Speaker 1:
Yesterday, Taxpayer Supported National Public Radio was scheduled to start running commentaries by a convicted killer on death row. The commentator was to be Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of the cold-blooded murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Taxpayer-subsidized NPR was to pay Abu-Jamal, the founder and former information minister of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panthers, $150 per commentary. National Public Radio argued that the Abu-Jamal commentaries would bring a “unique perspective” to public radio’s coverage of crime and punishment.
That one-sided “unique perspective” argument offered little comfort to the law enforcement community, the victims of crime or the American taxpayer pumping money into the public broadcasting system. Officer Michael Lutz, president of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, argued, and I quote, “I was under the impression he was supposed to be punished. This man is a cold-blooded killer whose appeals went to the highest court in the land, and he’s getting a radio show out of the deal. It’s not fair to the family of the slain officer.”
I’m all for diversity on the airways, but those commentaries would have sent the wrong message at the wrong time. The last time I checked, we were trying to fight crime, not subsidize it, or promote the fortunes of convicted murderers through taxpayer-supported public broadcasting. After the justifiable public uproar about NPR’s unique commentaries plan, the taxpayer-subsidized radio network did the right thing and canceled the death row commentaries. In announcing the about-face, NPR managing editor Bruce Drake conceded “serious misgivings” about the appropriateness of commentaries, admitting, “We had not arranged for other commentaries or coverage on the subject of crime, violence, and punishment that provided context or contrasting points of view.”
It seems to me that the Congress has a great deal of responsibility when it comes to taking taxpayers’ money from the state of Kansas, the state of West Virginia, or anywhere else, and even thinking about putting it into some program where somebody on death row, some convicted cop killer, would be profiting from his commentaries. I didn’t believe it when I first read it, but I confirmed it. It was true, and I’m pleased that the program was canceled, but I think we need to be on the alert because those who probably thought up this idea would probably be thinking up some others that could be just as harmful and just as bad.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
