Philosophical food for thought. "The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed...The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad," Teddy Roosevelt, April 14, 1906, delivered in a speech titled, "The Man With the Muck Rake." So, what is good and what is bad? There's the rub, and the basis of an ideology. James O'Keefe recently released a video of NPR executives making some embarrassing statements. The method used to obtain the footage is highly controversial along lines similar to Julian Assange and Wikileaks in that the means and consequences may be frowned upon but the information released is impossible to ignore. A couple of the more unfortunate sweeping generalizations expressed by Ron Schiller, a senior vice president of NPR were, "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 movement." He also stated, with the nodding agreement of another NPR executive seen sitting next to Schiller, that people with ideological philosophies sympathetic with the Tea Party were, "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."
Set aside the substance of these outrageous claims and take a moment to look at the soil from which such opinions grow. These two statements express an attitude that has been detectable in NPR's programming for years, as well as, it may be argued without too much difficulty, much of the entertainment industry and news media in general. Schiller was let go as a result of these comments, or rather, in consequence of his comments being made public. Pretense is apparently still a modus operandi of NPR, but National Public Radio, receiver of both private donations and public funding, is going to have a difficult time maintaining its already suspect air of objectivity. Personally, I don't like that Schiller was fired over these comments any more than I approved of NPR firing contributor Juan Williams for comments he made regarding airport security and Muslim travelers last year. Williams' statements were made on air in the course of a debate, and in a controversial move, NPR interpreted his comments as being too provocative to Muslim sensitivities and canned him. Circumstances surrounding Ron Schiller were substantially different. He was in a setting in which he felt he could safely express his real point of view with no filter. Schiller, in my opinion, merely expressed the ideology of the corporate culture that permeates most of the organization which engrossed his professional life. He just got caught when the music stopped without a chair. The opinion he expressed, however sympathetic his superiors may have been to it, was disavowed.
NPR is an interesting animal. It is the subject of much criticism from conservative thinkers, and is sacrosanct to many people who fancy themselves sophisticated, cosmopolitan intellectuals. For myself, its programming used to be an informative and even relaxing part of my morning. Having grown up in a home with a father dedicated to public education as an administrator I was no stranger to NPR programming, the nightly news, or a variety of news periodicals such as Time, Nat Geo, and Newsweek. These all contributed to many family discussions and influenced my own personal views of the world. Years ago, however, I turned NPR off. I rarely visit that part of the dial beyond the Saturday Morning Edition and Car Talk any longer. There were several reasons for this. First, I found myself more and more in disagreement with NPR's concept of what constituted a news story's angle. This, I think, was and is a crucial aspect of unexpressed bias. The framework of a story was often skewed to support a particular political point of view at variance with my own. Fair enough. Parts of the story were emphasized and other parts were given minor mention or altogether omitted. Fair enough. Most likely this manifestation of bias was probably unconscious and influenced by the invisible hand of corporate culture aligned with an ideological world view as opposed to a conscious decision to push an agenda. Fair enough. Second, the condescending tone began to be insufferable. Fair enough. I can and have been condescending too, although I have made it a point to be less so. These were, and still are, forgivable offenses. I'm a firm believer in the first amendment so opinions that challenge a particular world view are as worthy of protection as those that support it. The third, and truly the reason for my turning the dial, was the snarky attitude that NPR was objective and unbiased. That was the kicker. It wasn't the subtle opinion that bled through and the selective reporting that ended my listenorship. It was the pious, disingenuous mask of sophisticated objectivity.
The language this man, Mr. Schiller, used is certainly not new. These kinds of labels have been applied to the Tea Party in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal (although it's preferable word was xenophobe, not racist), and even Marvel Comics. The list of name callers is a long one. It would be a fascinating study to analyze the television, NPR, and newspaper reporting done of the Tea Party rallies during the health care debate and contrast it to the reporting of the recent public union rallies, which by the way, got alarmingly out of hand yesterday far beyond anything the Tea Party protesters ever did.
Incidentally, I gave NPR another whirl a few months ago and was assailed with a story about a publicly funded design contest in New York for condoms. The Saturday Morning Edition and the upbeat and fun Car Talk are more than enough public radio for me.
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