NPR ombud Alicia Shepard has a piece (5/25/11) about internal discomfort with a recent $1.8 million grant from the George Soros-connected Open Society Foundation.
Shepard writes:
The money is for a worthy purpose.
NPR is using the two-year grant as seed money to start a local-national initiative, known as the Impact on Government project. Eventually, the plan is to have two public radio reporters in every state keeping tabs on state government issues that are woefully under-reported by the media. This is to be a multi-media project for radio, the Web and social media.
It’s hard to argue against the need for more vigorous coverage of statehouse issues. Corporate-owned media are not likely to do this, so local public radio would seem like a good fit.
Shepard writes that some NPR journalists are uncomfortable with taking money from a foundation tied to someone with well-known political views. Shepard cites one:
“I do have problems with it precisely because he is so left wing and were he on the other side I would still have problems with it,” said a long-time NPR producer. “I don’t have a problem with people supporting particular causes but I do have a problem when obvious partisanship spills over into your support of those causes.”
Shepard seems to share the unease, writing that having other funders for the project would help alleviate perception problems:
Diversification of funders would go a long way toward diluting any suspicions about a Soros connection. The sooner NPR can provide a varied list of funders for this project, the quicker valid concerns about perceptions and reality will diminish–if not go away.
If the goal is to quiet the critics on the right, who have made a lot of noise about the Soros money, then having a few other funders is not likely to matter.
But it’s worth pointing out the fact NPR gets a lot of money from major (and not so major) corporations. If the problem with Soros funding is that his politics might affect the journalistic product, are similar worries expressed about NPR‘s connections to this (very partial) list of corporate donors listed in NPR‘s 2009 annual report? If not, why not? Many of them have political agendas they pursue in Washington and elsewhere.
American Express Company
America’s Natural Gas Alliance
Anheuser-Busch
Bank of America
BP
Caterpillar
Citibank
Constellation Energy Group
Dow Chemical Company
General Motors Company
Georgia-Pacific
IBM Corporation
MasterCard Worldwide
Microsoft Corporation
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney
Toyota Motor Corporation
University of Phoenix
Wells Fargo Advisors
Not to mention that the David Koch is a major contributor to PBS, and may also be a contributor to NPR, I’m not sure… But why is PBS okay with taking Koch money but NPR finds Soros money unsettling?
This discomfiture brought to you by a grant from the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies.
I feel as if I’m always hearing about the support of the Gates Foundation, the PEWS charitable trust, etc etc whenever I have the misfortune of listening to NPR. These foundations all have political agendas. They are all a bit to the right of the Soros Foundation, which appears to be the problem here. Because Glenn Beck has taught us all that Soros is the key player in the world Communist conspiracy. So NPR must not be tarnished with his name.
The PBS/NPR propaganda conglomerate is nothing but corporate “entertainment” and “news” presented in a snobbish, upper-middle-class manner (reflecting where “individual” donations originate, which is very similar to the fare presented by LINK TV and FreeSpeech TV). A failed experiment. Donations should have been banned from the beginning.
I don’t know about anyone else but I am always hearing about programs being supported by various foundations and corporations…who could forget the tagline” Archer Daniels Midland supermarkert to the world ” heard at various times during the day..that is when I stopped donating.
Good points all around here.I also get a chill up my spine every time the Joan Kroc blurb is announced as preparing future journalists for ‘public” radio. That sounds to me like the Big MAc is hijacking NPR who’s willingly going along for the ride. And maybe that’s why Mc Donalds gets some uncritical exposure from time to time on mc NPR
Rational Revolution: “Not to mention that the David Koch is a major contributor to PBS, and may also be a contributor to NPR, I’m not sureâ┚¬Ã‚¦”
Koch Industries own Georgia Pacific, which is on the list cited, therefore they did indeed contribute to NPR.
FAIR, where are all the revenue sharing deals? How could you miss them? You do know that every book and music review on NPR and in NPR is all praise and never a negative word – never. There are some negative film reviews – but note they don’t get revenue sharing from film tickets sold. Then the stuff they promote (biggest book promoter anywhere) gets revenue sharing when it’s sold – read that as payola – whether it’s legal or not.
If george soros, an arch capitalist/ globalist who made his fortune speculating in the currency market (using information he recieved while being payed by british a intelligence agency), is “so far to left” too far for “ombusman’ Ms. Shepard…jeezis. why should i care what any of them think anyway? Ms Shepard is obviously a boob who’s entire consciousness is shaped by american pop/tabloid-political culture. oh wait! i dont care what she or any of the other corporate slugs at NPR think!
That used to bug me too, maggie b. The problem here is that to be identified with the “Left” is just a shade below being identified as a child molester in the Beltway. “Journalists” are deathly afraid of being called out as liberal, and will absolutely shit themselves if some fat old Rightist teevee talker/Republicon/millionaire talkshow host starts screeching about “bias” on the part of a milquetoast drone who only wants to help, who only wants to tell both sides of the story in a nice, friendly way. You’re right, Blackplates: That Soros has been transformed into Karl Marx or Daniel Ortega speaks volumes about the stuttering paranoia and sheer stupidity of clowns like Beck and the groveling scribblers who cower before him and the rest of the Right.
What really freaks out O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity and the rest of the dumbell Right is the fact that Soros actually seems to give a shit about the country and it’s future. To them, the new dumb rich, he’s a class traitor. They don’t get it: Soros’ concern about folks and ideas and small “d” democracy genuinely blows their minds. Why, they wonder, would a fellow who, ostensibly, is like them, care about “liberal” values and ideas? Why does he support the masses and their claims to their (the dumbell rich’s) money? Randian/Libertarian crackpot social and economic theory sustains the Limbeckian (Norman Goldman’s helpful term) worldview; that democracy demands the actions of people like Soros completely escapes them.
Goddamn HTTP. Wouldn’t be nice to have a text editor that allowed easy italics and editing, with preview?
I mean HTML.
NPR, as usual, are so full of excrement. Just look at all those corporate sponsors, most of them the companies that are raping and pillaging American society on a daily basis. When various liberal and progressive asked me to sign petitions when Repubicans wanted to defund them (ans PBS), I did not sign. NPR and PBS are so white and whitebread and so out of touch what real Americans want to see and hear is terms of alternative programming.
They need to get some balls, among other things, and stop shoving upper east-side (alleged, but not in reality) ‘progressive’ ideas down the throats of those of us who know better. NPR and PBS are only slight more progressive and liberal than Fox News, and way less liberal that the Fox broadcast network, among others.
There’s a caution to an idea like this that makes Rupert Murdoch look like just another mild-mannered reporter.
And it is this: no matter how well intentioned Mr. Soros and his bandoleers are at the outset — the chances of NPR reporters becoming corporate apologists will turn the project into a false flag operation. Murdoch and Faux News have their “News Hounds” website fronting as a counter-conservative scratching post for irritated progressives. But “NH”pays out considerable dividends for FNC because it plays as little more than center-left bleating about how red neck Faux News is about — well everything. But since the website plays daily it seldom, if ever, follows up on an initial tag line. Faux just wants to orchestrate any critics among (mostly) political neophytes.
People not of the Murdoch mentality ought to take note of: 1) why so many conservative corporations and Astroturf orgs. advertise on News Hounds, as well as 2) why candidates like Newt Gingrich and Ron and Rand “Romper Room” Paul continue to buy campaign ads on it, and 3) why a not-for-profit website never needs to campaign for money from its users.
Maybe it’s just a strange set of co-incidences.
With Congress going to cut some of PBS’s funding no matter what — I’d be suspicious of any pseudo-left-winger like Soros funding anything on PBS. He’s just another corporation. As he proved when he took $1 billion in Forex arbitrage from the British Exchequer on so-called “Black Wednesday” (9/17/92). The UK had to suspend pound trading before a 1987-type market crash sent even more panic thru the world’s markets. The British cabinet eventually fell and 3 million people lost their jobs during the ensuing “transition” on top of those already out of work from the 1991 recession.
The only good news was that John Majors’ Tory government fell. But the good news didn’t last. Then the bad news came: Tony Blair brought in New Labour with Rupert Murdoch’s blessing.
Yep — that makes George Soros a raging left-winger. You betcha.
One big omission is Walmart
The “brought to you with support from…” listing of corporations at the beginning of programs like the News Hour remind me of a perp walk most every time.
Take the King Soros money bag -and do the job you believe in.If he demands different results report that.If you are a left wingnut and truly believe -go for it.Nothing wrong with funding and articulating beliefs.
I used to critique NPR News on an almost daily basis for years.
See this blog, particularly in the Bush Era archives:
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/
But I have since ejected NPR completely from my daily existence. It is such a mainstream shill for corporate agendas that there is no sense in me wasting my time expecting, hoping, insisting that NPR should be anything else. I’m glad more and more people are waking up to what NPR really is, rather than what they think it is.
Personally, I think they should be allowed to languish. They’re largely irrelevant anyway, their on-air personalities are annoying and distracting (to say the least), and their mentality is recessive and elitist. I could go on, but the NPR Check blog gives a thorough picture of the ‘real’ NPR.
Finally, I successfully dumped NPR (even when in the car) for so many reasons, but the most banal and possibly the most valid reason is that, getting upset with NPR is like getting all worked up because of some insipid utterance made by, say, Ann Coulter, or someone equally worthless.