Defend Donald Trump with the Colorado Public Radio Stations: Textbook Retaliation, Biased News, and Other Implications for the Public Radio System
A team that includes noted free speech lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous filed the lawsuit for NPR and the Colorado stations jointly in the District of Columbia. The suit calls Trump’s early May executive order “textbook retaliation” and an existential threat to the public radio system “that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”
The suit, filed in a Washington, DC federal court by NPR and public radio stations in Colorado, claims that Trump’s effort to slash the broadcasters’ congressionally granted funding is unconstitutional. It also alleges that Trump violated the First Amendment by characterizing NPR and PBS as “biased media” and rescinding their federal funding as a result.
The appeal and reach of the broader public radio system is captured in the differing profiles of the three stations joining in the suit.
Congress allocates money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting two years in advance to insulate public broadcasters from political pressure over fleeting controversies. The CPB was authorized by Congressional statute but set up as a private corporation. Indeed, the organization is itself suing Trump over an earlier decree, in which he claimed to be firing three of the five members of CPB’s board of directors.
NPR’s Maher rejected such ideological characterizations, pointing to such statements by Trump to argue he was seeking to exact illegal retribution for their news coverage.
A Senator Supremum on the National Broadcasting Corporation’s Decision to Fire Its Chiefs: Reply to the NPR & PBS Investigations
The president’s authority is not subject to the jurisdiction of the CPB chief, according to a statement. The funds were directly authorized by Congress and funded by a private nonprofit corporation.
Harrison and CPB have effectively ignored Trump’s orders – retaining, for now, its board members, as the case works through the federal courts – and taking no actions to withhold money from NPR and PBS or the hundreds of stations that send funds to the two national broadcasters.
The relationship is closely intertwined, however, with public radio considering itself an interconnected system. NPR has a weekly audience of more than 43 million Americans, including through its local stations.
Local station reporters are often seen on NPR news magazines and the network often provides editing and guidance for regional collaborations between local stations. The NPRterrestrial distribution system is used to deliver and download content for broadcast. Additionally, the network and its member stations rely on CPB to help acquire rights to broadcast music for use on its shows.
The Republican Party’s United States House of Representatives held a hearing in which they assailed Maher for both her personal social media posts showing a liberal tilt and her journalism before she joined the network. NPR has policies that keep corporate executives from making editorial decisions for the newsroom, she said in her testimony. The New York City public television’s website had a video featuring a drag queen for a show intended for young children. (Kerger said it never ran on television and was taken down.)
This is what Functionalik has to offer. So a spokesperson told me this morning that the president is acting within his lawful authority to ensure that taxpayer dollars don’t go towards funding bias. PBS is not part of this lawsuit but tells me today it’s weighing its options. The Corporation of Public Broadcasting is a private corporation and has already sued the president over his attempts to fire 3 board members. They don’t think he has the power to do that.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp, Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
NPR and three Colorado public radio stations filed a lawsuit Tuesday morning against the Trump White House over the president’s executive order barring Congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS.
FokkenFLIK: So there was this executive order that the president put out on May 1 and then was accompanied by a memo the next day in which, essentially, he said the coverage on NPR and PBS was biased and that he was acting to ensure that that would not be subsidized by federal taxpayer money. The accompanying material made it clear that he thought they were biased against the right, woke and left-wing propaganda, and that denigration that you want that is popular these days in his circles.
KELLY: What are you doing? This effort is meant to make sure that the stakes are clear for local audiences. The response from the White House has been received. What is it saying?
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The president has no authority under the Constitution to act and protect himself from Congress: a reply to the complaint by S. E. Pessio
“The president has no authority under the Constitution to take such actions,” the complaint reads. “On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress.”