There may be nothing more ironic than watching Bill O'Reilly huddle up with Bernard Goldberg to natter on about NPR's current bucket of hot water, and how they deny liberal bias. The best line is at the end, where Goldberg says that if liberals think Fox News is biased, it's perfectly natural for conservatives to think NPR is biased.
It drives me crazy that NPR is just rolling over and refusing to defend themselves over this even after Glenn Beck's site, of all places, proved the tape was edited to distort the context of what was said. But their passivity notwithstanding, the logic in their little discussion here is non-existent.
Ira Glass addressed this in this "On the Media" segment this weekend. He flatly states (and I agree) that NPR isn't left-wing news, but also has serious frustration about NPR not fighting back.
He's right. There's nothing liberal or liberally biased about NPR, unless you count the fact that they actually bother to cover books and entertainment that aren't just banal nonsense. In fact, I've had WTF moments with their reporting where I've wondered who paid for that broadcast from the corporate world.
But this is all noise anyway, because like it or not, Ron Schiller wasn't remotely involved with reporting or editorial content. He was a fundraiser. It was his job to go court wealthy people and get donations because the government doesn't fund NPR, and it's a struggle to keep those small rural radio stations on the air (and competing with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, I might add). As for Vivian Schiller, the only reason she should have resigned was because she apologized for Ron Schiller instead of standing up for the integrity of her reporters and news operation.
And in what may be the supreme example of conservative bias, Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg natter and gabble about NPRs "bias" as if that twerp O'Keefe actually did something worth talking about. It wasn't anything more than yet another dishonest, edited effort to bolster the right-wing agenda of killing all things public in favor of private concerns. No, O'Reilly and Goldberg just blather on without any regard for what really took place on those tapes, and what a non-story this whole thing should be.
Note to NPR: Quit apologizing for this. If someone lies and elicits statements that they then edit to make sound worse than it is, it hardly deserves you pulling out the sword and falling on it, over and over and over again. Knock it off. Step up and push back.
