NPR Controversy

Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer issued the following statement in response to comments made by NPR executive Ron Schiller that smeared the tea party movement:

We were extremely disturbed to hear Ron Schiller, the Senior Vice President for Development of National Public Radio, spew baseless, hateful fiction about the tea party movement today, calling us weird, Evangelical, Islamaphobic, and gun-toting racists.

The tea party is composed of hardworking American citizens of every race, creed, and religion, whose taxes help fund NPR and pay Schiller's salary. I can't think of a time in recent history when a group of Americans have been so vilified and denigrated by a person who is supposedly serving the public's interest. Schiller's ignorant comments lend overwhelming evidence for the need to stop all federal funding of NPR.

Even more outrageous was Mr. Schiller's fact-challenged claim regarding the education and intelligence of tea partiers: "In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives." This sweeping, unenlightened generalization is abjectly false, according to a New York Times poll conducted last year, in which tea partiers were found to be better educated than the general public.

Mr. Schiller shows blatant disrespect bordering on contempt for a constitutionally-based political movement. It is untenable that he would express such ignorant views in public or in private. We at the Tea Party Express demand an immediate apology from Mr. Schiller, and will gladly welcome his departure from NPR. Regardless of Mr. Schiller's future employment prospects, we highly recommend he undergo sensitivity training to discover why he is prone to express such unenlightened rhetoric.

Note: NPR says Schiller had left the network before the video release. I'd think that an apology is in order--from Schiller and also NPR. Click here to view the O'Keefe video.

Oh, and why is O'Keefe still even considered a reliable source, after having been discredited so many times? Well, he's more effective than Michael Moore at enacting change. He tackled Acorn, Planned Parenthood, and now NPR.

UPDATE: National Public Radio's president and chief executive, Vivian Schiller, resigned Wednesday morning in the wake of a scandal that has elevated the news organization's concerns about its future funding. (here)