NPR advocates censorship with this act

Anyone know what channel that "center" station is on?

 

NPR vs. Fox News: Juan Williams firing reveals deeper media fight

NPR’s firing Juan Williams comes just as controversial figures connected to NPR and Fox News – philanthropist George Soros and commentator Glenn Beck– are in a harsh rhetorical fight.

Not only did it occur in the midst of on-air fund-raising by many public radio stations, it also happened just as controversial figures connected to NPR and Fox News – liberal philanthropist George Soros and conservative commentator Glenn Beck– are engaged in a harsh rhetorical fight.

Fox News is Mr. Williams’ other employer and the place where he made his controversial statement about Muslims. Mr. Soros recently donated $1.8 million to NPR, seen by conservative critics (and certainly by Mr. Beck) as proof (a) that NPR is a liberal mouthpiece and (b) that billionaire Soros pressured NPR to get rid of Williams.

“Up until then, opinions by NPR correspondents and analysts had been expressed in abundance, but Williams' statement on Fox, because it was expressed on Fox, amounted to apostasy,” editorializes Investor’s Business Daily. “The firing sends a message that Fox is beyond the pale and must be silenced.”

The fall-out from William’s dismissal has been sharp and swift, and it’s likely to continue.

On NPR’s web site, ombudsman Alicia Shepard reported that thousands of comments had caused the organization’s “Contact Us” form to crash.

“The overwhelming majority are angry, furious, outraged,” she wrote. “They want NPR to hire him back immediately. If NPR doesn't, they want all public funding of public radio to stop. They promise to never donate again. They are as mad as hell, and want everyone to know it. It was daunting to answer the phone and hear so much unrestrained anger.”

In addition to his gift to NPR, Soros also recently gave $1 million to Media Matters “to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast.” Media Matters is the progressive media watchdog which has been pressuring advertisers to drop their business with Fox News because of Beck’s alleged “hate speech leading to violence.”

Specifically, Beck’s dozens of comments attacking the Tides Foundation are being linked to the attempt by a heavily-armed man to assassinate employees at the San Francisco-based foundation, which funds environmental, human rights, and other progressive projects. The attack in July was thwarted in a shoot-out with police in which two officers were wounded.

Beck and his supporters insist that he does not condone violence. On his highly-popular Fox News show, Beck has turned around the accusation of violence, charging that Soros' $1 million contribution to Media Matters is a "wanted dead or alive poster" and a "million dollar bounty" on himself.

In the midst of all this comes the Juan Williams controversy.

Williams is an accomplished journalist and an expert on the civil rights era. But his on-air comments had become more openly opinionated in recent years, and this was why in 2008 his job title was changed from “news correspondent” to “news analyst.” On Fox, however, he was expected to be a pundit, performing alongside such provocative figures as Bill O’Reilly. There, the format is more likely to be shoot-from-the-lip.

NPR’s reaction to the current episode is likely to prolong the controversy, certainly among fans of Fox and its most successful personality, Glenn Beck.

Writes NPR ombudsman Shephard: “This latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR's values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Electi...an-Williams-firing-reveals-deeper-media-fight

 

sure, NPR is fact based therefore not biased nor against free speech... the way they slant their news is by not covering things that don't promote the Left's views... that is harder to detect than it is to analyze some biased wording... the funny thing about all these leftists that censor by omission is that they wind up talking about misery, misery, misery I wrote to the editors of the LA Times once and told them that if they ran a story about puppies, flowers, sunshine, children at play, and trees they would have to emphasize the misery aspect in order to fit the story into their editorial guidelines..

 

I look forward to seeing the Los Angeles Times go out of business. They ceased being a source of news for LA many years ago.

I also look forward to the termination of public funding of NPR. For decades I've wondered why my tax money goes to fund the operation of a left-wing propaganda organ.

Let NPR go the way of Air America. There is little difference between them.

 

Sure if you wish to say Gergen does not make the argument for the right sometimes... perhaps I am less conservative than you think...

But if you discount Gergen... which I am wiling to do.... who then are the regular guests who represent the right or conservatives on CNN.

Like I said you might see a preacher on when there is a preacher scandal. or a republican on when one
is outed.... but how represents the right since tucker carlson and glen beck left?

 

NPR's Overdue Execution
by Patrick J. Buchanan

"On June 30, 1972, two weeks after the Watergate burglars were taken into custody, Richard Nixon vetoed a congressional bill to double and treble federal funding for public broadcasting.

Nixon's stunning veto was sustained. Yet he had only "scotched the snake, not killed it," in the words of MacBeth.

Having escaped the ax, PBS and its little sister, National Public Radio, with their consistently leftist bias, grew fat on 40 years of federal money.

Nixon would express regret he had not followed the advice of those who urged him to terminate taxpayer funding and force public television and radio to compete fairly with private broadcasting.

Early in 2011, a Republican House and a more Republican Senate will have a second chance to succeed where Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush I and II failed to try -- to terminate tax funding of PBS and NPR.

This vote will be an early test of the GOP's claim that, having been burned in 2006 and 2008, it has learned its lesson, that Big Government conservatism was a fatal attraction and remains an oxymoron.

As any viewer of cable news now knows, what has pushed NPR into the crosshairs of Tea Party sharpshooters was its egregious act of liberal bigotry against Juan Williams, a 10-year veteran of NPR.

Williams, a moderate-liberal African-American who worked for The Washington Post and now works at Fox News, was fired for telling Bill O'Reilly that, when boarding an airliner where Muslims are wearing visibly Muslim garb, he gets "nervous," he gets "worried."

Whether Williams was fired for harboring such feelings, or for having confessed them to O'Reilly, we do not know. But NPR President Vivian Schiller said that if Juan did entertain such feelings, they should have remained "between him and his psychiatrist."

Schiller's NPR calls to mind other places where folks who confessed to thoughts offensive to the regime ended up in insane asylums and re-education camps, the Soviet Union and South Vietnam post-1975.

Yet, as this episode, like a flash of lightning, suddenly illuminated the ideological landscape at NPR, it is most welcome.

As for Juan, not to worry. He has a new three-year, $2 million contract with Fox. He is known to a larger national audience, and in a positive way. He is widely seen as having been scapegoated by bigots and bravely fought back.

But the reasons for defunding PBS and NPR, and their parent, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, are far broader. They involve not just politics and economics, but principles and the Constitution.

First, the United States government should not be in the news business at all. Arguments and debates about public affairs should be the province of private citizens. If the government must engage in propaganda in times of war or tension, to sell its policies abroad, the home front should remain insulated from that propaganda.

When director Bruce Herschensohn's brilliant "Years of Lightning, Day of Drums" about JFK's White House days was made by the United States Information Agency, it was only by special dispensation that it was allowed to be shown to the American public.

Second, a U.S. government that has run back-to-back deficits of $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion cannot afford the luxury of providing news and entertainment to a nation with hundreds of cable TV channels and hundreds of AM, FM and satellite radio stations, not to mention scores if not hundreds of nationally syndicated radio programs.

Why should taxpayers have to fund a government version of Al Franken's Air America, when the private version went belly up? Let the PBS-NPR elite audience fund its own news and entertainment.

When public television first came on air, there were three TV networks and few cities had more than three TV stations. The case for public television, that the people need "alternative programming," collapses when there are more channels than most of us have heard of, tailored to every conceivable taste and interest.

Consider now the words of Thomas Jefferson: "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

Yet, Congresses and presidents who profess to revere Jefferson have voted for 40 years to force conservatives to pay billions of dollars through CPB, PBS and NPR to propagate leftist ideas that they disbelieve and abhor.

In FY 2010 alone, CPB, which funnels tax dollars to public television and radio stations, received $420 million. The special interests who will fight to shelter these subsidies should not be underestimated. In big cities and on many campuses, there are powerful beneficiaries and articulate advocates of public broadcasting who will paint as troglodytes any congressmen who would poach on these preserves of privilege.

Again, whether a Republican House will zero out funding for public broadcasting will be an early test of its character. If it gives CPB only a haircut and a pat on the head, the tea party folks should start recruiting candidates to run against GOP incumbents in 2012."

 

======================
Double minority;
black & FOX news helper, but not FOX employee [yet]

 

I love that last sentence.