CEO Vivian Schiller Defends NPR Against Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON -- The embattled head of NPR laid out the case today for rejecting Republican lawmakers' efforts to end federal funding for public broadcasting, even while acknowledging that the network had a "perception" problem for its poor handling of the firing of commentator Juan Williams and other missteps.

Five months after the controversial sacking of the Fox News regular, NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller admitted executives acted too hastily. In January, the Williams fiasco claimed the head of NPR news, Ellen Weiss, and stripped Schiller of her 2010 bonus.

Days later, a rattled NPR erroneously reported Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died after being shot in Tucson, Ariz. Schiller said there was "no excuse for it" and after a "postmortem in the newsroom," new procedures were put in place.

Neither incident will help NPR, which is on the newly empowered Republicans' most-want-to-cut list, along with the Public Broadcasting System. But in her speech today at the National Press Club, Schiller noted that this isn't the first time conservatives have wanted to zero out funding for public broadcasting. Major pushes were made in 1995 and 2005, only to fail. This time, though, "the threat is more serious" because of the deficit, she said.

National Public Radio, renamed NPR under Schiller's watch to reflect its broader reach online, gets just 10 percent of its budget from the federal government. But it uses that money, she said, to leverage support from listeners, corporate underwriters and philanthropic foundations and individuals.

"It is not the largest share of revenues, but it is a critical cornerstone of public media," Schiller said. "It is seed money" that is especially important to NPR's 800 members stations. Many rural stations rely for as much as 50 percent of their operating budgets on federal tax dollars and would be forced off the air if Congress eliminates funding.

NPR has been accused of a liberal bias, but Schiller said every news organization has faced charges of leaning too far left or right.

"NPR's audience is not a left- and right-coast phenomenon," she said. "We are urban and rural, North and South, red state and blue state. Our listeners are equally distributed throughout every part of America."

Still, she said the Williams incident didn't help and, about some of the problems NPR faces now, she added: "No question it's a perception issue."

Schiller said ending federal funding "would have a profound impact" on NPR's ability to "fill the void" left on a shrinking media landscape that has seen thousands of journalists laid off, dozens of foreign bureaus closed and radio airwaves filled with partisan ranting.

"We stay on the story when everyone else moves on," she said, citing reports on the Massey mine disaster and the blanket coverage by NPR's foreign-based staff of the uprisings in the Middle East as examples. "We are the opposite of parachute journalism."

If public broadcasting loses government support, "we would be going backwards and retreating on this 44-year investment that the American people have made in this incredible institution," she said.

A recent Pew Research Center report found NPR was among the most trusted national news sources, and a new PBS-commissioned poll showed 69 percent oppose cutting off government funding for public broadcasting. Democratic lawmakers have trotted out Big Bird to help preserve the $430 million the network receives annually.

Still, Politics Daily columnist and public broadcasting fan Jill Lawrence is among those who have suggested it may not be worth continuing federal support. She said it may be time for NPR to "end its role as a political football and a symbol of what government shouldn't be doing" and look to new and creative ways to make up the lost revenue.

In a half-hour question-and-answer period, Schiller also said:

• A task force reviewing the network's code of ethics will report its recommendations this spring. It has already called for phasing out long-term contracts with other news organizations like the one enjoyed by Williams before he was fired and signed a lucrative contract with Fox News. Such arrangements "can be confusing," Schiller said, though she suggested that NPR correspondents Mara Liasson, Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts, who are heard regularly on other networks, might be grandfathered in to keep their moonlighting deals.
• Increasing diversity at NPR, where Williams was the only black male on air until he was canned, is "a very, very big priority." She cited criticism by the National Association of Black Journalists and noted that while NPR has made progress, it wasn't enough.

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