Today, Vivian Schiller resigned as chief executive officer of National Public Radio. “I’m told by sources that she was forced out,” NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, has reported. Her sudden departure marks an abrupt end to a long-winding climb up the corporate ladder.
In 1983, Schiller graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Soviet Studies. Two years later, she earned a master’s degree in Russian at Middlebury College. Her first journalism gig was translating Russian in the former Soviet Union for Turner Broadcasting. For ten years, she served as Turner’s vice president of development, producing many award-winning documentaries, such as Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream.
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The climb continued: Between 1998 and 2002, she served as executive vice president of CNN Productions, where she helped launch People in the News and CNN Presents. Afterward, she worked as senior vice president and general manager at the Discovery Times Channel for four years. From May 2006 to December 2008, Schiller was senior vice president and general manager of the New York Times’ website. Finally, in January 2009, Schiller took the helm at NPR.
Once she sat atop the corporate pyramid, however, Schiller began to feel tremors below. Last October, she bungled NPR’s firing of longtime analyst Juan Williams. The Fox News contributor got the boot after he admitted on The O’Reilly Factor, “When I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Although many observers viewed NPR’s actions askance — how exactly did Williams’s comment compromise his analysis? — Schiller ridiculed his protests, saying that he should have kept his misgivings about Muslims between himself and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.” The wisecrack provoked howls of outrage. Schiller later apologized “to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark.” But her original comment sealed her in many people’s minds as a liberal media titan.
And now the titan has fallen. When news broke that a former NPR executive had bashed the Republican party as racist, Schiller quickly headed for the door. Joyce Slocum, a senior executive, has assumed the role of interim CEO. David Edwards, chairman of the board, has said the board accepted Schiller’s resignation “with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years.”
But what did Schiller do over the last two years except besmirch NPR’s reputation and bring it to the brink of losing its federal funding?
— Brian Bolduc is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute.
Good Riddance - What she did to Mr. Williams was without excuse, especially in light of the ugly remarks made by most of that liberal crew on a daily basis. Hope they lose their federal funding, hope they go down, down, down.
The cautionary tale here is one not of politics or opinion. The tale is about arrogance, and one that every CEO or business boss should read and learn from. That she had the opinions she had about Juan Williams and other things is, relatively-speaking, irrelevant. That she didn't have a "safety valve" in her head that said "Hey, think it, but don't say it." is the interesting and, in her case, tragic part.
Corporate leaders--whether CEO's of public broadcasting companies or the board members who will now seek a replacement for her--have a fiduciary duty to their ownership. The fact that the public-funded PBS/NPR complex holds a huge part of its "ownership" in contempt is, of course, the problem there, but not realizing that your big mouth can make your owners lose money and potential is something every leader should take this "crash" as a crash-course in, for their own career survival's sake and for their enterprises'.
I take the backseat to nobody in thinking this woman is a leftist elitist who shouldn't be in charge of anything my tax dollars go to, but she's not that unique among "bosses" who mistake the role for that of king or queen. Hubris and the hazards of it is an ancient curse. It seems, however, that the lesson is one that still goes unlearned in a lot of board rooms and penthouses--made doubly dangerous when you are NOT accountable to customers, shareholders, or a boss any more enlightened than you are.
If they hadn't given Juan the ham-handed boot, wouldn't they have insisted that he go into rehab to keep his job? This is what they do when anyone makes an "insensitive" remark about one of their protected classes, isn't it? So if they're so "appalled" by all this bigotry on their staff, shouldn't they be sending everyone into diversity training?
NPR has been intellectually corrupt for decades; but the housecleaning needs to start at the top.
And yes, there is no place for government-supported media. Well, at least not in a free democracy. Government-supported media are necessary to run any effective totalitarian state!
First, why didn't anyone at NPR bother to investigate Amir Malik, Ibrahim Kasaam, and the Muslim Education Action Center before that NPR luncheon took place? Surely they are aware there are "sting" operations on the Right who love to do this type of "Gotcha!" Was it laziness or just plain stupidity?
Second, I was initially surprised that she managed to advance to the head of NPR in a relatively short timespan. Then I looked at her employers prior to NPR. I am no longer surprised.
NPR like or not often covers stories which the big for-profit networks cannot or will not cover. NPR is the ready illegal alien here to do our media dirty work or at least the work that doesnt translate into high viewer ratings and higher ad revenue.
That being said, this lady is and was tone deaf. Firing your only black commentator RIGHT BEFORE an election? It's the journalistic equiv of invading Russia at the start of winter.
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