NPR Was Ready to Accept $5 Million From Fictitious Muslim Brotherhood Front

As recently as 7-8 years ago TNA used to de-bunk bogus media exposes, such as the notorious 1992 Dateline "exploding fuel tank" story
Now TNA uncritically retails similar scams conducted by GOP-aligned "conservative" outfits.
Ironically, Glenn Beck's news aggregator "The Blaze" published a pretty good discussion of "undercover" journalism by partisan activists:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ends-vs-means-the-ethics-of-undercover-journalism/
Here's a more focused critique from George Weigel at Slate, who shows how a key quote in the NPR/Muslim "sting" video was cropped by James O'Keefe and his adult handlers:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/03/11/the-npr-stin-s-racist-tea-party-comment-was-taken-out-of-context.aspx
James O'Keefe isn't a journalist; he's a Beltway GOP-funded Johnny Knoxville, only less entertaining.

-- William N. Grigg


xxx

NPR Was Ready to Accept $5 Million From Fictitious Muslim Brotherhood Front
Written by R. Cort Kirkwood  
Saturday, 12 March 2011 16:30

National Public Radio was eagerly anticipating a $5 million donation from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center, according to the latest secret recording released by Project Veritas, which set up MEAC to sting NPR and in turn caused the resignation of two top officials early this week.

The second recording, an audio of a phone call, demonstrates that NPR had not "repeatedly refused" the donation, as an NPR spokesman said after Project Veritas unleashed the first secret video, which showed NPR executives eating lunch with the phony Muslims and calling members of the Tea Party racist.

Indeed, the audio features Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving, explaining that NPR would happily keep the donation a secret and hide MEAC's identify from auditors.

Liley also wrote emails, The Daily Caller reports, explaining the same thing.

The Trouble Begins

NPR has been in hot water all week because of the outrageous remarks from Ron Schiller, its former foundation president and vice president of development, who was forced to resign along with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation).

The leftist network's troubles began on February 22, when Schiller and Liley ate lunch with "Ibrahim Kassam" and "Amir Malik," who represented MEAC. The pair explained that MEAC was a front for the terrorist-connected Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks global Islamic hegemony under Sharia law. MEAC explicity states at its website that it too seeks to impose Sharia law everywhere. None of this bothered Schiller and Liley.

Indeed, the more the phony Muslims spoke, the more Schiller and Liley expressed their opinions of "Islamophobes."

Said Schiller:

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 move....

[The Tea Party is not] just Islamaphobic, but really 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.

When Malik complained that the Muslim Brotherhood is "demonized and looked down on as horrible, terrible people," Liley offered an American history lesson:

Sadly, our history from the record … shows that we have done this before. We put Japanese-Americans in camps in World War II.

And when Kassam jokes that Muslins called NPR "National Palestinian Radio," the two executives laugh. Said Liley: "Oh really? That's good. I like that."

Schiller also says that NPR can do without federal funding and would be better off without it, which contradicted Vivian Schiller's remarks at the National Press Club on March 7, the day before the video was released.

Vivian Schiller told her audience that NPR does not have a liberal bias and needs federal funds very badly.

Within about 12 hours after Project Veritas uploaded its video, both Schillers had resigned from NPR, and Ron Schiller lost the job he had been anticipating at the Aspen Institute.

The NPR board forced Vivian Schiller out, and not just because her underlings were clearly out of control in this case. She was also responsible for the embarrassing fiasco involving Juan Williams, who made the mistake of telling Bill O'Reilly that Muslims on planes make him nervous. Vivian Schilller permitted a subaltern to fire Williams, a respected NPR veteran, over the phone. Schiller said he needed a psychiatrist.

Legal Counsel Was Drafting Agreement

After the major NPR disaster, an NPR spokesman explained that the leftist network would never have taken the Muslim moolah, insisting,

The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

But this claim was quickly proven false in Project Veritas' latest audio, and emails from Liley to MEAC show NPR not only wanted to accept the money but also would have kept MEAC's donation anonymous in its records.

Even worse, Vivian Schiller knew about the coming donation and the plans to keep it under wraps. Says Liley:

Vivian knows about our meeting as my email indicated I think for her to feel ­ for us to prep her appropriately for the next meeting, it would be great to have some more information from you guys. But Ron and she talked, and I shared notes from our meeting about kind of where you are in your interest, and so I think for us to do kind of our due diligence, it would also be helpful to get some of the background information [on the organization and on its leadership].

As well, Liley told Kassam that NPR will keep its auditors in the dark and that legal counsel would write an agreement.

They have audited our programs at times and, I think, as part of that, they can look at our audited financials. If you are concerned in any way about that, that's one reason you might want to be an anonymous donor. And, we would certainly, if that was your interest, want to shield you from that....

I let [NPR legal counsel] know. well, Vivian let her know about this.... Typically we have some kind of written agreement, especially with gifts of this size, even a simple letter just to lay out the terms so that both sides understand what the support would be used for. So she's putting something together that we could share with you tomorrow in draft form. … It's a simple gift agreement …

Liley reconfirms these major points, The DC reports, in an email:

NPR can list MEAC as an anonymous donor in our database, which would mean we would not disclose the organization's name. We do not publish a list of gifts, so it would not be an issue there. …

The audits of our governmental grants are conducted by the same firm we hire to do our NPR financial audit.

I am awaiting a gift agreement from our legal counsel and will share it when I have it.

The latest recording either means the NPR spokesman was ignorant of the deal or was instructed by superiors to lie about it. Again, NPR did not "repeatedly refuse" the donation.

Funding in Trouble

According to The DC, the seriousness with which some at NPR are taking the Schiller scandal comes through in a letter that two dozen staff members, including veteran NPR talkers Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts, sent to "listeners and supporters":

We, and our colleagues at NPR News, strive every day to bring you the highest quality news programs possible. So, like you, we were appalled by the offensive comments made recently by NPR's now former Senior Vice President for Development. His words violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.

Those comments have done real damage to NPR.

Indeed they have, particularly to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which now faces the loss of federal funds. CPB funds NPR.

While rhe House of Resprentatives ended funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting last month, the Senate is considering Sen. Jim DeMint's legislation to do so.

Funding from CPB for some NPR affiliates is crucial. Of CPB's $430 million budget this year, the Associated Press reports, $94 million went to 400 public radio stations.

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