About eight minutes into the gotcha video that sunk Ron Schiller, NPR’s director of development—and torpedoed his boss, Vivian Schiller, who waited too long to make “no relation” part of her legal name—I began to wonder: Is it really possible that the chief fundraiser for the producer of “All Things Considered” had never heard anyone say “National Palestinian Radio” before? NPR’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a major magnet for reader mail and Topic A for its ombudsman; perceptions of bias have had financial consequences. In 2002, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America led a boycott that cost the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR at least two big underwriters and a million dollars, according to the trade magazine Current. Ron Schiller and his colleague Betsy Liley must have been faking a hearty laugh when “Ibrahim Kasaam” of the “Muslim Education Action Center Trust” said he jokingly called their employer “National Palestinian Radio”; if not, I would question their fitness for their NPR jobs in the first place.

From the very beginning of this “Ali G” knockoff, you know that the makers are looking at NPR from a right-wing perspective. In fact, the establishing shot literally shows the NPR building from the right, where a sign by an adjacent lot says, "Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” thereby lumping public radio in with a more recent conservative bugaboo: the stimulus plan. On the other hand, there are times, during his lunch with the two ersatz Muslim donors, when Ron Schiller’s patter betrays a political mushiness that one encounters on the coasts and in college towns, a partly informed progressivism that makes me want to hide my head under the nearest tote bag.

The elision of public radio and the stimulus is evidence of the right-wing misperception of NPR. But many of its most devoted listeners aren’t clear on what NPR is, either. NPR is the biggest producer of the shows that air on member stations, but it is not synonymous with public radio. Shows that have cemented some of the strongest emotional attachments to public radio aren’t NPR shows: “Prairie Home Companion” is produced by American Public Media, and Public Radio International distributes “This American Life.” Nor does NPR have a lock on news; APM also does the business-news show “Marketplace.”

There are times when NPR, the producer of public-radio shows, and the hundreds of member stations that air many of those shows, benefit from this confusion. This is not one of those times. CUNY journalism professor and new-media pundit Jeff Jarvis—who, like Ron Schiller and others, thinks NPR should get away from federal funding, and who makes a persuasive argument against the NPR board’s firing of Vivian Schiller—gets to the heart of the matter:

Look at the NPR board. It is comprised mostly of local stations. That made sense when the stations distributed NPR programming and paid for it. But today, NPR the network does not need the stations when it can distribute online, which is how radio will be distributed more and more. The stations that don’t add real value in their markets—such as WNYC does in mine—are screwed as their value as distributors diminishes. The stations’ audiences are going to shrink and with that their revenue. Most of them have no real local presence other than their towers. The stations also depend heavily—more than NPR does—on government support, so they cannot easily give it up and buy their independence…. Bottom line: The stations’ interests and NPR’s interests are no longer aligned. That has been the case for some years. It is the elephant in the studio.

Forty years ago, when National Public Radio was founded, listeners had no other option than AM and FM, just as newspaper readers could not go beyond their local broadsheet. Technology has changed that. When I listen to public radio these days, it is through podcasts downloaded from iTunes or the excellent NPR mobile app. The structure of the system that we call public radio needs to catch up with today’s technological and media landscape, and public funding may be an obstacle.

The focus of many conversations has been on how to free NPR of federal funding, so it can avoid this kind of circus in the future. But to serve the public, a news organization must be insulated from the will of its donors—individuals, foundations, corporations. Seeing this video of Ron Schiller disturbs me, but maybe not as much as imagining other meals with other prospective donors. What do they think they’re getting for their contributions?