March 8, 2011 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Vivian Schiller, the chief executive of NPR, today resigned following the release of an embarrassing video of a former top NPR fund raiser.
Her resignation was announced in a statement by NPR’s board.
NPR, already on the defensive over Congressional efforts to end federal spending on public broadcasting, must now deal with the fallout from the undercover video that shows one of its top fund raisers calling the Tea Party racist and xenophobic and saying NPR would be better off without government money.
The video shows Ronald Schiller, NPR’s senior vice president for development (no relation to Vivian Schiller), meeting with two people from a fictitious Muslim education group who tell him they want to donate $5-million to NPR, partly because they are concerned about Republican efforts to pull federal funding to public media.
Mr. Schiller, who had already announced plans to leave NPR in May, resigned effective immediately on Tuesday night.
The video set-up was orchestrated by James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who was also behind undercover videos that damaged the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn.
In the video, Mr. Schiller, who was set to leave NPR to take a new job as director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program, in Colorado, tells the potential donors that the Republican Party has been “hijacked” by the small-government Tea Party, which he calls “seriously racist, racist people.” He adds that he personally believes a “significant part of the Republican Party” is anti-intellectual.
He also says NPR “would be better off in the long run without federal funding.”
Betsy Liley, director of NPR institutional giving, was also at the meeting.
NPR immediately condemned Mr. Schiller’s comments in a written statement by Dana Davis Rehm, a senior vice president: “The comments contained in the video released today are contrary to everything we stand for, and we completely disavow the views expressed.”
In a separate statement, Ms. Rehm said that the “fraudulent” Muslim group in the video “repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5-million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to do.”
Before Mr. Schiller resigned, NPR said it had placed him on administrative leave. Mr. Schiller later issued a statement of apology, saying he had made comments “counter to NPR’s values and also not reflective of my own beliefs.”
Some Republicans have seized the opportunity to renew their call for an end to federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to public radio and television broadcasters.
The Republican-led House approved legislation last month to zero out that spending starting in 2013 (money is allocated two years in advance because some programs take a long time to produce and to insulate public broadcasting from political meddling).
“This video clearly highlights the fact that public broadcasting doesn’t need taxpayer funding to thrive, and I hope that admission will lead to a bipartisan consensus to end these unnecessary federal subsidies,” Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, said in a statement.
NPR itself gets only 2 percent of its revenue from Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants.
However, public radio stations overall rely on the grants for about 10 percent of their income. In a speech at the National Press Club on Monday, Ms. Schiller, called that money “a critical cornerstone of public media,” especially for stations in rural areas.
“Their government funding is a larger share of revenue—30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent or more,” she said. “These are areas where listeners may have no other access to free over-the-air news and information.”
NPR was No. 285 on The Chronicle’s 2010 Philanthropy 400 ranking of organizations that raise the most money through private sources. NPR raised nearly $64.8-million during its 2009 fiscal year (Chronicle subscribers can view NPR’s fund-raising history here).
For its part, the Aspen Institute is likely weighing just how much harm the video could have on its potential donor and participant base, said Dan Keeney, a communications consultant in Dallas.
“There is a significant downside here if they intend to raise money from conservative circles,” Mr. Keeney said.
The Aspen Institute has not yet commented on the video, and calls and e-mails from The Chronicle have not been returned. Waiting to respond may also be a good tactic, said Matthew Seeger, a professor at Wayne State University, in Detroit, and the author of six books on crisis communications.
“In general the public is relatively forgiving,” Mr. Seeger said. “The Aspen Institute is a secondary player in this event; it’s important for them to see what [Mr. Schiller’s] response is, because that will determine whether or not they will support him. They don’t want to commit until they see what other kinds of circumstances are going to be playing out.”
Mr. Seeger said Aspen should issue what he calls a “value-based statement” that describes the Institute’s values and how the comments made in the video relate to those values.
“I recommend that organizations always think about what their core values are before making a response to these kinds of issues,” he said.
On RealAspen, a community-information site that posted an article about the NPR controversy, comments have ranged from supportive to antagonistic.
“I hope your new director of the arts program learns some discretion before taking on his new job,” wrote one commenter.
Another reader congratulated Aspen’s pick: “Having just watched the scam video where two liars were purporting to be from the Muslim Brotherhood offering money to NPR, I would say that Aspen is getting a man with a balanced viewpoint, unlike most of the media in the U.S.”
