Neocon take-over of National Public Radio

Once upon a time NPR (National Public Radio) was an alternative voice.

That voice was discarded during the Bush administration when Republican fundraiser Gay Hart Gaines was appointed by George W. Bush as vice chair for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cheryl Feldman Halpern was appointed chair of the Corporation by Dubya, and Elizabeth Sembler was appointed by Dubya to the board of the corporation.

These women are certainly not liberals:
Gaines is affiliated with right-wing and neoconservative organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute. According to Common Cause, Gaines was “an ardent fundraiser for Newt Gingrich.”

Halpern is a Republican donor and a critic of NPR. Halpern has accused NPR of anti-Israel bias and said that public broadcasting journalists should be penalized for biased programs. Biased programs are those that don’t fit Republican and AIPAC agendas. Halpern is a board member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spin-off organization from AIPAC tasked with focusing primarily on influencing the US executive branch, while AIPAC focuses on Congress.

Sembler is director of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Day School in Clearwater, Florida.

The Republican takeover was completed by an infusion of corporate money into NPR. Today the station has as many advertisements for corporate donors as a commercial station. It still pretends to be financed by listeners, but NPR is now part of the corporate media.

[Excerpts of an article by Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration]