Why Should We Save NPR from Slashing Its Own Throat?

The slimy attack on NPR by the same immoral idiots who previously tried to ravage Planned Parenthood makes it clear we are in the midst of a cultural jihad from the jingoistic hard right wing of the Republican party.  Good people need to stand up, and shout, “Enough!” against these crusaders — because the mainstream media won’t do it because they are too busy being led around like lost puppies by these dark and evil forces that survive only to cut down our free speech and temper any debate in their favor.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship get it right and call out the schadenfreude of the “charade of outrage:”

Remember what Fox News chief Roger Ailes said about NPR executives after they fired Fox contributor Juan Williams? “They are, of course, Nazis,” Ailes told an interviewer. “They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view.” When the Anti-Defamation League objected to the characterization, Ailes apologized but then described NPR as “nasty, inflexible” bigots.

Double standard? You bet. A fundraiser for NPR is axed for his own personal bias and unprofessionalism but Ailes gets away scot free, still running a news division that is constantly pumping arsenic into democracy’s drinking water while he slanders public radio as equal to the monsters and murderers of the Third Reich.

Joel Meares, in the Columbia Journalism Review, pens the proper response NPR should have provided in the wake of their public punking:

Ron Schiller was a fundraiser who no longer works for us. He had nothing to do with our editorial decision making process. And, frankly, our editorial integrity speaks for itself. We’ve got reporters stationed all over the world, we’ve won all sorts of prizes, we’ve got an ombudsman who is committed to examining our editorial operations. If you think our reporting is tainted, or unreliable, that’s your opinion, and you’re free to express it. And to look for the evidence. But we will not be intimidated by the elaborate undercover hackwork of vindictive political point-scorers who are determined to see NPR fail.

Jay Rosen is amazed at how poorly NPR is handling their public response to the scamming.  They’re terrorized and unable to attack back:

To give in to that panic is to cooperate in your own demise. Which is exactly what the NPR board did by demanding that Schiller–a visionary leader who knew where NPR had to go in the digital age–resign immediately, and without a fight. This was a stupid and cowardly act, which will be justified as institutional realism, the price for one too many slip-ups. It is not realism. The decision to let Schiller go originates in a delusion, captured so well by Jon Stewart during the Juan Williams controversy when he told NPR: you brought a tote bag to a knife fight! The delusion is that you can keep doing that and somehow it will all work out in the end.

If NPR are uninterested in fighting for their lives — or calling out the ridiculousness of these childish antics perpetuated against their institution — why should we care if NPR cuts its own throat?  If NPR doesn’t care about their future or their peoples’ mandate, then why should we?

The radical Right Wing have make their political and religious agenda clear:  They will hack and attack every mainstream, liberal ideal based in freedom and individuality until we are all owned by big business and we are all told how we’re supposed to behave by our ironic, and non-self aware, conservative overlords.

Planned Parenthood.  Wisconsin.  NPR.  Collective bargaining.  National Health insurance.  Guns on campus.  Gabby Giffords.  Long-Form Birth Certificates.  Outlawing religion.  Punishing infants.

The jihad is in full effect.  Will you fight back against these national terrorists? Or will you willingly succumb to their punishments like NPR?