Public TV and Radio to Receive Big Grants

The Ford Foundation, the main financial backer of public broadcasting in its formative days, is undertaking its largest initiative to support nonprofit media in more than 25 years, officials said yesterday.

The initiative will funnel $50 million over five years to a baker's dozen of public television, radio and other media organizations. A major focus of the effort will be to spur the creation and distribution of public affairs programming, particularly programs dealing with international affairs.

The Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio will receive the largest grants, $10 million and $7.5 million respectively. But less well-known entities will also share in the wealth, including Link TV, a television network devoted to explaining the rest of the world to the United States; the Sundance Documentary Fund, which supports documentaries about human rights issues; and New California Media, a consortium of more than 600 print, television, radio and Internet outlets devoted to ethnic news.

The official announcement of the initiative, which is expected today, comes as public broadcasting is being whipsawed by a leveling off of corporate underwriting, a decline in state government support and growing political pressure to correct what many conservatives view as a liberal bias. While Ford Foundation officials say those developments are not the impetus for their initiative, they say it arrives at a critical time.

"The media in general is at a crossroads in our country," said Susan V. Berresford, the foundation's president, pointing to declining newspaper circulation, a drop over the last decade in coverage of international affairs, and continuing market pressures that demand ratings successes while eating into news-gathering budgets.

The Ford Foundation's involvement with noncommercial broadcasting dates to the middle of the last century. Ford grants paved the way for quintessential public broadcasting programs like "Sesame Street" and documentaries like "Eyes on the Prize," as well as technological advancements like closed captioning. "Without the Ford Foundation in those days, there would be no public television," said Lawrence K. Grossman, a former president of PBS.

From 1951 to 1996, Ford gave more than $400 million to public media, and since then its financing has averaged about $3 million a year, according to the foundation. (It gave more than $475 million altogether last year.) But just as today's public broadcasters face battles over the political and cultural leanings of Bill Moyers and Buster the rabbit, controversy was never far from Ford's largess. In the 1950's, some on the right took issue with the foundation's bent, viewing its plans to promote international cooperation and reduce poverty as thinly veiled support for Communist regimes or organizations. Later, the Nixon administration tried to weaken the influence of what it viewed as the liberalism of the Ford Foundation and its mainly Democratic leaders.

"No doubt this will be seen by conservatives as an ideological initiative," said Tim Graham, the director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. The Ford Foundation's grants for global issues are not just aimed at fighting poverty, he said; the solutions advanced are left wing, and the money for media organizations goes to liberal-leaning entities like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "It seems to be taking public broadcasting and tilting it away from the viewpoint of a lot of taxpayers," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Ford Foundation said that it guards against factual inaccuracy and blatant unfairness in everything it supports.

The $50 million fund may not represent much money in a broadcasting world where a season of one prime-time network show can cost that much. But to the recipients of Ford's money, the grants are most welcome.

Link TV operates on an annual budget of about $5 million, according to Kim Spencer, its president. It will receive $4.5 million over five years from the Ford Foundation and plans to use that money to broaden its reach beyond satellite systems and to bolster its programming and marketing efforts.

The Independent Television Service, which supports independent producers in the public television system, plans to use its $5 million of Ford money to support projects by international producers, so it can bring more diverse voices to American airwaves. It now supports only the work of American producers.

The grant to PBS will support a new fund that will allow it, for the first time, to test new ideas; currently, the system relies on its stations and independent producers to develop programming. Ford support will also help pay the operating expenses of the new PBS Foundation, set up to capture the donations of wealthy individuals - much as NPR did with a bequest of more than $236 million from Joan A. Kroc, the widow of Ray A. Kroc, the founder of McDonald's.

"We operate on such a razor's edge here, we wouldn't have been able to launch the foundation in such a timely manner," said Pat Mitchell, PBS's president. "We'd still be out fund-raising."

Had the foundation been operating several years ago, PBS might have been able to share in the bounty from Ms. Kroc. Dick Starmann, a former adviser to Ms. Kroc who helped direct her charitable giving, said he called both NPR and PBS in either late 2002 or early 2003 at Ms. Kroc's request. At PBS, "I got into the electronic queue and I never got through to anyone live," he said. He said he left one message, perhaps two. No one responded. Ms. Mitchell of PBS said, "I can assure you that if the call came in today, it would go to the PBS Foundation."

The Ford Foundation is one philanthropic group whose money has made its way, through various twists and turns, into terrorists' hands.

With assets of approximately $10 billion, the Ford Foundation is headquartered in New York City, with 13 offices worldwide. The Ford Foundation played a large part in funding the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which occurred in Durban, South Africa, ending just two days before September 11, 2001. The stated purpose of this Conference was to unite all of humanity against racism. However, the Conference quickly turned into a circus of anti-Semitic and anti-American acts. The two main events were the Official Conference and the NGO Forum. At the NGO Forum, Jewish delegates were verbally and physically harassed, and the Official Conference revived the UN document equating Zionism with racism, rescinded by the UN in 1991.

On this issue I think many conservatives miss a key point. Like so many of LBJ's other corrupt and crippling "Great Society" initiatives, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 does not pass constitutional muster. Yet the long time dominant RINO wing of the GOP has never wanted to go down that road for fear of being seen as the meanie who put strychnine in Cookie Monster's Snickerdoodle (oh, the humanity!)

With the help of some creative conservative attorneys I'd wager that we could shut down PBS, NPR and their local stations by stripping FCC licenses from their current owners, most of whom are universities who seem happy to serve as the employer of last resort for reporters and producers who lack the talent to get real jobs.

The FCC could then reallocate the licenses to religious broadcasters -- the intended and proper occupants of that 88-92 portion of the FM band -- or, say, a consortium of conservative pollicy organizations that would create educational shows about US history, culture and religion (note to multi-cultis, Buddhists, Hindus, Lesbian Druids and other flotsam & jetsam ... you need not apply.)

For too long these quislings have not been held to account for their deeply damaging villifications of this country. At the same time they have served as apologists and propagandists for America's sworn enemies (Al Qaeda, the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, Castro, etc.) The time is long past for conservatives to body slam this corrupt and cancerous institution. Herding a few of the worst offenders (Bill Moyers and Amy Goodman, for example) into prison on treason charges might not be a bad idea either.

As we look to undo 7 decades' worth of DemonRat/Communist sabotage to this country I believe that if we garrot public broadcasting, many other fights will suddenly grow easier.

As I've said in other posts here, First Amendment fundamentalists might be uncomfortable with this approach. But since when did First Amendment protections extend to taxpayer-funded institutions that habitually consort with our enemies while also undermining the founding principles of our republic?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.