Perhaps after consulting with state-sponsored lawyers, Schiller reconsidered her smear. The NPR website released a hasty statement after her public trashing of Williams was reported: “I spoke hastily and I apologize to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark.”

NPR accused Williams of undermining its credibility. But vindictive Vivian Schiller and her colleagues have undermined state-sponsored radio’s credibility for years with impunity—from NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg publicly wishing for the late GOP Sen. Jesse Helms to die a painful AIDS-induced death to NPR affiliate employee Sarah Spitz pining for radio talk show giant Rush Limbaugh’s death on a journalists e-mail list.

Thomas Jefferson famously opined: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” NPR and PBS have no problem raising money from corporations and left-wing philanthropists, including billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Institute just gave $1.8 million to pay for at least 100 journalists at NPR member radio stations in all 50 states over the next three years.

Not one more red cent of public money should go to NPR, PBS and CPB. Let the speech-squelching progressives and jihadi-whitewashing apologists pay for their own propaganda. Free the taxpayers!

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.