George Will on Sunday's "This Week" said what likely has been on the minds of right-thinking Americans for many decades.
"NPR is run by people who don't like people like me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JAKE TAPPER, HOST: Cokie, you've been at NPR for almost 40 years. Obviously this institution means a lot to you, but why should we care?
COKIE ROBERTS: Look, I should just say that they did then reject that money, and sent internal e-mails basically saying this is totally unacceptable. We have to have tax forms, all of that. So, that should be stated. But, look, we should care because 34 million people listen every week and want to get the news that you get there, that you can't get any place else. NPR’s got seventeen foreign bureaus. That's something you can't say for any other broadcast organization these days. And brings you terrific information, day in and day out, week in and week out. And the reporters who are there on the line, being shot at in North Africa at the moment are being very badly served by the management that’s now gone.
TAPPER: George, very quickly.
ROBERTS: Well, there are not 14,000 radio stations in rural areas, which is where most of the federal funding goes. Most of those stations are the ones that, NPR gets hardly any money from the federal government, and the big stations get hardly any money. But the little, tiny, rural stations that, where there’s nothing else on the air, get a lot of money and they would go dark.
I love the fact that Roberts and all the NPR-lovers in the media have the same talking point that in the year 2011, despite the existence of cable, satellites, and the internet, people in rural areas would be totally uninformed without this radio network.
It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
