Right thing done for wrong reason? I agree. The ousting should have been done for professional reasons, not what she says off-the-air. It suggests that we can't rely upon professional ethics to police us and we need a scandal.

I hope it isn't quite that bad yet.

By the way, are you counting the seconds until Obama is gone? Why? This widget will do it for you!

Odd. My link didn't post. Here it is.

And if my link doesn't work, here's the URL.

http://www.obamacountdownwidget.com/

Thanks, Patrick!

Off topic - Amy, I hope you don't have to evacuate because of the tsunami! Let us know, okay? I heard it already hit Hawaii, and hit hard.

Huh? The fact that the comments were made off-the-air isn't really the key point: Ron Schiller made the comments not at a private party while in a meeting in his official capacity as President of the NPR Foundation and NPR Senior Vice President for Development.

Some of the most important aspects of a CEO's job have to do with organizational culture, and the recent incidents provide more information, as if more were needed, that Vivian Schiller has driven NPR's culture further in a direction that most Americans do not want it to go.

I am torn. On the one hand, people are free to hold their views, even strong views, and people often say in haste things they would, in more reflective moments, never agree to. So we should be careful to not judge a person solely on 50-60 words spoken off the cuff. Rather, you should judge based on the lifetime of actions and words, to get a more full picture. But all that applies to how we should form opinions of people in general.

Employers can fire you for whatever reason they want, and if you are a news organization trying to maintain some semblance of impartiality, having a guy connected to you who spews unsupportable, bigoted, hateful views of large segments of one side of the political divide harms that semblance. So he had to go, for appearance's sake.

I agree with David Foster. I think Heather McDonald is grasping at straws here.

These comments were made in an official meeting with "potential" donors. This was obviously a business meeting and not a private conversation at the family dinner table.
They were fired for the right reasons, but just not soon enough. It should have happened after the Juan Williams firing.

What David Foster said. This was not a private meeting; it was a meeting held in his capacity as NPR executive.

I don't care about his personal opinion of the Tea Party. It's not like anyone could reasonably believe that someone who works for NPR could favor a smaller-government agenda, after all. I think his much more important (and possibly much more damaging to NPR) comment was that NPR would be better off without taxpayer funding.

What David Foster said. This was not a private meeting; it was a meeting held in his capacity as NPR executive.

While I agree his remarks were unprofessional and things you just really shouldn't say at a business meeting, I would be more concerned if he were a journalist. He's not. He's a fundraiser. And, as such, he has no real influence on what NPR covers/how they cover it.

You know Amy LA is far more likey t get hit my a tsunmai generated by a local small quake precipitating an uderwater mudlside on the contenetal shelf then an 8 sized quake half a world away.

It biggest problem with localized tsunamis is that they usually are washing ashore before people have time to even realize there is a problem

And, as [a fundraiser], he has no real influence on what NPR covers/how they cover it.

Yes he does. The people and organizations from whom he solicits funds drive programming. If he chooses to solicit funding only from anti-Tea Party people and organizations, then the programming directors would jeopardize NPR's funding if they aired pro-Tea Party programming.

At least that's how it works when people argue that Fox News won't go after Rupert Murdoch or prominent conservatives. Or when they claim that because of advertising revenue, network news programs won't go after certain companies.

The real point is, why is NPR funded by tax dollars at all. It is not and has never been "non-biased". At least not in my lifetime

"Conservatives can easily prove liberal bias by analyzing the content of the programming."

Actually proving bias is extremely difficult. Be it Fox being biased Right or MSNBC biased Left, even though practically no one denies such biases. Measuring/proving bias or "isms" like racism is inherently difficult.
Attempts are made in proving bias, run into one main problem you need an "unbiased" to compare it to, which people who hold that same bias will attack where "unbiased" is.

"While I agree his remarks were unprofessional and things you just really shouldn't say at a business meeting, I would be more concerned if he were a journalist. He's not. He's a fundraiser."

If I made bigoted comments like that during a meeting with a business partner, I'd be fired in a New York minute. It doesn't matter what influence I do or don't have. David Foster had it absolutely right concerning Ron Schiller.

As far as Vivian Schiller goes, I suspect her firing was inevitable and was going to occur regardless of what she did or didn't say at the National Press Club. They've had two major own-goal PR screwups in the past six months, on her watch. The trustees clearly have no confidence in her leadership at this point.

The thing is that Ron Schiller had originally quit on his own to go to the Aspen Institute. He is now not going to take the job.

Vivian Schiller was canned for several reasons as outlined in the link. This is the same thing as any board of directors canning a CEO for any or no reason. It is a No Confidence vote based on facts or feelings.

The equivalent would be telling the Vikings they had to keep Brett Favre, even if he isn't convicted, just because he wasn't convicted. They have the right to protect the teams image.

But while I was googling for her for more info, I ran across that linked article. This statement boggles my mind:

We certainly know why they are after NPR and PBS. NPR is the best electronic news gathering organization in the country. Since the conservatives have achieved hegemony over commercial radio with the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and Savage, they must be aghast as the commercial radio audience diminishes and the public radio audience grows. There's only one possible solution to that: "Kill them."

I might need a new laptop after that. I almost puked on it. Does this guy have a clue?