Swapping of PBS Mailing Lists Raises Issue of Donor Privacy

Members of Congress learned at a hearing last week that at least 28 of the nation’s public-broadcasting stations have exchanged donor lists with political organizations, adding fuel to critics’ efforts to end federal support for the stations.

The revelations have also focused Congressional attention on issues of individual privacy and the policies of all non-profit groups for handling donor information.

At the House telecommunications subcommittee hearing, Rep. W. J. (Billy) Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, expressed “a deep sense of disappointment” with the stations that had shared their lists with Democratic and Republican campaign committees, as well as with other political groups.

“That a publicly supported entity should think for a moment that it has the right to trade private information about the citizens of this country who deign to support it with any third party for commercial benefit is outrageous,” said Representative Tauzin, who chairs the subcommittee. “It should be outlawed, if it is not yet, and it will be outlawed if we have the chance to do so in legislation this year.”

The issue of list exchanges by public-broadcasting stations first surfaced in May when The Boston Globe reported that WGBH, the public-television station there, exchanged the names of its donors with the Democratic National Committee. A mother who had made a gift to the station in the name of her 4-year-old son alerted the newspaper after her son received an appeal from the D.N.C.

Officials at WGBH initially described the exchange as an isolated mistake by a low-level employee. It offered a public apology and took steps to prevent any future list swaps with political groups.

But in the past few weeks, other public stations — including ones in New York, San Francisco, and Washington — have also disclosed that they too made their donor lists available to political groups, both Republican and Democratic.

Robert Coonrod, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes federal money to public stations, told the Congressional subcommittee last week that a preliminary survey of 75 of the largest stations identified 30 that had engaged in donor-list transactions with political groups, either through sales, purchases, or exchanges. Mr. Coonrod said his organization was in the process of collecting information on all 353 stations that received federal money. He apologized to the committee for what he described as “manifestly stupid” actions.

The activities may not have been illegal, however. The Internal Revenue Service says charities are permitted to trade or sell their lists to political groups or candidates without running afoul of tax laws, as long as they take steps to insure that all political groups or candidates are given a reasonable opportunity to purchase the lists and that no group or candidate is given special treatment.

Despite the controversy, the exchange or sale of donor lists by non-profit groups is a common practice.

The public-broadcasting corporation’s survey of 75 stations found that 53 had hired list brokers to help raise money by selling the names of the station’s donors to other organizations and buying other groups’ lists in the search for new donors. Of the four brokers most often used by those stations, three included political groups in rentals or exchanges, Mr. Coonrod said.

Public-broadcasting officials at the hearing said they supported an independent investigation into the list exchanges and said they were working with their member stations to prevent future list exchanges with political groups.

Still, several members of Congress seized on the list-swap disclosures as further reason to call for eliminating government support of public broadcasting. “Big Bird is nearly 30 years old, and it’s time to leave the federal nest,” said Rep. Steve Largent, Republican of Oklahoma.

But Rep. Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, urged Congress not to punish the nation’s television viewers with large budget cuts to public broadcasting as lawmakers sought to fix the problems associated with the list exchanges. “It seems to me that cutting the funding would result in these stations continuing to look for additional, more-commercial sources of revenue,” he said.

Before news of the list exchanges broke, the subcommittee had been close to approving a measure that would have extended the life of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for seven years. The measure would have increased federal spending limits for public broadcasting next year by 12 per cent over the 1996 amount — the last time Congress formally extended the life of the corporation.

But Representative Tauzin said those figures would remain up in the air until problems with the list exchanges could be fully resolved.

Mr. Tauzin made it clear that he was upset not only that the stations were trading donor information with political groups, but that they were selling or exchanging such information at all. He said he believed donors would be outraged if they realized that their names were being sold and traded by organizations they supported.

Representative Markey agreed that the practice of donor-list exchanges raised privacy concerns. But he said the problem extended well beyond charities to banks, health-maintenance organizations, and others.

“Generally speaking, this is part of a larger discussion we’re starting to have in America this year about privacy in this modern era,” he said.

Representative Markey and other members of Congress at the hearing urged public stations to review their policies to make sure that donors had the chance to “opt out” of having their names and other information traded or sold.

Robert Tigner, general counsel of the Association of Direct Response Fundraising Counsel, said the majority of non-profit groups already have specific and explicit rules for allowing donors to keep their names private. The association represents 40 consulting companies that raise money in behalf of more than 600 non-profit groups, including many public-broadcasting stations.

Still, Mr. Tigner said that proportionally few donors choose to opt out of charity list exchanges or rentals — in part, he believes, because donors realize that such steps allow charities to save money. The whole premise behind such transactions, he said, “is that non-profit groups can locate a cohort of people more likely to donate” than randomly selected people.