Alaska News

NPR exec videotaped ranting about tea party 'racists'

"Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people." That statement was caught on video and published at NPR.org Tuesday. It was made by none other than NPR (departing) vice president Ron Schiller, according to the Congressionally-subsidized news network that purports to provide news to more Americans than all the major broadcast news networks, combined. Schiller -- who NPR describes as "soon to be departing," was caught delivering his bias to a made-up activist group called the Muslim Educational Action Center Trust, according to the story. It gets worse: he also said NPR would be "better off" without federal funding, which is inconsistent with the network's official position, NPR was quick to point out. The scandal comes at a bad time: Congress has been debating whether to cut funding to NPR and the nation's thousands of local public radio news stations that are not for profit and seem to always be holding fundraisers. Recently, the move by Republicans to cut funding to NPR was the subject of "Talk of the Nation," one of the station's most popular programs. Read the full story.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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