 million to NPR. The stingers bought access to NPR executives with fake money.

There is no ethical canon or tradition that would excuse such deception on the part of a professional journalist. Robert Steele of the Poynter Institute argues that undercover journalism can only be justified on matters of “profound importance” when “all other alternatives for obtaining the same information have been exhausted.” This may excuse posing as a worker at an unsanitary meat-packing plant or as a mental patient in an abusive asylum. But it is hardly a matter of life and death to expose the conventional liberalism of a radio executive.

O’Keefe’s defenders contend that he is not really a journalist but a new breed of “citizen journalist.” This can be defined as someone who simultaneously demands journalistic respect and release from journalistic standards, including a commitment to honesty. The profession of journalism counts many biases, challenges and failures. But citizen journalism has a problem of its own. Do we really want private citizens deceiving, taping and exposing the foolish weaknesses of their neighbors, with none of the constraints imposed by responsible professional oversight? Modern technology makes such things possible. Human nature makes them enjoyable. Neither makes them ethical.

These tactics are not a new brand of gonzo journalism. They are a sophisticated version of the political dirty trick. Would it be citizen journalism to fool a senator’s psychiatrist into revealing demeaning information about his or her patient? Or to befriend a prominent conservative pastor, goad him into making homophobic statements, then edit, exaggerate and put them on the Internet? What ethical or professional standard among citizen journalists — in many instances, really political activists — would rule out such deceptions?

The ethics of lying, of course, are complex. The prohibition against bearing false witness made the Ten Commandments cut. But I suspect that Moses would allow for lying to hide a Jew hunted by the Nazis. This does not make the prohibition against lying minor or relative. It is a recognition that competing moral duties can be more urgent and compelling — in this case, the moral duty to save a life. A spy tells lies to protect his country. A general engages in deception to defeat an enemy.

But there can be no moral duty to deceive in order to entrap a political opponent with a hidden camera. There is no ethical imperative to provide a prostitute to a weak man and then videotape the scandal, or to provide drugs to a recovering addict and then report the result — or to promise $5 million to a radio executive to get him nodding to leading questions.

The popular justification for this approach is that the other side does it — the ethics of mutual grievance. A liberal journalist calls Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin pretending to be a conservative donor, fishing for incriminating quotes. O’Keefe allegedly attempts to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones in New Orleans. Abuses are employed as excuses for equal and opposite abuses. The result is more than a race to the murky journalistic bottom. It is the triumph of a thoroughly postmodern view of politics: Power means everything. Truth means little. Ethical standards are for the weak and compromised. Influence is gained, not by persuasion, but by deception and ruthlessness.

This escalation is really a descent.

[Arianna_Ludlam]

I am sort of split on this one. NPR receives federal money and then charges the, member stations a small fortune to be able to broadcast NPR material, not to mention some of the shows have to (or use to) pay for the privilege of being broadcast on NPR. Would it really hurt NPR if they lost the federal funding? Other than the people making the big salaries?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/house-votes-to-move-forward-on-defunding-npr/2011/03/17/AB50Uqk_blog.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews


House votes to defund NPR
03/17/2011
By Felicia Sonmez


After a contentious debate and over procedural objections from Democrats, the House on Thursday voted to prevent federal funds from going to National Public Radio.

The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), passed the House on a 228-to-192 vote, with one Republican voting present. All but seven Republicans voted for the measure, and all Democrats present voted against it.

The measure is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate. The White House on Thursday issued a statement “strongly opposing” the bill but stopping short of a veto threat.

The bill would ban any federal money from going to NPR, including funding through competitive grants from federal agencies and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR receives about $5 million annually in such funds. The bill would also prohibit NPR’s roughly 600 member stations from using federal funds to purchase programming from NPR and to pay station dues.

The push to defund NPR follows the departure from the organization of its chief executive, Vivian Schiller, and its top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation), in the wake of a hidden-camera video sting by conservative activists that showed Ron Schiller making controversial remarks about Republicans and tea party members.

Democrats argued that the bill would not actually lower the deficit and charged that Republicans were simply taking aim at NPR because they disagree with its content.

“This bill does not cut one dollar, one dime, one penny from the federal deficit,” McGovern said, adding that if the debate is about whether or not the American people should be forced to subsidize content they disagree with, federal funding of advertising on Fox News Channel should also be up for debate.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said that even if the measure were to pass the Senate and be signed into law – the chances of which are close to zero – NPR would continue to exist, but “what it does is harm small, rural stations” that are dependent on federal funds.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, called the bill a “purely ideological bill so members can go home and brag about what they have done to NPR” when they return to their districts later Thursday for a week-long recess.

Several of the Republicans who spoke in favor of the measure said they personally enjoyed NPR but did not believe it should be funded through taxpayer dollars.

Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) said he appreciated some of NPR’s programming but added that “half the American people have never even heard of, much less even listened to, NPR.”

Rep. Rich Nugent (R-Fla.) argued that those watching the House debate on Thursday were likely watching it on C-SPAN, which doesn’t receive federal funding.

“A lot of us like NPR,” he said, later adding: “We’re not trying to harm NPR. We’re actually trying to liberate them from federal tax dollars.”

Just before a Thursday morning vote to consider the measure, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) raised a procedural objection to proceeding on the bill, arguing that the quick action on the proposal – which was first posted on the Internet at 1:42 p.m. Tuesday – violated House Republican leaders’ pledge to post all bills online for 72 hours before bringing them to the floor.

“Did this bill age for 72 hours?” Weiner asked, waving a large blue posterboard bearing House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) statement, “I will not bring a bill to the floor that has not been posted online for 72 hours.”

Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe, who was presiding over the chamber, replied that he would not respond to “hypothetical questions.”

Jo Maney, a spokesperson for House Rules Committee Republicans, maintained that consideration of the measure did not violate the three-day rule because it was posted on Day 1, was in the Rules Committee on Day 2 and was on the floor on Day 3, with final passage set to take place 72 hours after the bill was first posted.

Democrats also objected to the bill being fast-tracked to the floor without being thoroughly debated in public committee hearings. The Rules Committee approved the measure on Wednesday in an “emergency meeting.”

“The process in this House is awful,” Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) said. “An emergency! Think it was about jobs? Think it was about health care? No! It was about defunding NPR.”

Republicans defended the process, arguing that the seven-page bill addresses a straightforward question.

“It’s basically a yes or no question,” Maney said. “Do we continue taxpayer funding of NPR or not?”

[Arianna_Ludlam]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/npr-executive-vivian-schiller-resigns/2011/03/09/ABfgHXP_story.html

NPR executive Vivian Schiller resigns under pressure from board and CPB

By Paul Farhi, Wednesday, March 9, 2011

NPR lost its chief executive Wednesday, a day after the news organization was embarrassed by a secretly recorded video that caught one of its top managers calling Republicans “anti-intellectual” and tea party members “racists.”

Vivian Schiller, NPR’s top officer, was forced out of her job after two years, just as a Republican-held Congress has accelerated the debate on cutting funds for public broadcasting.

Schiller officially resigned, but there was little doubt she was ousted under pressure from NPR’s board and officials from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that acts as Congress’s liaison in distributing about $430 million a year to public radio and television stations.

Schiller announced she is leaving only about 24 hours after a video surfaced on the Internet with comments by NPR’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller), made during a luncheon meeting with two men who posed as wealthy donors from a Muslim charity. During the meeting, which was recorded by James O’Keefe, a well-known conservative provocateur, Schiller disparaged Republicans as “anti-intellectual” and tea party members as racists and xenophobes. He also suggested that Jews control the nation’s newspapers and that NPR would be better off without its federal subsidy.

Despite distancing herself from the comments, Vivian Schiller accepted a late-night ultimatum from NPR’s board chairman, Dave Edwards, that she quit, according to people familiar with the matter.

NPR’s directors, CPB officials and lobbyists for public broadcasting interests were concerned that Schiller’s continued presence at NPR in the wake of the video would almost certainly have a catastrophic effect on the debate in Congress over funding for public radio and TV stations. “The idea was to placate the Hill,” said one person involved in the decision. “They needed a human sacrifice.”

Schiller, in an interview Wednesday, acknowledged as much. “The organization is under a tremendous amount of pressure because of the defunding threat,” she said.

The video flap was the second major embarrassment for NPR in less than six months. In October, the Washington-based organization fired commentator Juan Williams after he expressed his fears of flying with people wearing “Muslim garb.” Conservatives decried NPR’s “liberal bigotry.” Within days, a bill introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) to defund public broadcasting began to gain traction.

The stunning series of public gaffes comes at a time when NPR is otherwise performing admirably. Its array of news and discussion programs — from “All Things Considered” to “Car Talk” and “The Diane Rehm Show” — reached a combined weekly audience of 27 million listeners. Under Schiller, NPR has also expanded its online operations, with a popular news Web site, NPR.org, and an influential musical site, NPRmusic.org.

The recent incidents — Williams’s firing and the video — gave comfort to the two factions that have long opposed public broadcasting. Cultural conservatives have always regarded NPR and PBS as smug, effete and liberal. Fiscal conservatives say funding public broadcasting is unjustifiable in an age of soaring deficits.

“Our concern is not about any one person at NPR, rather it’s about millions of taxpayers,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) after Schiller’s resignation on Wednesday. “NPR has admitted that they don’t need taxpayer subsidies to thrive . . . [and] we certainly agree with them.”

It is unclear whether Schiller’s departure will change any minds in the public broadcasting debate. The White House said Wednesday that it remained committed to supporting the funding, with President Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, emphasizing that it is “important.”

Vivian Schiller’s sudden departure came a few hours after Ron Schiller resigned and about two months after Vivian Schiller pushed out her top news manager, Ellen Weiss, after a review of Weiss’s role in the Juan Williams episode. The tumult has left staffers at Washington-based NPR “shellshocked,” as one newsroom employee put it Wednesday.

NPR “is a wounded animal,” said Alicia Shepard, the organization’s ombudsman, or in-house critic.

Vivian Schiller joined NPR from the New York Times Co. in early 2009, just a few weeks after NPR cut about 7 percent of its staff, or 64 positions. At the time, NPR said it was running $23 million in the red.

She reorganized NPR’s management (hiring Ron Schiller, among others), beefed up digital newsgathering and worked to repair the organization’s sometimes strained relationships with its affiliated stations, which pay for and air the programs that NPR produces. With cost controls and a somewhat improved economy, she helped put NPR in the black. “I think she did an amazing job in the two years she was here,” said Shepard, who is is employed by NPR to offer impartial criticism.

After the damaging video circulated Tuesday, it was clear to the board that Schiller had to go, said Edwards, its chairman. “Vivian was not responsible for the many mistakes that were made, but the CEO of any organization is accountable for anything that emerges,” he said during a morning news conference. “We determined that it was a wise decision to accept her resignation and move on.”

Public TV and radio stations receive — on average — about 15 percent of their annual operating budgets from Congress (the balance comes from state funds, viewer and listener donations and corporate sponsors). But that’s on average: Stations in large urban areas, such as WETA-TV in Arlington and WAMU-FM in Washington, receive far less than 15 percent, while those in some rural areas receive as much as half their operating funds from Washington.

“If funding is eliminated entirely, there are going to be a number of stations that will be hard-pressed to stay on the air,” said Paula Kerger, the president of PBS. “States are cutting back, too. This is not an easy time.”

NPR’s public stumbles may have hurt the organization, but they may not have a decisive effect on the funding fight in Washington this year, said Pat Butler, the chief executive of the Association of Public Television Stations, which lobbies for federal money.

“As far as I can see, no one has changed his or her mind” as result of Vivian Schiller’s resignation, he said. “The people who were for us are still for us, and the people who were against us are still against us. I still feel pretty good about our prospects.”

Butler said he believes that public broadcasters have support from 10 Republican senators, whom he didn’t identify, along with the Democratic majority. “In the end, I think we’ll have a good bipartisan majority. The public likes public broadcasting. It’s like apple pie.”