A Rescue Plan for Local Public Media That Conservatives Will Love

Many conservatives achieved a decades-long goal this summer when the Trump administration stripped $1.1 billion in federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit created in 1967 to funnel congressional dollars to NPR, PBS, and 1,500-plus local public media stations across the country, many of which are now struggling to survive.

As a former Republican member of CPB’s board of directors who shares concerns about liberal bias in national public media, I nonetheless believe this action will deeply harm journalism — especially local journalism — and its vital role in the nation’s democracy. A forceful and cohesive response is needed by philanthropy. To be effective, that response will require foundations to break out of their comfort zones and partner with institutions on the other side of the ideological and political spectrum.

Support for local public media should be a central component of philanthropic missions. Many of the issues funders on both the left and right care about would get little attention if local journalism disappeared. But unlike NPR and PBS, smaller outlets lack the reach and fundraising staff to sustain themselves without the $267 million in federal grants provided annually by CPB.

To their credit, some funders have stepped up. The MacArthur, Knight, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, and Schmidt Family foundations, along with Pivotal Ventures, have pledged $26.5 million toward a Public Media Bridge Fund for grants and low-interest loans to “vulnerable stations.” MacArthur has pledged an additional $10 million in direct support for stations and programs.

Not for Progressives Only

But this effort represents both a solution — and a problem. The foundations involved are all generally associated with the progressive left, reinforcing conservatives’ view that public media is a liberal mouthpiece. That’s why, as the clock runs out for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I propose another approach: the creation of a private endowment by a bipartisan group of funders to replace the rescinded federal dollars. The money would be earmarked specifically for local journalism, including hiring reporters, but not for coverage of particular topics or issues. CBP, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, could continue to serve as the vehicle for such an endowment.

To start the process, a group of foundations, perhaps led by the Carnegie Corporation, which birthed the idea of public broadcasting in the 1960s, should convene a conference of ideologically diverse grant makers. They should consider how the essential functions of public media — local journalism and emergency broadcasting — can be preserved, not through one-time infusions of cash but through an endowment large enough to produce income similar to the rescinded federal funding.

Such a gathering should include not just big, liberal names such as the Ford, MacArthur, and Open Society foundations, but their equivalent on the right — the Marble Freedom Trust, the Bradley Foundation, and major individual donors. Representatives of liberal community foundations across the country, such as the Cleveland Foundation and the New York Community Trust, should also be at the table, alongside conservative family philanthropies like the Kern Family Foundation in Waukesha, Wis.

Admittedly, conservative foundations may resist joining this effort. As one longtime program officer for a major right-leaning foundation told me, “Any conservative money would be so outweighed and outmaneuvered by progressive billionaires that it would not be dollars well spent, I’m afraid.” But major individual donors who lean conservative may not be so reticent and could help convince conservative foundations to join. They include billionaires Kenneth Griffin, head of the Citadel hedge fund and a leading Republican Party donor, and Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and has moved its editorial page to the political center.

Drawing in such centrist and right-leaning donors would likely require an invitation to participate from MacArthur, which has led the philanthropic charge to support public media. Doing so would be an act of magnanimity and an example of the sort of bipartisanship the nation needs. It would also require a commitment to what might be called non-cause-centered journalism — reporting devoted to ongoing coverage of city councils, state legislatures, and school boards rather than progressive causes such as trans rights and climate change.

Why Conservatives Should Care

Political conservatives, of whom I am one, should not be averse to philanthropic funding for local public media, which has distinguished itself in recent years by covering critical issues in communities with little or no other sources of local news. Without these outlets, the actions of both Republican and Democratic politicians wouldn’t get the attention and scrutiny the public deserves.

Many public media outlets are in communities with a paucity of deep-pocketed donors, which is why the federal grants were so important. To replace those funds, a CPB-administered endowment for local stations of $5.3 billion should do the trick — hardly an onerous amount given the $1.6 trillion treasure chest of capital foundations are currently sitting on. With a 5 percent return on investment, an endowment of that size would spin off $267 million annually — the same sum distributed by CPB.

As an established funding distribution entity, CPB is the logical choice to administer the funds — and no law prevents it from doing so. Although President Trump, in a legally dubious move, attempted to fire members of the CPB board, its bylaws were amended in May to allow its own president, hired by the board, to create a new “designated body” to govern its operations. The bylaws state that board members cannot be removed “by any person or authority, including the President of the United States, without a two-thirds vote of the other Directors and serving members of the Designated Body.”

In my own career, as a reporter and documentary producer for WGBH in Boston, I once directed a film about Tom Menino, a city-council aspirant who went on to become the longtime mayor of the city. He explained to me how he understood the importance of local media. “That’s your oxygen,” he said. It’s the oxygen, as well, for local democracy. It may never have been a great idea to mix the press and government in the first place — as accusations of liberal bias at NPR have sadly demonstrated. But in the current funding vacuum, the philanthropic sector must step in.