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What I Told House Republicans About Their Dangerous Attempt to Defund NPR
We need more—not less—public media.
May 09, 2024
Here we go again. Every couple of years, conservative members of Congress launch highly partisan attempts to root out alleged “bias” at NPR and PBS—which remain incredibly popular and trusted among the American public—and threaten to slash funding that supports local nonprofit radio and TV affiliates nationwide.
This year’s so-called outrage? A contentious and inaccurate critique of NPR published by a disgruntled editor. In it, then-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner claimed that NPR ignores conservative viewpoints and storylines.
GOP members of Congress claim that Berliner’s essay proves that “NPR suffers from intractable bias,” arguing that “it is time Congress investigates how federal dollars are being used at NPR and what reforms may be necessary.”
While I don’t represent NPR, PBS or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I was called to testify on May 8 before a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee to offer my views about public funding for local news and information, a pillar of Free Press’ work over the past 20 years.
In testifying, I hoped to provide a voice for NPR’s tens of millions of weekly listeners, who rely on the service for fact-checked journalism, local viewpoints, and international coverage. But I also hoped to paint a picture of the possibilities of an expanded public-media system, one that receives more robust public funding for the kinds of local news and information that have gone missing in local communities.
Inquiries like the House hearing will likely make NPR leadership more timid, and I imagine that’s the point.
Over the past two decades, I have been both an advocate for and a critic of the public broadcasting system—which I believe can do more to live up to its mandate and mission. This won’t be accomplished by tarnishing the reputation of NPR’s accomplished journalists, tearing down the institution, or starving it of funds.
But inquiries like the House hearing will likely make NPR leadership more timid, and I imagine that’s the point.
Defunding threats don’t just harm NPR executives—they endanger the work of more than 1,000 local radio stations providing essential information to communities large and small.
While I always welcome Congress’s interest in public media, especially given the crisis in local journalism, I’m perplexed that an essay by one disgruntled editor at NPR is cause for a congressional inquiry.
The United States spends a pittance per capita on public media when compared to other healthy democracies.
Berliner’s essay (which was published, confusingly enough, in a Substack publication called “The Free Press”) is riddled with fuzzy math and cherry-picked evidence. For example, he inaccurately describes several stories as going uncovered, when NPR did extensive reporting or publicly interrogated its own editorial decision-making about them.
That said, public media’s purpose should be to tell stories not already told by commercial media and serve audiences not represented elsewhere.
Berliner laments NPR’s increased focus on racial diversity since 2020. If in 2024 you’re still questioning whether systemic racism exists, you should probably spend more time listening to the experiences of your colleagues from different backgrounds.
If Berliner had done so, he would have found many people of color inside and outside of NPR and PBS who consistently and repeatedly criticized public media’s failures to reach and serve new and diverse audiences. Numerous NPR and PBS employees and associates also raised concerns about the workplace environment for people of color at NPR and PBS, editorial decision-making, and budgeting and funding priorities when it comes to media makers from marginalized backgrounds.
Berliner’s supposed bombshell that D.C. residents in NPR’s newsroom are all registered Democrats—in a city where just 5 percent of voters are registered as Republicans—doesn’t withstand scrutiny either. As NPR journalist Steve Inskeep points out, NPR has 662 people in its newsrooms around the world, including far more in D.C. than the 87 Berliner tallied. The numbers don’t add up.
While Congress has a role in overseeing the operations and financial management of NPR, threats to defund it based on a perceived failure to cover certain topics or hire certain people strike at the heart of journalistic freedom.
Yet these rickety claims have sent a GOP-controlled House subcommittee down a precarious path. I’m deeply concerned about the request the House majority sent in a letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, asking her to track and report to Congress on the political affiliations of NPR’s newsroom employees.
This dangerous overreach, which came at the urging of House Speaker Mike Johnson, raises serious First Amendment concerns and smacks of a political loyalty test. While Congress has a role in overseeing the operations and financial management of NPR, threats to defund it based on a perceived failure to cover certain topics or hire certain people strike at the heart of journalistic freedom.
Yes, there also must be a firewall between NPR executives and the newsroom. NPR’s new CEO may have once volunteered for a Biden campaign. The head of the CPB used to co-chair the RNC. Neither is, nor should be, involved in editorial decisions.
Berliner insists he doesn’t want NPR defunded, but his complaints have been seized upon by those who seek to defang or destroy public media. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of attacking NPR personnel on trumped-up charges of bias.
There is another path. Instead, Congress should take this moment of crisis in local journalism as an opportunity to talk about how to rebuild and expand the public-media system to meet the real needs of local communities.
Congress should take this moment of crisis in local journalism as an opportunity to talk about how to rebuild and expand the public-media system to meet the real needs of local communities.
There’s much common ground to explore on this topic. At the hearing, I found myself in agreement with Howard Husock of the American Enterprise Institute, who also argued that more public-media resources should be devoted to local journalism to replant news deserts.
With changes to the law, this could go beyond broadcasting to support emerging nonprofit news outlets that are providing in-depth and (as of this week) Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. Right now, the United States spends a pittance per capita on public media when compared to other healthy democracies. That’s just $3.16 per capita a year in public funding compared to $75–$100 per capita or more annually in countries like England, France, Germany and Norway. That’s literally pocket change.
Instead of cutting back even further, Congress should increase funding for public media and ensure that locally engaged outlets—and those reaching the diverse audiences NPR hasn’t—can receive more support. This should not be a partisan debate about right versus left, but rather one about returning the public airwaves to local hands, lifting up diverse local viewpoints, amplifying community affairs and playing local music over the airwaves.
I imagine many members of Congress remember a time when there were multiple local outlets covering their campaigns and accomplishments—actually telling people back home what they do in Washington.
A renewed and vibrant public media system focused on local voices is possible. But it requires a different approach, one that builds on public media’s founding purpose, quoting President Lyndon Johnson, to use the public airwaves, “which belong to all the people … for the enlightenment of all the people.”
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Newton Minow, Ex-FCC Chair Who Said TV a 'Vast Wasteland' Dead at 97
"After all, the airways belong to the people."
May 06, 2023
Newton N. Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chair in the early 1960s famously proclaimed that network television was a “vast wasteland,” died at home in Chicago Saturday. He was 97.
Minow was appointed as FCC chair by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Minow received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
In his first public address as FCC chairman, on May 9, 1961, at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Washington he said:
“When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better,” he said. “But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. ... I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland."
“You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
Minow called for “a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives” and said, “There is nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license”
“My faith is in the belief that this country needs and can support many voices of television — and that the more voices we hear, the better, the richer, the freer we shall be. After all, the airways belong to the people.”
“In 1961, I worried that my children would not benefit much from television. But in 1991 I worry that my grandchildren will actually be harmed by it,” he said in a 1991 Associated Press interview.
Television is one of our century’s most important advances “and yet, as a nation, we pay no attention to it,” Minow said.
\u201cNewton Minow, who as President John F. Kennedy\u2019s new FCC chairman in 1961 sent shock waves through the country by calling American television \u201ca vast wasteland,\u201d died on Saturday. He was 97. https://t.co/cVFLWue78N\u201d— The New York Times (@The New York Times) 1683404105
Open Mind: Vast Common GoodPBS and FCC Chairman Emeritus Newton Minow recounts the history of public television's origins and charts our path from a ...
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'He's Just...Erased': PBS 2020 Segment Finds Time for Klobuchar, Sestak, and Bullock--But Completely Ignores Bernie Sanders
It was like watching "manufacturing consent in action,' said Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson.
Dec 02, 2019
A Monday night PBS NewsHour segment on the state of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary highlighted Sen. Amy Klobuchar's new ad campaign in Iowa, the departure of marginal candidates Steve Bullock and Joe Sestak, a tender campaign moment with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden's "No Malarkey" bus tour--but did not once even mention Sen. Bernie Sanders despite recent key endorsements and a surge in the polls.
Sanders' presidential campaign has repeatedly accused the corporate media of ignoring the senator from Vermont, a phenomenon Sanders supporters have dubbed the "Bernie blackout."
The PBS segment, led by NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, offered "a real taste of what Bernie is talking about," Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson wrote Tuesday.
"Remember that Sanders has been #1 in two out of three recent New Hampshire polls, and is currently second in Iowa, ahead of 'frontrunner' Joe Biden," Robinson noted. "Alcindor found time to talk about Joe Sestak and Steve Bullock, plus plenty of candidates struggling to get out of single-digit poll numbers. And yet: not even a photo of Bernie Sanders. Incredible. He's just... erased. He's gone. Bernie who?"
Watch:
Robinson described the NewsHour segment as an example of "manufacturing consent in action":
Political commentator David Pakman recently asked, looking at Pete Buttigieg's rising poll numbers, 'What do you think is behind Pete's rise?' My own answer to that is simple: the manufacture of consent by a media apparatus invested in selling a candidate that will not disrupt the economic status quo.
So much of our understanding of the world and what matters is filtered through the media, because that's how we get access to things that are not in our direct experience. If nobody talks about Bernie Sanders' campaign, how are you supposed to learn about it unless Bernie people come and knock on your door?
The NewsHour segment came just weeks after a detailed analysis of MSNBC's coverage of Sanders by In These Times found that the Vermont senator received both the least frequent and most negative coverage of the top 2020 Democratic presidential contenders.
"The corporate media's war against Bernie Sanders is very real," Jacobin's Luke Savage wrote last month.
"MSNBC, of course, is hardly the only culprit," Savage noted. "As Katie Halper documented a few months ago, the New York Times reporter assigned to cover his campaign 'consistently paints a negative picture of Sanders' temperament, history, policies, and political prospects.' The Washington Post once famously ran sixteen negative stories about Sanders in the same number of hours."
Sanders' lack of corporate media coverage compared to his 2020 rivals does not appear to have dampened his campaign's momentum. Last week, Sanders regained the number two spot behind Biden in RealClearPolitics' national polling average and came out on top in an Emerson New Hampshire poll.
As Common Dreams reported, Sanders on Monday netted the endorsement of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) Action Fund, the largest progressive organization in the key early voting state.
"Some 2020 presidential candidates have been embracing or acknowledging movement politics. But only one of them has been doing it for decades," the group said in a statement. "That's why Iowa CCI Action is endorsing Bernie Sanders. We're standing with Bernie because Bernie stands with us."
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