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Was The NPR Sting Presented Out Of Context?

Ryan Faughnder |
March 14, 2011 | 10:59 a.m. PDT

The hidden camera video that led to the sacking of NPR fundraising executive Ron Schiller and the resignation of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller is coming under greater scrutiny for misleading editing techniques. The video, by conservative activist James O’Keefe, showed Ron Schiller making disparaging comments about the Tea-Party and saying that NPR doesn’t need federal funding. 

Ron Schiller's comments were somewhat distorted in video
Ron Schiller's comments were somewhat distorted in video

Schiller made the comments at a fundraising event while meeting with people who he thought were representatives of a Muslim group, but were actually undercover activists sent by O’Keefe. This comes as NPR has been publicly fighting protect it federal funding from conservatives who wish this money to be stripped away.

A recent analysis by – of all groups – Glenn Beck’s conservative website The Blaze analyzed the ten-minute video and compared it to the two hours of mostly raw footage that O’Keefe put on his website alongside the edited version.

The Blaze concluded that several of Schiller’s comments – while still inexcusable in the view of the conservative blog – were presented out of context.

The edited video, for example, showed Schiller laughing in amusement after the narrator describes MEAC (O’Keefe’s “Muslim” front group) as an organization that strives to spread Sharia Law:

Narrator: “On the MEAC website, it said that the organization sought to, quote, spread acceptance of Sharia across the world.”

Schiller: [Laughing] “Really? That’s what they said?”

The Blaze reports, in its analysis, that “when you look at the raw video you realize he was actually recounting an unrelated and innocuous issue about confusion over names in the restaurant reservation.”

The analysis goes on to halfway defend Schiller’s comments about Tea-Party activists being “xenophobic,” “racist,” “white, Middle-America, gun-toting” people. In fact, Schiller was paraphrasing two high-level Republicans he had met who had told him why they could not support a party that had been “hijacked” by Tea-Party radicals.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik was quick to pick up on the story, noting that O’Keefe’s record of “investigative journalism” is “checkered” because of the blowback he suffered after his famous take-down of ACORN was largely debunked by the California state attorney general's office.

The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky initially criticized the NPR fundraising chief, writing in a blog post that Schiller’s comments smacked of “liberal condescension.” After the Blaze’s post he backtracked, writing that, given O’Keefe’s reputation for distortion, he should have been more skeptical:

I wouldn't say the fuller, unedited video completely and totally exonerates Schiller. He still says several things a representative of a straight news outfit should not say to people he doesn't know. And after all, he didn't bother to fight for his job, or even his new job at the Aspen Institute, which evidently fell apart last week.

However, it can be true that Schiller spoke somewhat out of school and that O'Keefe's doctoring of the tape was completely corrupt and unethical.

Reach Ryan Faughnder here.



 

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