On the day NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller lost her job, I was reporting from Egypt. That evening, I had dinner with employees from NPR's Cairo bureau. I wasn't eager to talk shop, but I didn't have to. The conversation barely touched on news from home.

Instead we spoke of Egypt's revolution. And we talked over the logistics of supplying our colleagues in nearby Libya with body armor.

When I had time to think about it, I noticed a contrast between the news that NPR reports from the Arab world and the news NPR has lately made at home. Each news story revealed the values of the people reporting it.

Here the story was reality TV. A video editor created a faux organization, set up a meeting, and secretly recorded the bone-headed remarks of an NPR executive. The editor, activist James O'Keefe, spliced together clips to suggest that NPR was prepared to take money from an Islamist group allegedly founded by members of the "Muslim Brotherhood in America."

Emails show that NPR refused the money, and the conservative website The Blaze discovered that the executive's remarks were repeatedly lifted out of context. Nevertheless, the executive and his CEO were dismissed.