Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR, has stepped down following a sting operation by conservative gadfly James O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s group, Veritas, secretly recorded a meeting between men pretending to work for a Muslim charity and NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian).
In the video, Ron Schiller slammed Tea Party activists: “Basically, they are, they believe in sort of white, Middle America, gun-toting, I mean, it’s pretty scary.”
And Schiller said perhaps the worst thing he could while Congress is debating whether to cut off funds for public broadcasting: “We would be better off in the long-run without federal funding.”
Vivian Schiller, who survived an earlier flap over the clumsy firing of commentator Juan Williams, has been leading the charge to protect government funding. But the comments of her fellow executive apparently proved too much, and the NPR board has accepted Vivian Schiller’s resignation.
