As reported here at Big Journalism on Tuesday, NPR made seriously conflicting statements when attempting to perform damage control in the wake of the undercover video report released by Project Veritas. NPR insisted that they had “repeatedly refused” a $5 million donation from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC). Remember that MEAC had been represented to Ron Schiller (NPR’s former VP of Development) and Betsey Liley (Senior Director for Institutional Giving) as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and their website said they were dedicated to the spread of Shariah worldwide.
While taking great pains to isolate Mr Schiller (who had already tendered his resignation to the publicly-funded broadcaster) NPR also suggested to the American public that they had no intention of accepting the proposed donation from MEAC and had, in fact, “repeatedly refused” the donation. Only later in the day did NPR reveal that they had been vetting the group as recently as last week with hopes of obtaining their 501(c)(3) credentials. We continue to ask: Why vet a group you have repeatedly refused to take money from?
What we are witnessing is NPR’s ‘Modified Limited Hangout’ made famous by the engineers of the Watergate cover-up. NPR is attempting to admit guilt and beg forgiveness for the lesser “crime” of making intolerant remarks about conservatives and supporters of Israel as a means to misdirect from the much larger and odious crime of being willing to accept blood money from a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
These two conflicting accounts could very well have paved the way for CEO Vivian Schiller’s ouster as her forced resignation was announced twelve hours after our article exposing the contradiction. Now, with today’s video showing an active engagement from the NPR development team with the journalists posing as Shariah advocates and “All Things Considered” aficionados, NPR’s attempt at deception is clear for all tax payers to see.
MEAC: “It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?”
Liley: “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous. I can inquire about that.”
And in a subsequent e-mail from Liley to MEAC, Liley wrote that she’s “awaiting a draft of a gift agreement from our legal counsel and will share it when I have it.” That sure is a funny way of “repeatedly refusing” a donation.
Clearly, the lipstick-on-a-pig attempt to recover NPR’s lost credibility by firing the two Schiller’s is insufficient. Congressional oversight is required to fully investigate NPR’s attempt to deceive the same tax-payers they claim to rely on for their very existence.