Rant

Tea kettle madness

Posted 14 months ago|5 comments|484 views

TAGS

Ron Schiller , NPR , Tea party , Contemporary society

Written by

DrDivago
Princeton, NJ

Recent comments of Ron Schiller (President NPR Foundations), taped during a conversation are making "scandal". All he said, in short, is that the Tea (kettle) party is a big joke – as a reasonable man he pointed out that there is nothing Christian about such a movement and it is just another form of contemporary populism and political ignorance manipulated by the press and political interests. All he is saying is basic common sense but our society is to such a point that even common sense is now a scandal while madness looks like common sense. Republican Eric Cantor immediately jumped on the story making his typical comments - but we will talk later about this bloke. The "funny" part of the story is that Ron Schiller was forced to apologized and resign from NPR. Would be so easy to think that all we see in the news is just the byproduct of a very ill mind, but when we turn at our society we understand that is in the fake values and ideals that it offers the cause for all madness, even tea kettle madness and Schiller apologies for a reasonable comment.

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Out Of The Box

Moderator

14 months ago: NPR is supposed to be apolitical, right?

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/09/134384689/...

— "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." In the heavily edited tape, that comment followed Schiller being told by one of the men that their organization "was originally founded by a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America." There's no sign in the edited tape that Schiller reacted in any way after being told of the group's alleged connection to an Islamic group that appeared to be connected with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

— That NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding," a position in direct conflict with the organization's official position.

Schiller is also heard laughing when one of the men jokes that NPR should be known as "National Palestinian Radio."

I guess one man's reality is another man's madness.

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markbyrn

Moderator

14 months ago: While I might agree with sentiments of the NPR execs, there is one media entity (and only one) where the fairness doctrine should apply and that is publicly funded radio, television, and Internet. Publicly funded media must either be politically neutral or they must provide equal time to the loons on the left, right, and in-between. Also, the executive staff of this public ally funded media should be required to sign-up to fairness policies that will obligate them to political neutrality.

BTW, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller was fired, err resigned and what about that Karma? If you recall, she fired Juan Williams last year for merely saying he was uncomfortable when seeing people in Muslim garb on airplanes.

The alternative for NPR is to be cut off from public funding and rely strictly on hand-outs from the the liberal members of the public so they can continue to have a liberal bias. You could call it Liberal Public Radio and the conservative could do their own version of it but considering the current political equations in Washington, it's going to be hard times ahead for NPR.

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Altruist
Eugene, OR

14 months ago: I think Ron Schiller was doing nothing more than expressing his opinion about the Tea Party. His opinion has not been reflected in the programing or content of NPR, which includes more conservative commentators than liberals. (239 conservatives Vs. 141 for Liberals
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...

I think the most important thing that Schiller said is something that most people do not realize, that only 2% of their funding is from the government.

NPR is not some liberal socialist government run propaganda machine. It is supported almost entirely by grants and small donations from listeners.

In my opinion since all of the rest of broadcasting is owned by and run by major corporations there is a need for an unbiased source of good reporting that is not sensationalist and that is not afraid to upset their corporate sponsors.

During the 70's and early 80's NPR was funded mostly by the government, and during that time the programing was exceptional, but that funding was taken away and now NPR is dependent on corporate sponsorship like the oil and coal industries. http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-09-...

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Out Of The Box

Moderator

14 months ago: Holy P-moly.

The actual percentage of government funding is 15.9%, if you don't include university funding(13.6%), which is also government funding. So throw it all in together and you have 29.5% of NPR funding coming from the public sector.

http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/public...

Breakdown as follows

Individuals---------32.1%
Business-----------21.1%
Universities-------13.6%
CPB-----------------10.1%
Foundations-------9.6%
Other?--------------7.6%
Fed & State------ 5.8%

Now, here is a list of the highest sponsors of NPR. Tell me where the oil and coal companies fit in in comparison to Intel, Paramount, MGM, Warner, and Universal?

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Out Of The Box

Moderator

14 months ago: forgot the link http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/annual...

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