Local NPR Chief Responds to National Controversy
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Vivian Schiller, chief executive of National Public Radio is out of a gig now. Publicly, NPR’s Board of Directors say she resigned. Various blogs and other posts say she was forced to quit. In other words, she was basically told, look, you can either resign or we’ll just fire you. Most of the time, people take the first route, to resign and this way they can say they “left on their own terms."
It all stems from a fundraising event that was secretly videotaped. The video showed one of NPR’s fund-raising executives (not Schiller) repeatedly hammering Tea Party supporters and Republicans in general. Schiller says she had no knowledge of the comments being made but that the “buck stops with her” so she decided to call it quits. All this comes at time when NPR is trying to fight for its tens of millions of dollars in federal funding it gets to stay on the air.
WRNI Weighs In
Here in Rhode Island, we have WRNI, as our local NPR station. Joe O’Connor is the General Manager of WRNI. O’Connor says he has never had the opportunity to meet Schiller but that he does welcome her resignation. “Sadly, a series of NPR executive misjudgments have needlessly tarnished the remarkable work NPR correspondents are doing around the world.”
Can WRNI Cover RI Tea Party?
O’Connor says with no hesitation what has happened on the national level will have zero effect on WRNI’s reporters and editors to cover members of the RI Tea Party. “We have had Tea Party members like Lisa Blais on our air and participating in our weekly Political Roundtable that can be heard at 5:35a and 7:35a on Fridays on 1290 AM in Providence and 102.7 FM south of TF Green.” said O’Connor who also added that the actual comments being talked about were made by a former NPR executive who was in charge of fundraising. “He was neither a journalist nor did he in any way influence NPR coverage and certainly would not in any way influence how we cover news in The Ocean State.”
Will resignation hurt local fund-raising?
O’Connor stresses that his team has covered the local Tea Party effort “fairly” and will continue to do so. When asked if this national flare up will translate into lost pledge dollars here in the Ocean State, O’Connor says he can’t see that happening. “Because the Rhode Islanders who fought so hard and so successfully to prevent WRNI from being sold to the highest bidder in 2004, and the listeners who have contributed in record numbers since our Independence from Boston University in the fall of 2008, they listen all the time.”
Love or hate the tea party, media here and everywhere, public or private, has a responsibility.
Report it right.
Report it straight.
And leave the opinion for editorial pages.
What happened with NPR on a national level could have easily been the head of NBC or CBS, ABC etc and that is the scary part because everyone has an opinion.
But, when you sign up for a job in media or journalism the opinions stay in your head and not make their way out of your mouth.
Jeff Derderian is a former television news reporter and anchor both in Providence and Boston. He is one of the founders of the Station Education Fund. He can be reached at [email protected]
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