And thus the MSM goes into Nixonian Stonewall Mode

“A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement,” the Daily Caller reports:

A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

“The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, the head of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, who last week announced his departure for the Aspen Institute.

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give up to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey explores the fundraising angle of the video:

Maybe I’m getting inured to this kind of thing, but for me the big screaming headline from the latest James O’Keefe undercover video isn’t that high-ranking NPR executive Ron Schiller bashes conservatives, Republicans, and the Tea Party as “white, gun-toting … xenophobic … seriously racist people.” The big news for me comes when Schiller, who thinks he’s meeting with representatives from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) to discuss a $5 million donation to NPR to help MEAC “spread Sharia worldwide,” that NPR would do better without federal funding. Just before this, Schiller tells the two undercover reporters that federal funding only accounts for 10% of their direct funding, but a sudden end to subsidies for public broadcasting would close a number of their stations, which gives a little more clearer explanation of their financial dependence on taxpayers.

Eric Cantor is more than willing to give Schiller what he’s wishing for:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, ripped National Public Radio (NPR) on Tuesday after NPR foundation’s nonprofit president Ron Schiller was caught on video saying the radio network and most of its member stations would survive without federal funding.

“As we continue to identify ways to cut spending and save valuable resources, this disturbing video makes clear that taxpayer dollars should no longer be appropriated to NPR,” Cantor said in an e-mail to TheDC. “Not only have top public broadcasting executives finally admitted that they do not need taxpayer dollars to survive, it is also clear that without federal funds, public broadcasting stations self-admittedly would become eligible for more private dollars on top of the multi-million dollar donations these organizations already receive.”

The NPR and public broadcasting defunding debate has heated up as of late, and the new video conservative activist James O’Keefe released emboldens their cause. Congressman Doug Lamborn, Colorado Republican, told TheDC “it’s amazing, the attitude that these guys have,” and their “arrogance and condescension” is “just amazing.”

Lamborn went on to say that he thinks this might be the end of the debate on federal funding for public broadcasting.

“Well, I sure hope so [that the debate ends now],” Lamborn said in a phone interview. “If they, themselves, admit that they’d be better off without federal funding, there’s no further defenses for them to throw out. Remove them from the federal budget and be done with it.”

While past MSM performance is no guarantee of future results, Christian Toto’s prediction at the Tatler as to how this will play out in the short-term seems pretty self-evident. Here’s a hint. If you’re reading about this in the Blogosphere, the MSM will do everything they can to bottle up this coverage and ensure that you’re in the minority, just as they did with O’Keefe’s previous sting against ACORN and the recent conservative stings against Planned Parenthood, and as they tried to do initially when Dan Rather was caught cooking the books:

When a liberal blogger prank called Wisc. Gov. Scott Walker it quickly made news across the MSM even though the governor didn’t say anything politically damaging. Will the same happen here?

Not likely. The story will probably play out this way. First, the MSM will try to ignore it. Then, a few outlets will begrudgingly air or post it, but with all sorts of labels attached to O’Keefe. The words “edited” or “highly edited” will appear regarding the video, and then the infamous Shirley Sherrod story will be brought up even though there’s no direct connection between the two.

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post-owned Slate is already swinging into action on damage control: