In an interview with the left-wing International Women’s Media Foundation (IWFM), former National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Vivian Schiller announced she will return to journalism one day.
“I’m not done,” Schiller said. “I certainly plan to stay in journalism – I feel too passionate about it. I will be back in some position at some point.”
NPR fired Schiller after conservative James O’Keefe’s video sting – in which NPR’s nonprofit foundation president Ron Schiller (no relation), who was also fired, and NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, were caught on camera bashing conservatives, saying Jews “obviously” control America’s newspapers and that NPR would be “better off” in the long run without taxpayer subsidies.
The IWFM interview is Schiller’s first since NPR showed her the door – and it focused on what it was like for a woman to run NPR. She said she didn’t think it was any different for her being CEO as a woman than for any man who could have filled the spot.
“I was the first woman CEO of NPR and we went through a series of four or five extremely difficult months,” Schiller said. “It was very stressful and there was a tremendous amount of pressure on me. I would not go so far as to say I felt like there was more pressure on me or more criticism or more attention because I was a woman.”
She said she did, however, “feel a responsibility to stay strong,” because she didn’t want to appear as any of the “caricatures of what a woman under pressure might be like.”
WATCH: Former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller talks to left-wing International Women’s Media Foundation: