[Mustang19]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110309/ap_on_re_us/us_npr_tea_party_criticism

WASHINGTON – A National Public Radio executive was captured on hidden camera calling the tea party movement racist and xenophobic and said NPR would be better off without federal funding, in an embarrassment likely to fuel the latest round of conservative attacks on public broadcasting.

The video was posted Tuesday by James O'Keefe, the same activist whose undercover videos have targeted other groups opposed by conservatives, like the community organizing group ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

It drew swift reaction from Republicans in Congress, who are renewing efforts to cut funding to public broadcasters. NPR and PBS have long been targets of conservatives who claim their programming has a left-wing bias. Similar efforts in the 1990s and 2005 were not successful, although public broadcasters take the threat seriously.

National Public Radio said in a statement that it was "appalled" by the comments from Ron Schiller, the president of NPR's fundraising arm and a senior vice president for development.

Schiller informed NPR that he was resigning from his position before the video was shot, NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said Tuesday. He was expected to depart in May, but has now been placed on administrative leave.

O'Keefe, best known for hidden-camera videos that embarrassed the community-organizing group ACORN, posted the video Tuesday on his website, Project Veritas. The group said the video was shot on Feb. 22.

"We've just exposed the true hearts and minds of NPR and their executives," O'Keefe said in a letter posted on the site. He asked supporters to sign a petition urging Congress to review NPR's funding.

"This disturbing video makes it clear that taxpayer dollars should no longer be appropriated to NPR," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in a statement. He added that executives have "finally admitted that they do not need taxpayer dollars to survive."

The budget bill passed by the House last month would end funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports programs distributed on NPR and PBS. CPB is getting $430 million in the current fiscal year.

Attacks by conservatives on NPR gained momentum last year when analyst Juan Williams was fired for saying on Fox News that he feels uncomfortable when he sees people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes. Schiller defends the Williams firing in the video.

The heavily edited video shows Schiller and another NPR executive, Betsy Liley, meeting at a pricey restaurant in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood with two men claiming to be part of a Muslim organization. The men offer NPR a $5 million donation. NPR said Tuesday it was "repeatedly pressured" to accept a $5 million check, which the organization "repeatedly refused."

"The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party. It's been hijacked by this group that is ... not just Islamophobic but, really, xenophobic," Schiller said in the video, referring to the tea party movement. "They believe in sort of white, middle America, gun-toting — it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

NPR receives about 2 percent of its revenue from federal grants, while its member stations get about 10 percent of their funding from federal and state governments.

"It is very clear that we would be better off in the long run without federal funding," Schiller said, saying it would allow the organization to become an independent voice and clear up the misconception that it is largely government-funded.

Schiller conceded that if the funding were lost, "we would have a lot of stations go dark."

NPR disavowed his statements.

"The assertion that NPR and public radio stations would be better off without federal funding does not reflect reality," Davis Rehm said.

Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., introduced a separate bill Friday to cut off funding for CPB.

"There's two issues at stake here in regards to taxpayer funding for public broadcasting: We can't afford it, and they don't need it," DeMint said in a statement Tuesday.

Schiller did not respond to a message left at his Aspen, Colo., home. His resignation from NPR was announced publicly last week and he has accepted a job as director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program. He is not related to NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller.

A national coordinator for the group Tea Party Patriots, Mark Meckler, wrote an e-mail to supporters about the video.

"At a time when the country is upside down by more than a trillion dollars, can we really afford to provide huge subsidies to entities that openly state that they don't need the money?" he wrote. "Let's take his advice and pass legislation that would defund the clearly biased news organization that is out of touch with Americans across the country."

Through a publicist, O'Keefe agreed to respond to e-mailed questions but did not immediately reply.

Project Veritas identified the men who met with Schiller and Liley as Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar. Their assumed names were "Ibrahim Kasaam" and "Amir Malik," and they claimed to represent the Muslim Education Action Center, a group they said had ties to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

About the Williams firing, Schiller said, "What NPR did, I'm very proud of, and what NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news."

Liley says little in the video, although she can be heard laughing when one of the men says his group referred to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio." NPR would not say whether any action was taken to address Liley's comments or appearance in the video.

So an ex-employee happens to be caught meeting with fundamentalists a week after his resignation saying the NPR doesn't even want funding. Now NPR somehow doesn't mean what it says when it asks for money. Clever, David Koch.

edit: You have to watch the video. Extremely well produced.

http://www.theprojectveritas.org/node/36

edit 2: He's even reading from a script.

[Nuclear1]

Conservatives are just angry that reality has a left-wing bias...NPR just said what a lot of people already know about the GOP and the Tea Party.

[Flipside]

Whereas everything said by Bill O'Reilly about Liberals is absolute fact....

[Spicious]

O'Keefe is not a trustworthy source (of videos).

[Nuclear1]

O'Keefe is not a trustworthy source (of videos).

Oh, that little ****.

Ugh.  Isn't he supposed to be in jail or something?

[Nemesis6]

Well, O'Keefe is lying felon. No silly conservative hit-piece is gonna change the fact that he's a liar, and Jesus is not happy with him.

[karajorma]

The video was posted Tuesday by James O'Keefe, the same activist whose undercover videos have targeted other groups opposed by conservatives, like the community organizing group ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

On March 1, 2010, the district attorney for Brooklyn concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff there. O’Keefe received immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes to California authorities. An investigative report by California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. released on April 1, 2010 found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino to be "severely edited" and did not find evidence of criminal conduct or intent to aid or abet criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees. Brown stated, "things are not always as partisan zealots portray them". The California report also found that one of the employees shown as apparently aiding in O'Keefe's human smuggling proposal had reported his encounter with O'Keefe and Giles to a police detective. That employee, who was fired by ACORN after the video's release, later sued O'Keefe and Giles alleging invasion of privacy, and citing a California law that outlaws recordings without consent of all parties involved. On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its findings which found no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years.

By April 1, 2010, the attorney general's office had completed its investigation and Brown announced its findings. O'Keefe and Giles received immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing three full, unedited videotapes. Brown noted that the terms of the exchange did not exempt O'Keefe or Giles from being sued by the ACORN members filmed in the videos. Citing the 1967 Invasion of Privacy Act, Brown's report stated that "an application of these principles to the facts presented here strongly suggests that O'Keefe and Giles violated state privacy laws and provides fair warning to them and others that this type of activity can be prosecuted in California". Brown also cited O'Keefe for working with the specific intent of damaging ACORN, and not acting as a truly objective journalist reporting a story. In his report on the investigation, Brown stated, "The video releases were heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees and to omit some of the most salient statements by O'Keefe and Giles. Each of the ACORN employees recorded in California was a low level employee whose job was to help the needy individuals who walked in the door seeking assistance. Giles and O'Keefe lied to engender compassion, but then edited their statements from the released videos." For instance, a much-publicized recording of a visit to the San Diego office, in which an employee is purportedly seeking information to help smuggle underage girls from Mexico into the United States to work as prostitutes, did not mention that the employee's 'contact' in Mexico was actually a police official. The employee collected as much specific information as possible, then contacted Mexican police, warning them of the plot.

So he's already been proven to be a lying sack of **** and you believe him?

[Mustang19]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110310/ap_on_en_ot/us_npr_tea_party_criticism

The CEO of NPR just resigned. People are taking this seriously.

What is really interesting about this thing is how, to the average gun toting middle American, there is no question of O'Keefe's honesty. I've seen conspiracies before, but this **** is so blatant it's just wack. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident has nothing on what conservatives have managed to pull off over the past years.

[karajorma]

ACORN lost a load of federal funding last time. Didn't make it any less a steaming pile of ****e.