March 10, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Congressional Republicans are stepping up efforts to stop the flow of federal money to NPR following the release of an embarrassing undercover video that prompted the public broadcaster’s chief executive to resign on Wednesday.
Three Republican senators—Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Richard Shelby of Alabama—today urged the Senate to end the grants that NPR gets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Unlike some of their colleagues, they singled out NPR and did not propose to kill all spending for the CPB, which provides grants to public radio and television stations across the country.
In a letter to Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the senators criticized “biased and highly questionable comments” made in the video by Ronald Schiller, a former top NPR fund raiser, when he met with potential donors from a fake Muslim charity. In the video, Mr. Schiller criticized Republicans and the Tea Party and said that NPR would be better off in the long run without federal money.
“In this time of fiscal austerity, we should make wise investments and direct scarce federal resources to organizations that will use this funding to serve the needs of the nation,” the senators wrote. They said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had provided roughly $2.9-million to NPR in 2010. (NPR had about $184-million in overall revenue that year.)
As part of legislation to cover federal spending until the end of September, the Republican-led House voted last month to abolish all spending on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting starting in the 2013 fiscal year (money is allocated to the agency two years ahead of time). It also wants to take back any “unobligated” money that has not been spent this year.
A companion bill drafted by Senate Democrats did not take up that idea.
However, Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma introduced a bill last week to end federal aid to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after the 2013 fiscal year. Mr. Schiller has resigned from NPR–along with the former chief executive, Vivian Schiller (no relation).
But, Senator DeMint tweeted on Wednesday: “It’s not about who NPR/PBS hires or fires. It’s about taxpayer funding: we can’t afford it and they don’t need it.”
Other senators have come to NPR’s defense.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, told Politico she opposed cutting off federal support to the broadcaster.
“In the day of Fox News on one side and MSNBC on the other side, it’s nice to turn on your radio and have a little bit more fair and balanced approach,” she said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats told CBS News that NPR and PBS offer an alternative to media concentration, “where you have a handful of media conglomerates largely controlling what we see, hear, and read.”
Editor’s Note: Suzanne Perry was communications director for Minnesota Public
Radio from 2002 to 2004.
