NPR Fake-Donor Situation Not ‘a Harsh New Reality’

To the Editor:

I was troubled to read The Chronicle’s article “NPR’s Scandal Serves As a Cautionary Tale for Fund Raisers” (March 18) because it appears to accept as a to-be-expected commonplace event the unethical “set-up” and subsequent dishonest portrayal of Ron Schiller’s conversation with the fake “donors.” [Mr. Schiller resigned from NPR as senior vice president of development soon after a video of him meeting with alleged donors was released.] That perspective is simply wrong.

Full disclosure: I am a member of the Board of Trustees and a donor to the University of Chicago, so I worked with Mr. Schiller for several years.

But my concern is this: When a fund raiser is victimized through false pretenses followed by false reporting, that is not simply “a harsh new reality” that we should “expect” in today’s “shrill and divided state of political discourse,” as The Chronicle’s article states.
The article also says “fund raisers can expect more challenges of the sort Schiller faced.”

Really?

We should expect savaging of the sort Mr. Schiller got when trickery was followed by falsehoods? As a civil society, we’ve got to do better than that, and not only for the sake of fund raisers.

It is both unjust and unhelpful for The Chronicle to suggest that we should all expect more of the same chicanery and falsehood by fake “donors” in the future, and blame the fund raiser when it happens.

Emily Nicklin
Chicago

Ms. Nicklin is a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis International.

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To the Editor:

I have listened to a lot of the invective that has been thrown by people who are sure that they would have acted better in the same situation Ron Schiller faced.

I don’t know that the commentators truly know how they would react in that cushy restaurant chair.

I know I get nervous or angry sometimes and say things I don’t mean.

Sometimes things come out entirely differently from how I meant them. I have been known, when pressured, to agree with (or smile woodenly at) people who are in positions of power over me who I may not actually agree with to:

• Appease them.
• Shut them up.
• Move the conversation along to (please, God) any other topic.
• Represent my organization appropriately, even if it’s not my personal belief.
• Avoid an unnecessary fight.
• Maintain civilized discourse.

In prospect research, our code of ethics is crystal clear about lying.

According to the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement’s statement of ethics:

“Members shall be truthful with respect to their identities and purpose and the identity of their institutions during the course of their work.”

It’s more than just maintaining professional integrity, although that’s a pretty decent benefit.

The purpose is to protect our organizations’ reputations and help build strong and transparent relationships with donors. Besides, we don’t need to misrepresent. If we have to lie to get a piece of information, it’s probably not the kind of information we should hold in our files anyway. Does it help build a stronger relationship between our organization and the donor? If not, forget it.

But what if we’re pressured from our higher-ups to get the information anyway? What then? I have been in that situation.

Professional ethics are important to front-line fund raisers, too.

According to the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ ethical principles, members are required to “practice their profession with integrity, honesty, truthfulness, and adherence to the absolute obligation to safeguard the public trust.”

I find it hard to believe that in building relationships with donors, fund raisers don’t tell white lies sometimes. But clearly, AFP put both honesty and truthfulness in that one sentence to underscore that it’s a big deal.

I hope the rock-throwing is through. It has stalled at least two careers [those of Mr. Schiller and of Vivian Schiller, who resigned as CEO of NPR], and I wonder if it will ruin others.

I have worked with Mr. Schiller off and on for over 10 years as both a colleague and a consultant. I’ve never had cause to question his integrity. But as a human being, I’m guessing he errs—the way we all do sometimes.

Helen Brown

Watertown, Mass.

Ms. Brown runs a prospect-research consulting company that bears her name.

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To the Editor:

Ron Schiller went to NPR because of his belief in the importance of airing views that are drowned out by the relentless screech of for-profit media.

Because of his role at NPR, he was deliberately and personally targeted for an attack that violated the basic ethics of journalism and privacy. This is “gotcha” journalism at its worst.

Mr. Schiller met with a Muslim organization in the same spirit that any organization would meet with a Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Protestant group that was attempting to exercise philanthropy. His presumption was that they had a right to make a proposal to NPR about public education. This is a far cry from the horrific stereotypes being propagated around the country about Muslims.

Every time we see politically motivated video—especially when it was obtained secretly—we must ask about whether and how we are being manipulated.

Political-attack agents who use dishonest means to achieve unworthy ends must be rejected. We must fight back.

Bob Massie

Somerville, Mass.

Mr. Massie is campaigning to become the Democratic nominee in Massachusetts’s next U.S. Senate election.

‘Like yoking a Lexus to a Yugo’

To the Editor

It is time for America to separate the vital, thriving public-radio system from its moribund, financially troubled, and redundant stable mate, public television.

Vincent Stehle (“Public Broadcasting Cuts Send the Wrong Signal as Demand for News Rises,” March 10) is right to portray public radio as an important medium to inform, educate, and connect us locally, regionally, and nationally. The 300 national public-radio stations are enjoying a remarkable, and entirely justified, growth in listeners and support.

The 360 public-television stations, on the other hand, are hemorrhaging red ink (according to an internal memo from newly independent public-television station KCET in Los Angeles, 74 percent of all PBS member stations have been operating with a deficit for the past three years, and PBS itself is $250-million in debt), and viewership has been plummeting for years.

When the Carnegie Commission issued its report in 1967 that led to the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting System, it envisioned a public-television broadcaster that would inform and document educational and governmental activities to America without commercial pressures or control.

Curiously, what it envisioned, although it would take more than a decade to come to fruition, was C-SPAN. C-SPAN is a product of the cable industry and does not receive a penny of government money.

We need to be careful when we lump public radio and public television together and call them public broadcasting. That’s like yoking a Lexus to a Yugo and calling them transportation.

Jack Shakely

President Emeritus

California Community Foundation

Los Angeles

Jewish ‘flavor of the day’

To the Editor:

The opening line (“I barely remember Friday”) of the article “Jewish Charity Gambles on Young Donors in Vegas” (March 24) fills me with a great deal of disappointment and some degree of disgust.

At a time when federal, state, and local governments are taking an ax to critical human services like emergency food assistance and case workers for families in crisis, including thousands of Jewish families, one would think that 1,300 young people could volunteer with Jewish federation agencies—allowing for a huge impact and fostering great advocates to meet with government officials.

The five-day binge, including the search for the “flavor of the day” and seeking madness instead of meaning, was moderated by the occasional attempt to describe novice authors or moviemakers as “Jewish leaders.”

And although it is admirable that Mark Wilf and Jonathan Kraft volunteered their time, “the Jewish angle to owning an NFL team” does very little for a family whose income was cut in half during the recession.

It is wonderful that the Jewish federations want to “drop the elitist trappings” of ribbons, buttons, etc., but for a Jewish community known for its acts of charity and deeds of kindness, “the Jews party hard” is not the slogan to move us forward and to heal the suffering in our communities.

William E. Rapfogel

Chief Executive Officer

Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty

New York