Bozell on Kroc's Gift to NPR

Bozell on Kroc's Gift to NPR

Bozell's News Column -- 11/04/2003 -- ABC’s Empty Assault on Jesus -- Media Research Center

In short, Joan Kroc was a Mommy Peacebucks. Her massive favoritism toward NPR leads to the inescapable conclusion that she felt that putting her money on "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and "Talk of the Nation" was in line with the rest of her political giving. It was, she hoped, just another effective avenue for defunding the Pentagon and lobbying against American military action of any kind.

So what does this say about NPR?

Let’s leave our senses for a minute and enter a strange alternative universe. Imagine that the generous conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife left one tenth Kroc’s amount to NPR in his estate. You know exactly what would happen, from coast to coast. The political left would rush to the rooftops to proclaim, in a panic, that NPR was being dangerously compromised, politicized, dragged to a right-wing extreme. Everywhere, there would be a call for NPR to honor its commitment to objective journalism by returning that gift.

So where are they now with Kroc? Most reporters are not just comfortable with this cozy leftist arrangement, they’re awed by it all. The Washington Post published (without giggles or groans) a Kroc spokesman insisting "She loved NPR and its unfiltered presentation of the news....It wasn't liberal and it wasn't conservative. It was as objective as you're going to find."

Let’s be clear about something here. NPR didn’t need that money. They report their annual budget is $100 million a year from public and private sources, more than enough for even lazy liberals to run a radio network. So it begs the questions: in an age of roaring budget deficits, shouldn’t we be reducing the federal outlay to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by an equivalent$200 million? By $100 million? By $10 million? Dream on.