[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 38 (Monday, March 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1592-S1593]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   PUBLIC-FUNDED RADIO AND TELEVISION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I have been around Congress a few years. 
When I served in the House of Representatives 16 years ago, the 
Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. 
They promised to change how business was done in Washington and they 
elected Newt Gingrich of Georgia as Speaker of the House. On his first 
day on the job, Speaker Gingrich addressed a black tie dinner of happy 
supporters and took aim at an enemy he said was undermining America's 
values, and that enemy was Big Bird.
  Newt Gingrich denounced public broadcasting as a sandbox for the rich 
and he condemned it for ``eating taxpayers' money.'' He went on to say: 
``They are simply enclaves of the left using your money to propagandize 
your children against your values.''
  Once the Gingrich Republican revolutionaries finished passing their 
so-called Contract With America, Gingrich vowed he would do everything 
in his power to do away with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 
National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting Stations. 
Fortunately, in the Republican and Democratic parties, cooler heads 
prevailed. Big Bird was spared.
  Well, to borrow a line from former President Reagan, ``Here we go 
again.'' When we should be talking about the serious budget deficit 
affecting America, the House Republican budget spent too much time 
resurrecting the old bumper stickers of the past. They went to 
America's bumper sticker museum and said: Well, let's see if there are 
some oldies but goodies here, and they loaded up the Republican budget 
bill with a lot of old issues. Some of them finally went back to the 
day when Newt Gingrich went after Big Bird. Sixteen years after Newt 
Gingrich, this new band of Republicans in the House is once again 
denouncing public broadcasting as a hotbed of subversive values, and 
they have vowed to pull the plug.
  You may remember, Mr. President, our friends across the aisle 
actually tried to end funding for the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting last November during the lameduck session. At that time, 
the rallying cry was outrage over NPR's firing of commentator Juan 
Williams. Now there is a new defunding effort underway and a new source 
of outrage. James O'Keefe, a rightwing activist with a video camera and 
a conservative agenda, released a video last week which he claims 
proves National Public Radio is a biased liberal organization that 
needs no Federal funding.
  In the video, two allies of Mr. O'Keefe's pretend to be members of a 
Muslim education group who are considering making a large donation, 
they said, to NPR. Then they secretly recorded their meeting with two 
NPR executives.
  If the name James O'Keefe rings a bell with Members of the Senate, it 
should. Remember some of the other things he was caught doing? It was 
James O'Keefe and his colleagues who posed as telephone repairmen and 
tried to lie their way into the office of our colleague, Senator Mary 
Landrieu of Louisiana. They were going to try to make one of their 
``gotcha'' videos there. They went too far. At the end of it, Mr. 
O'Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of entering Federal property 
under false pretenses. A Federal judge sentenced Mr. O'Keefe to 3 years 
probation, a fine of $1,500, and 100 hours of community service.
  This same Mr. O'Keefe, in 2009, posed with some of his friends as a 
pimp and prostitute to secretly film a discussion with staffers of the 
grassroots antipoverty group ACORN. Their video of that meeting was so 
inflammatory Congress vowed to eliminate all Federal funding for that 
group.
  I cannot tell you, Mr. President, how many amendments we had on the 
floor of the Senate--in the midst of all the problems we were facing in 
the country and around the world--focused on ACORN. Three separate 
investigations, incidentally, later cleared ACORN of any wrongdoing. A 
report by the Congressional Research Service found Mr. O'Keefe's 
undercover videotaping may have broken laws both in Louisiana and 
Maryland.
  Mr. O'Keefe, obviously, is not too concerned about breaking a law if 
he thinks he is going to come up with a sensational video. He was 
convicted in Louisiana, as I mentioned earlier.
  The New York Daily News--not exactly a liberal news organization--
concluded, when it came to the ACORN incident, ``they edited the tape 
to meet their agenda.'' As California's then-Attorney General Jerry 
Brown said, after they investigated the ACORN video:

       Things are not always as partisan zealots portray them 
     through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a 
     fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor.

  Mr. O'Keefe appears to be engaged in creative editing again, and this 
time his target is National Public Radio. That is not just my opinion. 
The Web site of none other than FOX News' own Glenn Beck--that is 
right, Glenn Beck--compares the edited and unedited versions of Mr. 
O'Keefe's latest video and concludes that the edited version appears to 
be deceptively edited in order to portray statements by one of the 
secretly recorded NPR executives out of context. An example: On the 
video, Ron Schiller, who was then in charge of fundraising for NPR, and 
has since been terminated, is heard to say:

       It is very clear that we would be better off in the long 
     run without Federal funding.

  I have heard that repeated over and over; that this NPR fundraising 
executive said ``we would be better off if we didn't have Federal 
funding.'' The far right has seized on this statement as proof NPR 
doesn't need it and shouldn't get it. But here is the part that ended 
up on the cutting room floor. Schiller explained, when they looked at 
the full transcript, that most ``philanthropists'' think NPR is almost 
fully funded by the government, which prevents many of them from 
donating. Mr. Schiller also said that if NPR lost all Federal funding 
now, ``we would have a lot of stations go dark.''
  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports nearly 1,300 local 
radio and TV stations in communities all across America--in Illinois 
and I bet in West Virginia. Direct support for those stations makes up 
nearly 75 cents out of every dollar they spend. I know, because when 
you turn them on to listen to the news, they are begging for money. You 
send them a check and you think, I hope they will leave us alone for a 
little while.
  Mr. President, 170 million Americans use public broadcasting services 
every month. That is more than half the population of America. In my 
State of Illinois, 1 million people listen to our 14 public radio 
stations, and 3 million people rely on our 8 public television 
stations. All totaled, funding for public broadcasting works out to 
about $1.35 per American per year--11 cents a month. I would say that 
is a bargain. It is a fraction of what people would pay to get good 
information.
  Eliminating Federal funding for the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting is going to force many smaller stations to close, if the 
House Republicans have their way. The first ones hit--West Virginia, 
the rural areas of Illinois, and smalltown America. They will be the 
ones to lose the service first. Rural communities will be hard hit, as 
they rely more than big stations in big cities on Federal funding.
  Cutting all funding for public broadcasting? Does anybody seriously 
believe that will affect the deficit? But it would be a great loss to 
tens of millions of Americans who rely on public broadcasting for 
quality entertainment and honest, in-depth news coverage. With the 
momentous changes occurring in the world, and the major challenges 
facing our Nation, it is essential we maintain the integrity and 
viability of public broadcasting. There is nothing in commercial 
broadcasting that can replace it.
  Some of our conservative friends--and one of them came up to me on 
the plane when I was heading home to Chicago last weekend--say they 
don't object so much to the content of public broadcasting, they just 
object philosophically to the whole idea of taxpayers' money being 
spent to subsidize radio and TV. They said let them go on the free 
market. If they can survive, fine; if they cannot, so be it. Here is 
what they ignore: FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, virtually all the major 
network stations receive billions of dollars each year in public 
subsidies. How?

[[Page S1593]]

In the form of free use of the public TV spectrum. These stations do 
not own the airwaves. The American people own the airwaves, and we give 
them licenses to use our airwaves, America's airwaves, to make their 
profits.

  The New America Foundation estimated the total value of the TV 
spectrum used by commercial TV stations at nearly $5.5 billion a year, 
and that doesn't count the additional tens of millions of dollars that 
commercial TV stations make selling political ads every campaign 
season. Sound familiar? We have all been there, writing checks to these 
commercial TV stations to put on our ads so we can run for office and 
preserve the right of that TV station to use the public airwaves--free. 
The public subsidies to commercial stations dwarf what we spend on 
public broadcasting.
  I admire the reporting on NPR, but I am a progressive Democrat. Many 
conservatives admire their reporting. David Brooks is a conservative I 
respect. He writes for the New York Times and I look forward to his 
column. Even when I disagree with him, I know it is a thoughtful 
analysis of the challenges we face. Listen to what he said:

       I think NPR has done a good job over the last 10 years of 
     reducing that bias. I thought it was really biased 10 years 
     ago, but now I think it's pretty straight, and the Federal 
     money for NPR doesn't go so much for the big stations. It 
     goes out to the rural parts of the country which wouldn't 
     have those stations otherwise.

  David Brooks, you are right. If the Republicans have their way in the 
House, the losers will be a lot of red States in red parts of America 
that want to hear both sides of the story, as I believe all Americans 
should.
  Tony Blankley was a longtime aide to Newt Gingrich who works now for 
FOX News and NPR. He said:

       I've been on NPR regularly for a very long time. . . . From 
     a personal perspective they have always given me plenty of 
     access, I am clearly a right-wing commentator so I cannot 
     complain. There's a conservative on and there's a liberal on, 
     so that's all fair.

  He added:

       No editor or host has ever suggested, ``Could you not be 
     quite so conservative on this show?'' I have been open and 
     free to express my opinion.

  Michael Medved is a conservative radio host. This is his take on NPR:

       I think NPR tries harder to be fair than just about any 
     other media source. . . . I listen almost every day to 
     Morning Edition and All Things Considered. I think that they 
     do as good a job as anybody in media in reporting the news.

  The conservative blogger said of NPR:

       My own interaction with them has been fine. I have found 
     them to be fair. I think their coverage is often quite good. 
     I think NPR does a good job.

  As proof of NPR's political bias, some critics of public broadcasting 
point to what appear in the video to be critical comments Ron Schiller 
made about the Tea Party.
  This is another incident of deceptive editing. The full transcript 
shows that Mr. Schiller was recounting the views expressed to him by 
two top Republicans, including a former ambassador.
  Let me say very clearly: Even repeating those comments was ill-
advised on Mr. Schiller's part. He no longer works for NPR.
  And his comments have been roundly condemned by journalists who have 
given years of good work to NPR. In an open letter released last week 
to NPR listeners and supporters, the journalists said Mr. Schiller's 
comments:

     . . . violated the basic principles by which we live and 
     work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.

  But the suggestion that NPR cannot be relied on to cover the Tea 
Party or conservative organizations fairly is refuted by Tea Party 
members themselves.
  Katrina Pierson is a Tea Party activist in Houston. She told the 
media watchdog group Media Matters:

       I think NPR was very cordial to our group. They actually 
     came to Texas and Spent a few days with us visiting our 
     homes, and our work places. They attended meetings and asked 
     questions. I enjoyed having them here. I think the reporting 
     that they ended up using for All Things Considered, it was 
     fair.

  At a time in America when we value our government, when we applaud 
freedom, when we preach it to the world, when we beg authoritarian 
regimes to give their people a chance to hear both sides of the story, 
when we say that our Bill of Rights, when it comes to free speech and 
free press, should be a guidepost for the world, can we be in the 
business of shutting down this opportunity for Americans every single 
day to hear both sides of the story when it comes to the big issues? I 
don't think what was done in the House is about money. I think it is 
about a political philosophy. Many of them think they just want to shut 
down NPR because they are offended by some things that are said.
  Let me say from my side of the spectrum, I have been offended the 
other way. I thought they went too far the other way. But isn't that 
what it is all about? They give you both sides, make up your own mind, 
and that is the way it should be.
  We have seen what could happen when people rush to judgment after 
seeing selectively edited and sometimes deceptively edited videos. 
Shirley Sherrod was fired from her job at the Agriculture Department 
and painted unfairly as a bigot when she was, in fact, making a 
passionate plea for racial tolerance. Her comments were knowingly 
distorted in a video produced by a man who has, in the past, supported 
Mr. O'Keefe.
  Congress voted to cut off Federal funding for ACORN before there was 
any objective investigation into Mr. O'Keefe's damaging video about 
them. Later investigation showed there was no criminal wrongdoing.
  Let's not make the same mistake again. Let's not be duped by 
deceptively edited videos at a time when Americans need the objective 
reporting and informative programming that public radio and public 
television provide.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley.) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as 
in morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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