Monday, November 8, 2010

What Causes Do NPR's Leaders Support?

Matthew Shaffer of National Review Online takes a close look at Public Radio’s Political Sympathies [emphasis added]
I investigated the political sympathies of every power player on two boards of directors: that of NPR itself, and that of the NPR Foundation, which controls the flow of private money from donors to NPR. I obtained lists of board members from guidestar.com, a website that keeps up-to-date information on non-profits, as NPR was not eager to provide information about the Foundation. I found information about their political sympathies on campaignmoney.com, voterfactory.com, city-data.com, the Huffington Post’s Fundrace blog, Google, and opensecrets.com. The results are presented here. And they are telling.

I found information about all but seven of the 55 board members (50 directors plus the five “public” members of the NPR board). Of these 48 members, nearly all have demonstrably liberal political sympathies, with heavy support for the Democratic party, pro-abortion-rights groups, and environmental activism in particular.

...Presumably, NPR doesn’t have an official policy that board members must be liberal. But de facto, they have sure done a good job making their boards members indistinguishable from that of an openly partisan organization.

...The scandal is the uniformity of the institution as a whole. Its board members also sit on the boards of explicitly progressive advocacy groups, and have given millions of dollars to Democrats and liberal PACs — at the same time that they control the country’s “public” radio network.
Obviously, Congress should de-fund NPR; however, that only represents a small portion of their revenue. Conservatives should stop sending them money, too. But most importantly, bookmark Matthew Shaffer's article. That way, the next time some leftie goes on about the conservative dominance of Clear Channel or Fox, you can send them a link to his post.

No comments: