NPR headquarters (Photo: NPR)
TPM:
After reviewing widely circulated claims that James O'Keefe misled viewers in his sting operation on NPR, a spokeswoman for the news organization condemned the "inappropriately edited" video yesterday. Nonetheless, NPR maintains that the executive caught on tape, Ron Schiller, still behaved inappropriately.
Of course, NPR's criticism of O'Keefe's video not only comes after they finally had a chance to review a "largely unedited" version of the video, but it comes after they fired their CEO. Now that they've discovered that the video initially released by O'Keefe badly distorted what actually happened through deceptive editing, it's hard to believe they'd do things the same way if they could do it all over again, but we'll never know, because even if they regret overreacting, they'll never admit it.
NPR should have known that O'Keefe was manipulating facts from the very moment he released his video based on the simple fact that he refused to release the unedited video at the same time. They should have been willing to stand up for their organization. As NPR host Ira Glass says:
As somebody who works in public radio, it is killing me that people on the right are going around trying to basically rebrand us, saying that it's biased news, it's left wing news, when I feel like anybody who listens to the shows knows that it's not. And we are not fighting back, we are not saying anything back. I find it completely annoying, and I don't understand it.
Glass is absolutely right. NPR should have fought back. The fact that they didn't left the impression that NPR as an organization felt O'Keefe's attack was valid, even though it wasn't. As a result, their response did more harm to NPR than O'Keefe's attack ever could have on its own.