I know I should be writing about the college campuses revealing to administrators and faculty that they have successfully indoctrinated their students into being anti-Semites, bigots, and fascists while remaining ignorant of history and ethics. I’m really tired today, however, and for a while, at least, I’m going to indulge myself elaborating on an earlier ethics mess: the revelation that National Public Radio has become a malign force in American culture, and will lie, obfuscate and spin to disguise its true nature and objectives.
I found two notes worth pondering. From the Times (I’m not making this up)—
The organization is now led by Katherine Maher, who started as NPR’s chief executive last month after leading the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Ms. Maher had no professional experience in the news industry. In a January news release announcing her hire, NPR’s board said Ms. Maher would help the network “reach audiences on new and existing platforms.” Ms. Maher was criticized this month for social media posts she published before joining NPR, including one from 2018 that called Mr. Trump a racist and expressed support for numerous progressive causes, including Black Lives Matter. NPR has said that she wrote those posts as a private citizen expressing her free speech rights, and that she oversees the organization’s business, not its editorial product.
The Times is shamelessly misrepresenting Maher’s radical tweets; of course it is since she’s an ideological ally. In defending the far, far Left CEO, various NPR spokespersons said she was being unfairly vilified for “a few” “old tweets.” Few? There are 29,400 tweets in her astounding archive; she apparently used Twitter as the equivalent of a diary or journal to reveal her every thought. Among them was were all the markers of a woke fanatic, with buzzwords like “structural privilege,” “epistemic emergency,” “transit justice,” “non-binary people,” “late-stage capitalism,” “cis white mobility privilege,” “toxic masculinity,”“the politics of representation,” and “folx“.”” (Yecchh!) She’s a fan of AOC’s Green New Deal, comparing driving cars with smoking cigarettes. She supported the diabolical Elizabeth Warren for President in 2020. She didn’t merely “support” Black Lives Matter, she supported its mobs’ looting as a reasonable response to slavery:
In other words, the woman is nuts, or, if you prefer, an irredeemable asshole. I mentioned that tweet when NPR announced her hiring, but it warrants emphasis and repetition. Looting—mobs stealing merchandise from businesses—is just “counterproductive”? The U.S.’s embrace of capitalism, which has served the nation and its citizens extremely well, is “oppression”? Why is a taxpayer-supported news organization being run by an anti-American Marxist?
Maher also, like so much of the now totalitarian-tipping Democratic Party, favors gutting the First Amendment so inconvenient opinions and positions won’t get in the way of “social justice.” City Journal elaborates,
U.S. intelligence services, she explained that she “took a very active approach to disinformation,” coordinated censorship “through conversations with government,” and suppressed dissenting opinions related to the pandemic and the 2020 election. In that same speech, Maher said that, in relation to the fight against disinformation, the “the number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States.” These speech protections, Maher continued, make it “a little bit tricky” to suppress “bad information” and “the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.” Maher’s general policy at Wikipedia, she tweeted, was to support efforts to “eliminate racist, misogynist, transphobic, and other forms of discriminatory content”
This is all prelude, however, to NPR’s insulting explanation of why we shouldn’t be concerned about Maher, that “she wrote those posts as a private citizen expressing her free speech rights, and that she oversees the organization’s business, not its editorial product.”
I don’t care if she wrote those posts while dressed as the Easter Bunny, she wrote them, and we have every reason to assess the appropriateness of her ascension to the leadership of National Public Radio in light of what they say, and say about her. The fact that they are protected speech is completely irrelevant; it’s a rationalization, and a particularly stupid one: #24. Juror 3’s Stand (“It’s My Right!”).
Worse, the network says that the hostile beliefs the leader of NPR holds regarding the nation that it is obligated to serve fairly, responsibly and objectively don’t matter, because, see, she won’t be involved in determining programming content. The leader of NPR won’t be involved in what NPR does. No really. Not to worry. Sure.
How gullible does someone have to be to believe that? “Yes, she’s the leader and top officer, but she won’t lead or influence the culture, objectives or product.” No! Just “the business”!
The City Journal arrives at the unavoidable conclusion that Maher, the CEO of NPR, is
… is a left-wing ideologue who supports wide-scale censorship and considers the First Amendment an impediment to her campaign to sanitize the world of wrong opinions.
Yup! Here is where I would normally ask, “Now what?” but the only answer is to stop funding NPR, and for rational, fair, responsible Americans to make sure it settles into the same ugly niche as “The Nation,” the “Daily Kos,” and MSNBC, preaching to a choir of America-haters, fascists of the Left, and recent Ivy League grads.
Ethics Alarms 
I have used at least three, perhaps four, of the nine terms to which you object. Does that make me just a little nuts? Sort of assholic?
Of course not. Using ALL of them, together with calling looting “counter-productive,” however, compels the diagnosis. I know you would never use “folx.”
Besides, I like you…
I think you can also consider yourself safe from my using “cis white mobility privilege.”
I stopped contributing to NPR before she arrived, as there was no longer anything but one side of the story, the left side. I miss the days when I relied on NPR. Even Diane Rheem, who had her on left-leaning views, ALWAYS made sure on her program to have someone presenting a differing or opposite view, and she did not denigrate them. Objectivity and credibility…gone.
I had forgotten about poor Diane, with her vocal problems that made her sound 90. Yes, she was fair, professional and neutral. Those were the days.
“Those were the days.”
Why do I think you remember this…?
PWS
Chairman Maher.
(Hat tip, Ace of Spades.)
The only way I would elect to contribute more to NPR than the forced tax support is if they bring back “Clik and Clak: the car guys.”
I do like the puzzler but that is only 15 minutes of their airtime on a Sunday morn.
I enjoy the classical music but even that it is being augmented by some “wokish” garble now.
An erudite friend of mine use to provide book reviews that were cogent. He was once military intelligence officer fighting communism. For some reason he and his wife have embraced the Leftist ideals of kumbalah. They actually have one of those bumper stickers on their car with the religious symbols of all faiths to indicate their synthetic ecumenism.
So my commutes are now entertained with me asking Siri to play “The Lettermen” or love songs from the Fifties.
By “kumbalah” do you mean “pretense or the act of pretending”? That seems right.
jvb
* An average story on NPR…
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
“This portion of NPR’s programming has been brought to you by Boeing, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton…”
Yeah… I don’t think there’s any danger of them becoming Marxist any time soon.
You did notice how those same corporations rushed to bow down to Black Lives Matter, a Marxist movement to its core, right? Corporations pander to whomever they see as driving public opinion, and “hypocrisy” is a word that doesn’t appear in their lexicon or the Left’s. The big companies will ride on the tiger as long as they calculate that its in their best interests….or until they get eaten.
“Corporations pander to whomever they see as driving public opinion, and “hypocrisy” is a word that doesn’t appear in their lexicon…”
First of all, NPR is no longer driving public opinion, as the younger generations, from GenX to the present, don’t listen to NPR and don’t care about what it’s supposed to stand for, nor do they understand my point about undue influence from the military industrial complex. (My 35-year-old son assures me of this point.)
It’s not that those corporations are “willing” to fund such an organization; it’s that the organization (NPR) is willing to accept funding from those corporations that represent the interests of, and get revenue from, the military industrial complex. As a fundraiser, you know all about nonprofits needing to decline or return funding from donors who don’t share or support the values of the beneficiary organization.
Merely by having the corporations’ names associated with a “normal” media outlet, they are normalizing their presence in, and influence on, everyday business and citizens’ opinions.
If NPR is so Left, how do they justify accepting the support of military contracting corporations? Or is NPR pandering to the Right by accepting their support and brand?
No, they’d take money from the KKK if they could get away with it. It will be fascinating to see if “Chairman Maher” does anything about the contributions from the”MIC.”
Again, though, such donations are just virtue signaling, as John Kenneth Galbraith predicted in “The New Industrial State.” And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting still behaves like a corporation, just as the Washington Post or Google do.
My son agrees with you, except re Google which is more insidious than the rest.
Oh, he is right about that. It was a sign when they stopped using “Don’t be evil” as a motto.
The irony here is someone being defended for practising her 1st Ammendment rights while she bemoans how that ammendment also protects those who disagree with her ideology.