NPR Chief Denies Liberal Bias
The Hill reports:
NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller defended taxpayer funding for public broadcasting Monday and challenged critics to find any evidence of liberal bias in NPR's coverage.
Schiller said the accusation that public broadcasting has a liberal bias is just a "perception problem" that doesn't accurately reflect NPR's journalism.
"We are urban and rural ... red state and blue state," she said.
But Schiller also said the effort to cut public media dollars is linked to concern about the deficit and not being driven by the perception that NPR has a liberal tilt.
"I believe this is driven mostly by an attempt to find cuts to the deficit, and that is certainly understandable," she said.
Schiller's speech at the National Press Club comes amid a Republican push to slash public media from the federal budget.
House and Senate Republicans are working to defund public media this year. Democrats have been vocal about defending public broadcasting, and President Obama did not make any cuts to public media in his fiscal year 2012 budget request.
Schiller said it is "right and necessary to" question all aspects of federal spending, but argued that if "public value" is the standard of scrutiny, then "pubic broadcasting stands strong."
She said taxpayer funding for public broadcasting has been an "investment" by the American people in journalism over the past 40 years.
Public media "should not fall victim to the turbulence of these times," she said.
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