Can the GOP Defund NRP?
Politico reports:
National Public Radio is facing the most serious threat to the "public" part of its identity since Newt Gingrich’s days as speaker, thanks to a resurgent, tea-party-inspired Republican House with budget cuts on its mind and recent stumbles that have left the broadcaster vulnerable to its ideological critics on the right.
By far the greatest and most galvanizing of these issues was the firing of Juan Williams. But some Republicans also are seething over NPR’s announcement of a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, founded by financier George Soros, just a few days before Williams was fired.
Republicans, such as Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Reps. Darrell Issa of California and Eric Cantor of Virginia — as well as conservative commentators, such as Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck — have cited the grant in their calls to strip federal funding from NPR.
Budget hawks like Cantor say the grant proves NPR doesn’t need to rely on government money. But the culture warriors, like DeMint and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), go much further — arguing that NPR’s acceptance of the grant is proof of a leftist agenda.
“Open Society Foundations is essentially another name for George Soros, who is a committed leftist, one-world-government ideologue,” Franks told POLITICO in an interview, adding that NPR’s acceptance of the grant is “evidence of an underlying, hardcore left-wing bias that begs my ability to articulate.”
NPR denies any such bias and is standing by its decision to solicit the contribution from the Open Society group, which funds journalism initiatives as a means of fulfilling its mission of building “vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.”
But Republicans are gearing up to make another run at NPR’s funding next year — and at least one NPR board member thinks the network itself vulnerable to Republican criticism by taking the Open Society grant.
“In retrospect, knowing what I know now, would I rather that the first money had come from somewhere else? Probably yes,” said Steve Bass, president and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting and a member of NPR’s board. But, he added, “I know the folks at NPR very well, and we have very strong editorial guidelines.”
