Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., accused the NPR ombudsman of whitewashing the media outlet’s decision to take money from proponents of the Iran deal and interview those experts without disclosing it to listeners.
“It fails to answer any of the core questions regarding NPR’s role in acting as an agent of the White House during the debate regarding President Obama’s deal with the Ayatollah Khamenei,” Pompeo said in a statement late Friday.
Pompeo’s feud with NPR springs from revelations that the broadcast organization took financing from a group that lobbied for the Iran deal and then spoke with those experts but canceled an interview with the Kansas Republican. As one of the most vociferous opponents of the Iran agreement, Pompeo sees it as an example of the White House’s avowed plan to plant experts in the media in order to create an “echo chamber,” as one of Obama’s top national security advisers acknowledged.
The NPR ombudsman wrote that the disclosure of funding from a pro-Iran deal group was “minimal to the point of unhelpful” but emphasized that the reporters who covered the story didn’t know of the funding and brought a wealth of experience to their reporting. She acknowledged that NPR canceled an interview with Pompeo but argued that his viewpoint was well-represented because they subsequently spoke with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a high-profile Democrat who announced his opposition but emphasized that he couldn’t “force [his] colleagues to vote [his] way.”
That didn’t satisfy Pompeo. “This NPR whitewash report does not (a) explain why NPR chose to allow Ploughshares its microphone without acknowledging Ploughshares’ major role in funding NPR’s Iran reporting, (b) explain why NPR denied me, and others that shared my view, an opportunity to present a balancing viewpoint on that treacherous deal, or (c) remotely address the underlying ethical issues connected to NPR’s taxpayer financing and its willingness to serve the interests of one political party on the single most important foreign policy legacy of that party’s president,” he said.
NRP’s ombudsman said the outlet needs to be more careful about where it gets its funding.
“[I]n the case of grants such as the one from Ploughshares, which are intended to fund reporting on specific, highly controversial issues, my suggestion is that NPR consider not accepting them in the future if they contain such specific language,” she wrote. “No, the firewall was not breached in this case, but the damage that happened from perception is just too great a risk to NPR’s reputation.”
