Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Responding to a report that NPR was closer to accepting a $5 million donation from a phony Muslim group than previously acknowledged, NPR released e-mails to TPM backing up their claim that they had refused the money. 
  
 In their initial statement after hidden camera footage of their executives lunching with the fake foundation, NPR said that “The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.” The Daily Caller reported Thursday evening on emails in which NPR executives said they were “awaiting a draft agreement” from their legal counsel on the donation, raising the question of how far down the line negotiations had proceeded. 
  
 NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher told TPM via e-mail that the agreement “never got beyond the internal drafting stage - and was never sent. Period.” To back up her claim, Christopher provided TPM with four pages pages of emails in which CEO Vivan Schiller, who resigned Wednesday, and her staff discuss a potential donation from MEAC, the fake Muslim group created by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas to infiltrate NPR. 
  
 In an e-mail dated March 3, sent by the recently resigned Schiller to Betsy Liley, who appears in the two O’Keefe tapes, and two other staffers, Schiller suggests that MEAC is behaving oddly and that she can’t accept a donation without further information — despite pressure from the group to take the money immediately. She also correctly notes that MEAC’s information would have to be provided to the IRS, resolving an issue that Lilely appears to have left unclear in a conversation with a phony Muslim donor depicted in the most recently released video. 
  
 “I spoke to Ibrahim,” she writes. “He says they ARE a 501c3. And then he added… “I think”. I told him we would need to know for sure AND we would need to look at the 990 as we do for any first time donor. He stressed that they want confidentially and I told him what Joyce told me - that it would not need to be reported in the public part of the 990 but it would need to be reported to the IRS, including the name of the donating institution. He had questions on all of the above which I said I simply don’t have the expertise to answer but that one of our lawyers could. He repeated again that they want to deliver the check. I said that’s very generous but we really need to sort out these issues first. He said is there a problem - and I said I don’t know till we can see the 990. He seemed a bit worried that there was some subtext to our hesitation.” 
  
 In a March 3 e-mail a member of O’Keefe’s group posing as MEAC board member, “Omar Kasaam,” writes that his group is “eager to help NPR fight back against the sensationalized, ratings-driven corporate media and their relentless efforts to sew mistrust and xenophobia among America’s citizens” and says that his group cannot reveal its donors, but is willing to locate the necessary tax forms to move forward. 
  
 But the group clearly raises red flags for Joyce Slocum, NPR’s General Counsel and Sr. Vice President, who politely informs “Kasaam” the next day that NPR has been unable to find any information on MEAC despite its supposed status as a registered 501c. 
  
 “I’m sure you will understand that we need to verify certain information with respect to any organization that proposes to make a significant gift to NPR,” Slocum writes, adding that “Unfortunately, we have not been able to locate the necessary information about the Muslim Education Action Center, and so we need to ask that you provide it.” 
  
 In the latest e-mail, dated March 5, Schiller refers “Kasaam” to Slocum’s questions. 
  
 “Thank for your kind note and continued interest in NPR,” she writes. “Our General Counsel, Joyce Slocum, has sent you a note under separate cover with a few questions. We look forward to hearing back from you.” 
  
 The full e-mails released by NPR can be viewed here. ||||| An NPR fundraising executive said her organization would be willing to shield a would-be donor from a government audit by keeping the donor's name anonymous, according to a series of surreptitiously recorded phone calls released Thursday by a conservative activist. 
  
 Betsy Liley, NPR's senior director of institutional giving, made the comments to a man posing as a trustee of a fictitious Muslim charity, which the man had said had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based group that has suspected ties to terrorists. 
  
 Liley's conversations with the man were captured as part of a sting operation orchestrated by James O'Keefe, who has targeted the ACORN community group and Planned Parenthood with secret recordings. 
  
 O'Keefe secretly videotaped Liley's boss, Ron Schiller, making demeaning comments about conservatives during a luncheon meeting set up to discuss what the NPR managers believed was a potential $5 million contribution. Liley was also at that meeting and briefly comments in the video. 
  
 Ron Schiller resigned from NPR on Tuesday for his role in the video scandal. The video's release also led to the resignation Wednesday of his boss, NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron Schiller). 
  
 In a lengthy follow-up phone call with Liley after the lunch, an O'Keefe associate posing as "Ibrahim Kasaam" of the Muslim Education Action Center (a fictitious entity) expressed concerns that NPR, which receives government funding, would be subject to government audits or would have to disclose the source of its donations. 
  
 Liley responded, "If you were concerned about that, you might want to be an anonymous donor and we would certainly, if that was your interest, we would want to shield you from that." 
  
 At another point, Kasaam asked Liley, "It sounded like you're saying that NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?" 
  
 "I think that is the case, especially if you were anonymous, and I can inquire about that," Liley said. She later informed Kasaam via e-mail that NPR's management had cleared an anonymous donation from his group. 
  
 NPR had previously said, in the wake of the luncheon video, that it had "repeatedly refused" to accept donations from the organization. 
  
 NPR put Liley on administrative leave as a result of the video. 
  
 It's not illegal for a nonprofit organization to accept a contribution from a donor that wishes to remain anonymous. But in this case, the issue appears to be how far would NPR have gone to protect the anonymity of a potentially unsavory donor - one that might have connections to interests hostile to the United States. 
  
 An NPR spokeswoman, Anna Christopher, had no comment on the phone recording. But she said: "All donations, anonymous and named, are reported to the IRS. NPR complies fully with all tax and financial disclosure regulations." 
  
 NPR issued a statement late Thursday that said, "The statement made by Betsy Liley in the audio tapes released today regarding the possibility of making an anonymous gift that would remain invisible to tax authorities is factually inaccurate and not reflective of NPR's gift practices. . . . NPR will not be deterred from its news mission and will ultimately be judged by the millions and millions of listeners and readers who have come to rely on us every day." 
  
 In a related development, more than 20 NPR journalists - including Cokie Roberts, Robert Siegel and Susan Stamberg - said in an open letter to listeners that the journalists were appalled by the comments Ron Schiller made in the video. 
  
 "Those comments have done real damage to NPR," they said in the letter. "But we're confident that the culture of professionalism we have built, and the journalistic values we have upheld for the past four decades, will prevail." ||||| New video released Thursday afternoon indicates National Public Radio intended to accept a $5 million donation from fictitious Muslim Brotherhood front group Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust – and that the publicly funded radio network might have helped MEAC make the donation anonymously to protect it from a federal government audit. 
  
 When a man posing as Ibrahim Kasaam asked, “It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?” NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, responded, “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous. I can inquire about that.” According to conservative James O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas organization conducted the NPR sting organization, the man posing as Kasaam made two follow-up phone calls to Liley after their lunch. 
  
 Liley said a $5 million donation would amount to about “10 years of support.” 
  
 Kasaam follows up by asking: “The fact that NPR is not only a tax-exempt organization, but also receives direct contributions from the government — does that invite some sort of government oversight or government examination of contributions, et cetera?” 
  
 Liley answered: “They have audited our programs at times and, I think, as part of that, they can look at our audited financials. If you are concerned in any way about that, that’s one reason you might want to be an anonymous donor. And, we would certainly, if that was your interest, want to shield you from that.” 
  
 Liley mentioned a precedent at NPR — in more than $80 million in donations from universities. 
  
 “As I said, like this guy that I used to work with who gave – where I used to work for the university, I don’t know, $5 or $10 or $12 million, he was just entered into the database as anonymous,” Liley said. “I knew who he was and about five other people did, but there was no paperwork in any official place that identified him as that donor.” 
  
 Watch: 
  
  
  
 With that remark, Liley was likely referring to her time at Purdue University, where she was the assistant vice president for corporate and foundation relations. Liley said she and NPR have taken millions of dollars in donations anonymously before. 
  
 “We also got an $8 million gift,” Liley said. “I don’t know if you remember this; about two years ago a number of institutions, higher ed institutions, all with women as presidents, got donations that ranged from $5 million to $12 million. They were never identified who the gifts were from, but they totaled about $80 million dollars.” 
  
 The man posing as Kasaam asked Liley whether NPR accepts anonymous gifts on a regular basis, and if the process they were talking about was common among NPR fundraisers. 
  
 “I don’t know if they – I know at Purdue we were a public institution, so we were part of government, and therefore our books could have been, you know, open to any inquiry from a member of the public,” Liley said. “You’re a private nonprofit, and so we have a different standard. We do comply with government audit but I don’t think that they go into our donor database.” 
  
 Following their phone calls, Liley checked with NPR’s senior management, and sent an e-mail to the man posing as Kasaam saying MEAC was cleared to make an anonymous donation of $5 million. 
  
 “NPR can list MEAC as an anonymous donor in our database, which would mean we would not disclose the organization’s name,” Liley wrote in the e-mail to the fictitious Kasaam. “We do not publish a list of gifts, so it would not be an issue there.” 
  
 Liley’s e-mail addressed the MEAC representatives’ concerns about government audits: “The audits of our governmental grants are conducted by the same firm we hire to do our NPR financial audit.” 
  
 Liley wrote that she’s “awaiting a draft of a gift agreement from our legal counsel and will share it when I have it.” 
  
 That e-mail directly contradicts NPR’s public statements issued in the wake of O’Keefe’s first video. “The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept,” NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in NPR’s official response. 
  
 The new video shows recently ousted NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller knew of her subordinates’ meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood front group. “Vivian knows about our meeting as my email indicated I think for her to feel – for us to prep her appropriately for the next meeting, it would be great to have some more information from you guys,” Liley said. “But Ron and she talked, and I shared notes from our meeting about kind of where you are in your interest, and so I think for us to do kind of our due diligence, it would also be helpful to get some of the background information [on the organization and on its leadership.” 
  
 Liley was referring to now former NPR Foundation president Ron Schiller, who made disparaging remarks about the Tea Party movement and Jewish people. He was set to work for the Aspen Institute, but has since decided against going to work there. |||||
A:
NPR may have been embarrassed by its ex-fundraiser’s comments on the Tea Party—but at least it refused to accept the $5 million offered by phony donors, right? That original claim had been poked at by the Daily Caller, which yesterday said that emails showed NPR execs were "awaiting a draft of a gift agreement" from their legal counsel, indicating that they might have been closer to taking than they had admitted. But NPR rep Anna Christopher tells TPM the agreement "never got beyond the internal drafting stage—and was never sent. Period." She offers internal emails as evidence. In one, then-CEO Vivian Schiller says the “donors” are acting strangely, and that she needs more info on their status. But the drama doesn't stop there. In a recording released yesterday, one of the "donors" asks an exec if she is "saying that NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit." The exec responds that she thinks “that is the case, especially if you were anonymous,” reports the Washington Post, which notes that keeping donors anonymous isn't illegal—the question, it writes, is how far NPR would go to keep a "potentially unsavory" donor's identity hidden. NPR last night released the following: "The statement ... regarding the possibility of making an anonymous gift that would remain invisible to tax authorities is factually inaccurate and not reflective of NPR's gift practices."