National Public Radio

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ever wonder where National Public Radio gets their money? I happened on the NPR Annual Report for 2008, which must have changed by now but it shows the structure of Sponsors, Donors, Corporate/ Institutional donors, and the Joan Croc Society. Joan Croc left NPR $200 million in her will, and I suspect the society are people who bequeathed.

[fargon]

And me.

[Spexxvet]

This morning something was sponsored/underwritten/whatever by Koch Industries.

[glatt]

I wondered what the financial relationship with local stations is, so I spent a little time Googling it.

My local station is WAMU. It's apparently now the top NPR station in the country and is the top news station, even among commercial stations, in the DC area.

It pays 16% of its income to American University, its hosting organization. This is apparently an unusual arrangement. Most hosting universities pay the radio station, not the other way around. It also pays an undisclosed amount to the national NPR organization. I wonder why the chart in the first post doesn't show payments from affiliate stations to the NPR organization? It's a significant income stream for NPR. About 40% of WAMU's income comes from corporate donations, and it rewards those corporations with 15 second informational segments (but understand, these are not commercials.) Most of the rest comes from individual donors, like my wife.

Updated information is hard to come by, but I found a 2013 annual report. WAMU had a decent reserve of money, but then spent it all when it built a new building. It's possible that by building the new building, they will no longer have to pay 16% to American University.

WAMU used to play bluegrass in the afternoons, but decided to shift to all news. News is expensive. They had to hire a bunch of people. But it payed off. Turns out, Washingtonians don't much like bluegrass and do like news. They are now very popular but are barely keeping ahead of their expenses, especially with building a new broadcasting center.

[footfootfoot]

I remember hearing a caller call into some NPR program, maybe Fresh Air? and the guy began by questioning the objectivity or neutrality (I don't recall his exact words) of NPR being that Kevin Klose was (at the time) the President of NPR, and the former director of all major worldwide US government propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti.

The host instantly shut him down in mid sentence, during what was supposed to be a call in show discussing bias in the media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Klose

Originally Posted by wikipedia link

From 1994 to 1997, he served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), overseeing its relocation from Munich to Prague.

In 1997–98, he directed the International Broadcasting Bureau at the U.S. Information Agency.

From 1998 to September 2008 Klose was president of the National Public Radio (NPR), the United States' largest nonprofit radio outlet for news and cultural programming. He served in this position beginning in December 1998, and also served as the organization's chief executive officer from 1998 to 1999.[2][3] He was also a member of NPR's corporate board of directors, and a Trustee of the NPR Foundation.[4] In 2008 he was named President Emeritus.

Some criticized the choice of Klose to be the head of NPR because he "used to be the director of all major worldwide US government propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti."[5]

...

On January 25, 2013 the Broadcasting Board of Governors announced that Klose would be the Acting President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Acting in its capacity as RFE/RL's corporate board of directors, the Board voted unanimously to ask Klose to take on the position for up to one year, starting January 26, 2013...

Footnote [5] on the wiki page is a dead link but the wayback machine has a snapshot of the page here:

The situation is no better at National Public Radio (NPR) that long ago abandoned the public trust it was sworn to uphold when it was founded in 1970 as in independent, private, non-profit member organization of public radio stations in the country. It's as tainted and corrupted as its television counterpart and now also gets a substantial proportion of its funding from corporate donors demanding influence, like the kind a $225 million behest can buy. That's the amount gotten from the estate of the late Joan Kroc, widow of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's Corporation that never needs to worry about an unfriendly report on NPR's airwaves no matter how egregious its behavior, and there's plenty of it to reveal that stays suppressed in all the major media including on NPR, the "peoples' radio."

Despite its mandate to be unbiased and serve the public interest, NPR steers clear of that in its one-sided kind of "journalism." It's careful to shy away from all controversial topics that may be sensitive to corporate interests that include those providing it funding support or might wish to like Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto and Walmart that already do. It's also "respectful" of whichever party is in power with Republican administrations getting special deference as they were from 1994 until the Democrats took control of the Congress in the November, 2006 mid-term elections. Even George Bush's most extreme transgressions can't get NPR's ire up enough to report accurately on them.

That's made even clearer when it's known what kind of man it has in charge - current president and CEO Kevin Klose. Like the CPB during the Tomlinson tenure, so too is NPR run by a man who used to be the director of all major worldwide US government propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. And like Tomlinson, it made him an ideal choice for a comparable job at NPR, the "peoples' radio," that like the "peoples' television" and its flagship Lehrer News Hour, never met a US-instigated war it didn't love, support and report endless supportive propaganda about while suppressing all news unfriendly to the US empire and its business interests.

So far as its known, however, Mr. Klose hasn't been accused of the kinds of activities attributed to his former CPB counterpart, staying free from the taint that forced Mr. Tomlinson to resign. That aside, it's had no positive impact on NPR's programming that's just as committed as PBS to serving the interests of wealth and power feeding it while ignoring the public trust despite the considerable funding it gets from that source from frequent on-air fund-raising efforts it has no right or justification asking for.

Kevin Klose, NPR head, CIA creep, on Dianne Rehm tomorrow

“In a move roughly akin to the ACLU hiring a CIA director for its president, National Public Radio named the czar of American broadcast agitprop as its CEO. Kevin Klose has been director of the US International Broadcasting Bureau, which runs or coordinates all major American broadcast propaganda, including the Voice of America and Radio Marti. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia operate under the oversight of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the same body that supervises IBB. Kevin Klose was president of Radio FreeEurope/Radio Liberty from 1992 to 1997. Prior to that, he worked for many years for the Washington Post.

The choice raises new questions about the independence from government influence of the public radio network, which is already tied by purse-strings to Washington and has shown considerable deference to the White House in its coverage of the Clinton scandals.

This is not the first time American media and propaganda have been seamlessly joined. In 1976, the president of the CIA-connected Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was former CBS president Sig Mickelson. Ironically, one of the few journalists who raised questions about the relationship of the media and the CIA–to the detriment of his career at CBS–was Daniel Schorr, now at NPR. Carl Bernstein, in a contemporary article in “Rolling Stone, “estimated that 400 American journalists had been tied to the CIA at one point or another, including such well-known media figures as the Alsop brothers, C.L. Sulzberger of the”New York Times,” and Philip Graham of the “Washington Post.” Later the “New York Times” reported that the CIA had owned or subsidized more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, and periodicals, mostly overseas. …

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104×3925195

One odd thing I heard on NPR one morning at about 2:00am was a one line 'story' in Dec of 2001 stating that Bush had revoked the 'Contractor Responsibility Rule' that he had suspended in March of the same year. It was strange to me that over the next few weeks there was no other mention of that story on NPR.

The "contractor responsibility rule" revoked by President Bush required officials to review a company's recent history of violating federal laws before awarding federal contracts. To determine which contractors have the worst records in two significant areas covered by the rule -- the environment and workplace safety --
Mother Jones compared a list of the 200 corporations that did the most business with the federal government between 1995 and 2000 with federal data on companies cited for major environmental or workplace safety violations. Of the 200 corporations reviewed, the following 67 were found to have records of breaking environmental laws, workplace safety rules, or both.

You'll note that defense contractors make up the top of the list. IF you were planning to invade a country and start a war, and IF you wanted to streamline the whole process and avoid anyone having justification to ask questions, then you might want to let the hammer fall by degrees and first suspend the rule several months before you revoke it all together.

https://web.archive.org/web/20031230...ntractors.html