First, Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a feature highlighting National Public Radio’s comfortable new headquarters, which lie virtually within the shadow of the U.S. Capitol.

Second, two Post readers sent letters to the editor that criticized an executive for the Washington, D.C.’s top-rated radio station — commercial news-talk outlet WTOP FM — for questioning NPR’s continued claim on taxpayers’ money, given the up-scale nature of the network’s building.

Then, Jim Farley, the WTOP executive in question, reasserted his point in a June 27 Post letter of his own:

“NPR just built a luxurious new headquarters that includes a café with chefs, a gym with a trainer, a staffed wellness center, plug-ins for electric cars and other perks. Does an organization that well-heeled still need taxpayer money?”

Farley’s complete letter follows:

Letter to the Editor

NPR doesn’t need taxpayer support
“Charles H. Ellis III and Brian Ecker [“Throwing stones at NPR’s building,” letters, June 25] missed the point I made in the June 22 [Post] Style article, “Broadcasting their discontent.” NPR just built a luxurious new headquarters that includes a cafe with chefs, a gym with a trainer, a staffed wellness center, plug-ins for electric cars and other perks. Does an organization that well-heeled still need taxpayer money?

NPR says it needed the new headquarters because it ran out of room in its old building. That’s because it is growing. It is a vibrant enterprise that can afford to do without taxpayer largesse. How much better for NPR’s independence as a news organization if it refused the King’s shilling? The construct that the organization has two piles of money, one to buy its dream home and another with federal dollars that fund operations, is so twisted it would get a small-business owner in big trouble with the IRS.

At a time when newspapers and other news organizations are practicing austerity, and all federal agencies are pinching pennies because of sequestration, it is fair to question the support our competitor, NPR, gets from the federal government.

Jim Farley, Washington
The writer is vice president of news and programming at WTOP.

Addendum — NPR Gets Tax Breaks Too

In a later article about the District of Columbia’s failure to provide promised low income housing (“In District, affordable-housing plan hasn’t delivered,” July 8), The Post referred to one neighborhood not far from the U.S. Capitol: “This spring, NPR moved in across the street. The city bestowed $40 million worth of tax abatements and froze property taxes for 20 years to keep the media organization in the city.”

“Supported by listeners like you,” is the oft-heard tag line for NPR broadcasts. To which perhaps should be added, “not to mention friends in high places and low-income residents of the District of Columbia waiting years for better housing they were told was on the way”?

The claim makes one’s jaw drop. Reviewing Spike Lee’s HBO television documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik wrote (“A Filmaker’s Fury,” Aug. 21, 2006):

“With violin and cello sounding a somber elegiac tone, the camera catalogs body after body — many bloated, discolored, or distorted — floating in the sewer-sickened water that covered parts of New Orleands after the storm [Hurricane Katrina]. Lee is visually comparing New Orleans to the Holocaust; sadly, a comparison can be made.”

No it can’t. The Holocaust encompassed a continent, not a just city or even a region. The Holocaust was history’s most egregious act of mass murder; Hurricane Katrina was an act of nature, perhaps made worse unintentionally by human decisions. The Holocaust was part — a seminal part — of World War II; Hurricane Katrina was a storm — a large one, but still a storm. The Holocaust was followed by, among other things, 40-plus years of political upheaval in Europe and creation of the United Nations. Hurricane Katrina was followed by a change in leadership of a government bureaucracy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and BY the re-election of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

It’s been nearly two generations since Federal Communications Commissioner Newton Minow described television as a “vast wasteland” and he was talking about a medium with only a handful of networks. It’s been observed since that the multiplication of networks and channels has fueled a virtually insatiable demand for “product,” for something, anything, to fill the ever-expanding airwaves. Perhaps Zurawik’s time in front of the tube has dulled his critical faculty. In any case, in the presence of what he describes as Lee’s ambitious work — “like a symphony … structured in grand movements” — he’s plainly lost his sense of proportion.

Readers go to The Washington Post “Style” section for entertainment. Nothing wrong with that — entertainment long has been a purpose of journalism, not far behind reporting news and providing information. But does “Style” uphold even minimum journalistic standards of accuracy, objectivity, context, comprehensiveness and balance?

It’s hard to tell, judging by the July 31 “Style,” which includes a front-of-section report from Tehran, “Acting With A Clear Conscience; For This Assassin, a Film Cameo and a Notable Hit,” by Post Foreign Service correspondent Karl Vick, and a book review, Mossad’s Man of the Hour,”by Patrick Anderson.
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