Gary Knell assumes the President and CEO of National Public Radio today. As I listened to the piece describing NPR's situation relating to Congress, it sounded like NPR will be becoming more conservative to appease Republicans who will hate them regardless of what they do. Republicans only desire is to entirely stop funding NPR and Knell's job sounds like a thankless and fruitless task.
Will NPR's journalism go down the tubes as a result?
Knell succeeds Vivian Schiller, who resigned under pressure in March after a former NPR fundraiser was caught on camera calling the tea party racist. The episode led some conservatives to call for an end to federal funding for NPR, but Congress ultimately retained the funds as part of a budget deal in April.
Schiller was also criticized for firing analyst Juan Williams over comments he made about Muslims.
(NPR)
Juan Williams is a horrifically awful journalist and the Tea Party is demonstrably racist. The NPR exec got suckered into a James O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart scam in which Breitbart and Co. released heavily edited snippets. NPR never fought back. Mainly because their funding depends upon the teabagger minority in the US House of Representatives. The teabagger minority becomes the piper that will be calling NPR's tune.
Like when NPR stopped doing investigative reporting after Archer-Daniels-Midland became a major donor (NPR busted ADM for corruption back in the early 90s), I expect NPR's reporting to rapidly go downhill to the low, low standards of CNN.
Expect many false equivalencies between Democrats and Republicans. Also expect NPR to let Republicans lie more often without push back or any analysis of their truthfulness or accuracy.
[NOTE: I've been a long-time member of Minnesota Public Radio]