Tag Archives: Defund

MUST-SEE: NPR executive exposes radical left-wing bias in hidden camera sting

Here’s the video showing the sting of NPR that everyone is talking about:

That’s the short version. The longer version is here.

That NPR Senior Vice President for Fundraising Ron Schiller in the video. And he represents everything that NPR believes behind closed doors. The mask is off.

Where did that video come from?

NewsMax has the full story.

Excerpt:

In the video, Schiller is seen at a luncheon meeting in Georgetown with prospective NPR donors who claim to represent a pro-shariah group called the Muslim Education Action Center. The prospective donors, who say they have $5 million to disburse, are actually grass-roots activists O’Keefe trained.

The videotape shows Schiller telling his prospects that the the grass-roots conservative tea party organizations have “hijacked” the Republican party. He states that the new GOP elements are “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.”

Schiller’s potential patrons state outright on their faux Web site that they support the spread of extremist shariah law. They also are heard telling Schiller that their organization has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist group that has been linked to terrorism.

In the video, Schiller also defended NPR’s decision to terminate its association with commentator and columnist Juan Williams over comments Williams made on Fox News last year. Williams discussed his uneasiness about flying with people wearing traditional Muslim garb. Schiller said Williams had “lost all credibility.”

[…]“What NPR did I’m very proud of,” Schiller says.[…]Another NPR fundraiser, Institutional Giving Director Betsy Liley, also attended the Feb. 22 meal where Schiller made those remarks. She appears to compare America’s treatment of Muslims in the years since 9/11 with the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during WWII.

[…]Asked to elaborate on the additional revelations he plans, O’Keefe confirmed the additional disclosures involve NPR, but would not say whether they stem from the same meeting involving Schiller and Liley.

Strangely enough, NPR denies that it has any left-wing bias.

Is NPR liberal? Are they biased to the left?

From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

Just yesterday NPR’s president and CEO stood before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and declared that the taxpayer-funded news organization exhibited no bias against conservatives. Vivian Schiller even dared conservatives to show her the proof.

Less than 24 hours later, filmmaker James O’Keefe delivered the goods. 

[…]The timing was fortuitous — and it exposed Schiller as an apologist for the liberal mainstream media, of which NPR is a key player. If this is the type of talk Schiller permitted at the highest levels of NPR, is there really any question about the organization’s hostility to conservatives?

Schiller’s plea yesterday for specific examples of bias was itself laughable. The Media Research Center has a treasure trove of incidents dating back years.

“There’s no question it is a perception issue,” Schiller insisted when asked about bias in the newsroom. “It is absolutely a perception issue.”

But while she was willing to chalk up NPR’s liberal bias as merely a “perception” problem, she made sure another form of diversity was being addressed in more substantive manner.

This is the organization that FIRED Juan Williams. Juan Williams is a leftist, but not crazy enough for NPR, apparently.

Why did they do it?

From CNN.

Excerpt:

The conservative activist responsible for producing an undercover video showing a National Public Radio senior executive slamming the Tea Party as “racist” and “scary” is speaking out about why he went after the organization.

And late Tuesday, NPR announced it has placed the executive, Senior Vice President for Fundraising Ron Schiller, on administrative leave.

Filmmaker James O’Keefe said the idea for the sting stemmed from an incident in October when NPR fired analyst Juan Williams after he said he got scared when people wore Muslim garb on airplanes.

“My colleague Shaughn Adeleye who posed as one of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood was pretty offended with what happened with Juan Williams and he suggested looking into NPR after that incident back in the fall,” O’Keefe said to CNN Correspondent Brian Todd on Tuesday.

“My other colleague Simon Templar came up with the idea to have a Muslim angle since Juan Williams was fired due to his comments. So we decided to see if there was a greater truth or hidden truth amongst these reporters and journalists and executives.”

I am a big fan of the Saint novels, so it’s good to see someone resurrecting the Simon Templar alias. This sting is definitely something that Simon Templar would do to expose “the ways of the ungodly”.

Please read this interview transcript from the Hugh Hewitt show.

Excerpt:

HH: And where is the full video? Is it at Project Veritas, James O’Keefe?

JO’K: www.theprojectveritas.com.

HH: All right, now James O’Keefe, tell us a little bit about www.theprojectveritas.com. Who funds it?

JO’K: Who funds it? We don’t have any money right now. We are a non-profit organization, funded by grassroots people. I’m not exaggerating. We get very small donations, we’re running on fumes. And we have volunteer filmmakers, volunteer videographers who go out there. So I would appreciate people make a donation. It’s a 501c3. We haven’t gotten our tax exemption back from the IRS yet, but hopefully we do. And it’s just an effort to muckrake, to shake things up, to expose things for what they are, and to investigate the powerful institutions that the mainstream media refuses to investigate.

HH: Did you time the release of this to coincide with the debate over whether or not to defund NPR?

JO’K: NO, that wasn’t intentional. We got this tape, you know, February 22nd, in that week, which you know, and I produced it. So frankly, it was just very coincidental, and it happens to be more of a story. You know, as a journalist, I’m glad it’s taking place now, because it’s getting a lot more exposure given the debate. But frankly, that was kind of coincidental. It was not done months and months and months ago and I waited. It was done two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and it took me some time to produce it.

HH: Is it fair in your opinion to call this a sting?

JO’K: I don’t care what you call it. Honestly, and everyone’s asking me what do I refer to myself as. It really does not matter. You can call it a sting, you can call it investigative reporting, you can call it filmmaking, you can call it activism. But what it is, is exposing that a triangle has three sides, frankly, that everyone knows that this is true. But the guy is a caricature, a stereotype, of what people have been talking about for years about these media elites. So I don’t really care what people call me or call my teammates, journalists or sting artists or activists or hoaxsters. Whatever they say, I think that it’s a form of journalism that’s been used for decades by ABC News, PrimeTime Live, 60 Minutes, To Catch A Predator. We’re just adding a new media twist to it.

HH: Where were you, the reason I asked for the term is so I can ask this question. Where were you when the sting was going down?

JO’K: I wasn’t even in D.C. I trained these two guys. I gave them all my expertise. I gave them equipment that I have. And I helped them do what they wanted to do. That’s my mission at The Project Veritas, train people, equip them, and send them out into the field to do creative reporting.

HH: Did you conceive of the idea, James?

JO’K: No, the idea was basically a hybrid between Shaughn Adeleye, who came to me and was a little bit offended by what happened with Juan Williams, and my other friend, Simon Templar, who similarly thought about doing something with NPR. And we just put our heads together, and I offered by expertise, which is the sort of undercover stuff, and they sort of did the rest.

Evolution News has more on how NPR covers science news.

Excerpt:

One particularly interesting segment of the tapes is an exchange in which the NPR officials explain how their network covers controversial subjects in science. Betsy Liley is heard describing another funding source who wanted NPR not to report the views of global warming skeptics:

This funder said to us, ‘you know you would like us to support your environmental coverage, but we really don’t want to give you money if you’re going to talk to the people who think climate change is not happening,’ (as reported by the Washington Times).

She continues to say,

It is a complicated thing, though. There’s a political question and there is a scientific question and we were talking to him about supporting the science desk. And so we’ve gone back to the science editor and asked how have you planned to cover this thing? Our coverage, if you look at our coverage, you would say that science coverage has accepted that climate change is happening and we’re covering it. But in politics, our Washington desk, might actually cover it should it resurface as a political issue…this debate….

I think the challenge in our society now is that we are questioning facts. It’s not opinions we are debating. I mean, what are the facts? Is the world flat? Is that the next question we’re going to debate?

Mr. Schiller chimes in later saying,

The main point here is that it is not our responsibility to present the opinion of a non-scientist through our science desk. All educated scientists accept that climate change as fact. On the political side, however, where it is not accepted as fact, and the fact that debate is happening is news and it’s really important news. And our point of view requires that we cover that debate, if for no other reason than to have Americans understand there are still people who believe that it is not fact.

We should be stinging the secular left elites all the time. Stinging NPR, ACORN and Planned Parenthood is great for everyone – we stop funding them and then their missions (communism, voter fraud and abortion, respectively) are set back. They need our money to do the evil things they want to do. We need to cut off or limit all funding sources of NPR, PBS, unions, trial lawyers, environmentalists, ACORN and Planned Parenthood. And we need to bring in vouchers to stop all involuntary funding of public schools. Why are we work hard in private industry to pay the salaries of lazy left-wing socialists? Let them find real jobs and pay their own way in the free market. Let them offer something of value that customers want instead of acting like parasites on a host.

Why are we giving left-wing NPR $531 million a year?

Newsbusters reports on the radically leftist NPR.

Excerpt:

Almost the entire media skipped this chilling honor-killing verdict from Arizona on Tuesday, from Reuters: “An Arizona jury on Tuesday found an Iraqi immigrant guilty of second-degree murder for running down his daughter with a Jeep because she had become too Westernized.” Faleh Almaleki killed his daughter Noor in October 2009 because she spurned his arranged marriage and was living with her boyfriend. Apparently, to report this is to be “Islamophobic.”

NPR skipped Almaleki, but they noted the verdict in another horrific killing on Monday night’s All Things Considered: Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her husband Mozzamil in 2009 as the two headed a Buffalo television project designed to create better understanding about Muslims. NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston’s objective was to deny this crime was about Islam. Instead, she said, it was simply about domestic violence.

NPR anchor Robert Siegel tried to explain that “at the time, the media seized on the murder as an honor killing. That’s a killing allowed in some Muslim societies when shame has been brought on a family. But NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reports from Buffalo, the Hassan case is really about domestic violence and it forced an entire community to reckon with stereotypes.”

Yes, most domestic violence involves behadings. It’s not an exclusively Islamic thing, you know.

Republicans have proposed a bill to cancel the $531 million of welfare that NPR receives each year for this “journalism”. But NPR isn’t the only leftist state-run media source.

Here’s another instance of media bias from radically leftist PBS, in which Eleanor Clift says that Scott Walker doesn’t represent the will of the people, even though he was elected after campaigning to reform union pay and benefits to fix their budget woes.

House Republicans win vote to defund Planned Parenthood

Unborn baby scheming about schemes about voting Republican
Unborn baby scheming about voting Republican

This is from Life Site News. (H/T Eleanor)

Excerpt:

In a historic vote Friday afternoon, the US House voted to strike all federal funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Every year the abortion giant receives hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

The congressional body voted 240-185 in favor of the amendment, introduced by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), to the 2011 Federal Spending Bill.

Immediately after the vote Rep. Pence released a statement saying: “This afternoon’s vote is a victory for taxpayers and a victory for life. By banning federal funding to Planned Parenthood, Congress has taken a stand for millions of Americans who believe their tax dollars should not be used to subsidize the largest abortion provider in America.

“I commend my colleagues in both parties for taking a stand for taxpayers and a stand for life.”

The amendment will now go before the Senate.

The vote came after a heated debate in the House. It also comes in the wake of an explosive series of videos released over the last two weeks by the pro-life organization Live Action, which showed Planned Parenthood staff repeatedly willing to aid and abet the trafficking of underage “sex workers” by offering advice to an undercover investigator posing as a “pimp” on how to obtain secret abortions, contraception, and STD tests.

Here’s some information on the finances of Planned Parenthood.

Excerpt:

I’m sure the House Clerk has had his hands full all week, with the nearly 600 amendments filed and the many that were voted on during the fiscal 2011 spending debate. As a result, his website has been rather slow to update. At this point, though, we have all the votes on the spending bill, and there are two I’d like to point out right away. I’ll look at the final vote in a subsequent post, but here is the first one, yesterday’s Pence Amendment, by which the House voted rather convincingly to stop $363 million in subsidies for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, and its many affiliates nationwide.

Even if you’re not a social conservative, funding for Planned Parenthood as a fiscal and a campaign finance issue. Currently, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the Democratic Party. Planned Parenthood is a charity with plenty of donors. There’s no reason why taxpayers should have to support their favorite charity so that they can give more of their money to Democrats.

Take, for example, Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana. Its IRS 990 form for 2009 reports that this affiliate had $10.6 million in revenue from  patient services (including $1.2 million from Medicaid — an entitlement not covered by this spending bill). It raised $2 million and then took in $3 million in government grants. On the other side of the ledger, the group reports providing $14.6 million in services. With additional efforts to raise money and a bit of budgeting, they could probably operate at the same pace without the special handouts. (Their medical director made about $300,000 in 2009 — if he believes very strongly in the cause, perhaps he can settle for a bit less.)

If abortion were really supported by the majority of the American people, then surely the people who support abortion would be able to dig deep into their own wallets and just give Planned Parenthood all the money it needs to keep killing helpless babies. But I don’t think they are going to do that. And since they are not going to do that, Planned Parenthood will probably have to raise their prices for abortions. And as long as Obamacare doesn’t fund those abortions, then a lot more people are going to have to pay more for abortions. And since a lot more people don’t want to spend that money on abortions, a lot more people are going to stop treating sex as a recreational activity and behave more responsibly. Responsible behavior is what happens when people have to face the consequences of their own decisions.

I’m a fiscal conservative and a social conservative, and I don’t want my tax money going to kill innocent babies. I worked for that money and it’s mine – I earned it. I have to work weekends without pay just to keep my job. If all of these left-wing liberals are so comfortable with their jobs and salaries that they have extra money to spend on baby-killing, then let them give their money to Planned Parenthood. My money is for providing for my (future) babies, and paying for their graduate degrees. If I have to pay for other people’s plans to kill babies, then I can’t pay for my plan to raise them.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

– Adrian Rogers, former President of the Southern Baptist Convention

And a quote from Michael Medved:

The only real alternative to government as a source of assistance, authority and a functioning civil society remains the “little platoons” described by Edmund Burke — families and communities shaped by attitudes that count as both economically and culturally conservative.

Abortion will be severely restricted abortion providers realize that there is no money to be made by killing innocent people. That’s why we need to stop paying them our money.

Note that Susan G. Komen For the Cure and United Way also fund abortions. Be careful where you give your money.

Neil Simpson has a round-up on this topic here.

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