NPR President Vivian Schiller on Sunday decried calls for defunding public broadcasting saying doing so would be devastating.

From the Daily Caller

Speaking at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington Sunday on the “Future of Journalism,” National Public Radio

President and CEO Vivian Schiller said she takes calls for defunding NPR “very seriously,” while stressing how important government funding is for public broadcasting, especially for NPR’s member stations. She also recognized there’s a possibility that, with the new GOP majority in the House, those calls for defunding might be renewed.

“If defunding to public broadcasting were to occur, it would be devastating to public broadcasting. That’s a fact,” Schiller said.

After Schiller fired commentator Juan Williams several weeks ago for comments he made about Muslims on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” calls for defunding NPR erupted again.

“Almost all federal funding goes to member stations,” Schiller said. “Very, very little of it goes to NPR, but a lot goes to stations.”

While NPR headquarters only receives about 1 percent of funding from tax dollars, member stations receive about 9 percent of their funding from tax dollars, Schiller said. She said that the 9 percent NPR member stations receive from taxpayer dollars is essential for them to stay on the air.

“For small stations, and even for large stations, that’s a big chunk of their revenue,” she said. “It’s been a critical part of keeping those stations vibrant and, so, we take these calls for defunding very, very seriously.”

Schiller didn’t bring up the reason why she fired Williams or whether she handled the situation appropriately during her prepared remarks, but audience members at the forum did, questioning why she didn’t opt to suspend Williams instead of fire him. The forum’s audience members also showed disappointment in NPR removing Williams, who, because he is black, helped bring diversity to NPR’s staff.

“The circumstances around the termination of his contract were a unique set of circumstances,” Schiller said. “It was unique. We have admitted, I have admitted that there were certain aspects of it that we did not handle very well. In fact, there were certain aspects of this we handled badly.”

But exactly who will miss public broadcasting?  Liberals for one as they make up the large majority of the listening audience for NPR which though it claims to be non-partisan is far from it.

The fact of the matter is that the defunding of public broadcasting has been a target of conservatives for decades but they have never been able to gather enough support to make it happen.

Even with a brand new majority taking office in January the GOP will run into many of the same headwinds that previous Republican led Congress’ have had in the past and the more likely scenario will be an attempt to reduce funding levels rather than eliminate them altogether.

Schiller knows defunding is not a real threat to NPR but she knows that she can also paint attempts to do so as a right wing plot which she can effectively use to her benefit in the media.

At a time when money is scarce Congress should take a look both at the funding of public broadcasting and their programming to see if it provides any value to the public.

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