Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

Seizing on the opportunity presented by NPR’s termination of Juan Williams’ contract, Congressional Republicans have put a high priority on eliminating federal funding for (variously) NPR, public radio stations that are NPR members, or public broadcasting in general.

The GOP leadership did not wait until the new Congress (with a Republican majority in the House) convenes. Instead they sought to amend a bill unrelated to public broadcasting to prohibit Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds from being used by radio stations to pay for NPR programming and other services. It would also have prohibited direct support of NPR by CPB.

Like almost all NPR member stations, KUSP does use CPB support to pay a portion of our NPR programming costs, so the legislation would have directly affected KUSP. [Note: if anyone is interested in the deep accounting mechanics of CPB's grant programs that essentially compel KUSP to use at least some CPB support to pay for our NPR programs, please e-mail me; I fear most blog readers would be bored to tears by this information.]

A procedural vote on the House floor failed today by a vote of 239 to 171 (with 23 members not voting). Here is what I think is significant about this vote: not a single GOP member of the House voted on public radio’s side, so to speak. 3 House Democrats voted with 168 Republicans (John Adler of New Jersey, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, and Gene Taylor of Mississippi).

This lockstep GOP vote against public radio is unprecedented. Public broadcasting has always enjoyed some degree of bipartisan support in the House and the Senate — this is why the 1995 and 2005 efforts to cut off Federal support did not succeed. There were many Republicans who were prepared to vote in line with their own best judgment, and against the wishes of the party leadership of the time.

Such exercise of independent judgment appears to no longer be possible (as is true with so much in national and state politics nowadays). Given that the Republican Party will hold a sizable majority of House seats beginning in January, I have to conclude that the current economic system by which NPR, public radio, and public broadcasting operate is genuinely at risk.

I’m sure I’ll have more to write about on this topic in the months to come. Meantime, follow this link to see what Republican House Whip Eric Cantor had to say today about NPR. NPR’s own announcement about the House vote is linked here.

I’m happy to report that KUSP’s programming management team has reached an understanding with Gary Patton that will continue the broadcast of “The Land Use Report” on our station.

As is true for most of our programs, we receive ongoing feedback from listeners about the Land Use Report — some supportive, some critical. After hearing concerns about two different topics that were reported on this past summer, we initiated a discussion with Gary regarding his dual roles as a volunteer radio contributor for KUSP and as a practicing attorney Of Counsel to Wittwer & Parkin, LLP, of Santa Cruz. In late September it appeared that these discussions had reached an impasse, which led to an on-air announcement on the September 27 Land Use Report that the program would be discontinued at the end of November.

Our discussions continued in subsequent weeks, during which many community members expressed strong feelings about the high value of the Land Use Report as a public service to Monterey Bay area residents.

We now have an understanding about how Land Use Reports discussing topics where Patton has professional responsibilities as an attorney will disclose that fact. Because the 80-second broadcast format of the Land Use Report limits the amount of available detail, additional information about these situations will be made public through the Land Use Report transcripts and links page on our web site.

Reports that the Land Use Report would not continue made it into a couple of weekly newspapers as well as numerous online forums, so we put out a press release today announcing that the program will in fact continue. In that press release J.D. Hillard, Gary’s supervisor and the station’s executive in charge of talk and information programming, is quoted thus:

“This structure for reporting on Gary Patton’s client relationships means listeners will understand how his professional life overlaps with his volunteer role at KUSP. It means KUSP can both preserve the valuable service provided by the Land Use Report and provide the transparency listeners expect from their community public radio station.”

I’d just add that accountability and transparency issues seem to be all over the media these days (for further details, ask Juan Williams, Keith Olbermann, or any card-carrying pundit in the 202 area code). As J.D. says, we take our responsibilities in this area quite seriously. While we can’t please everyone, we hope in this case we’ve acted in a way that is responsible and in the best interests of Monterey Bay area residents who want to inform themselves about and take part in land use decision-making.