An attempt to force a House vote on defunding NPR has failed, but the GOP shows no sign of stopping. | REUTERS Will GOP take the P out of NPR?

National Public Radio is facing the most serious threat to the "public" part of its identity since Newt Gingrich’s days as speaker, thanks to a resurgent, tea-party-inspired Republican House with budget cuts on its mind and recent stumbles that have left the broadcaster vulnerable to its ideological critics on the right.

By far the greatest and most galvanizing of these issues was the firing of Juan Williams. But some Republicans also are seething over NPR’s announcement of a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, founded by financier George Soros, just a few days before Williams was fired.


Republicans, such as Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Reps. Darrell Issa of California and Eric Cantor of Virginia — as well as conservative commentators, such as Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck — have cited the grant in their calls to strip federal funding from NPR.

Budget hawks like Cantor say the grant proves NPR doesn’t need to rely on government money. But the culture warriors, like DeMint and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), go much further — arguing that NPR’s acceptance of the grant is proof of a leftist agenda.

“Open Society Foundations is essentially another name for George Soros, who is a committed leftist, one-world-government ideologue,” Franks told POLITICO in an interview, adding that NPR’s acceptance of the grant is “evidence of an underlying, hardcore left-wing bias that begs my ability to articulate.”

NPR denies any such bias and is standing by its decision to solicit the contribution from the Open Society group, which funds journalism initiatives as a means of fulfilling its mission of building “vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.”

But Republicans are gearing up to make another run at NPR’s funding next year — and at least one NPR board member thinks the network itself vulnerable to Republican criticism by taking the Open Society grant.

“In retrospect, knowing what I know now, would I rather that the first money had come from somewhere else? Probably yes,” said Steve Bass, president and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting and a member of NPR’s board. But, he added, “I know the folks at NPR very well, and we have very strong editorial guidelines.”

Still, NPR’s decision to take “ Soros money” has turned into a political gift to the Republicans, allowing the party to go after a longtime favorite target in public media with the new and shiny culture war weapon of Soros, while scoring political points for getting tough on federal spending.

The grant came just as NPR was at its most politically vulnerable, as a tea-party-tinged wave of Republicans swept in to take over the House, having made big promises on the campaign trail about cutting spending. The Juan Williams firing in October for comments he made about Muslims on Fox News was a spark to this political kindling, creating the strongest movement to defund NPR since the mid-90s.

A November attempt to force a House vote on a bill to defund NPR failed, but Republicans show no signs of stopping. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado, who this summer introduced a bill to defund the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting, last week joined several other House Republicans in requesting that the Government Accountability Office investigate exactly how much federal money is flowing into NPR’s coffers. According to NPR, only about two percent of its budget comes directly from the CPB, but the member stations that pay NPR fees also receive about 10 percent of their budgets from the CPB.



To be sure, the Soros grant is a tiny fraction of NPR’s annual operating budget of $161.8 million. NPR gets much larger grants from other groups, such as the John D. and Catherin T. MacArthur Foundation, which are not the focus of Republican attacks.

But the Open Society grant to NPR came at a time when Soros was trying to cement his role as the definitive bogeyman of the right.

Soros first drew the right's attention in 2004, when he spent millions on MoveOn.org and other outside groups in an attempt to defeat President George W. Bush. He also contributed to the Democratic National Committee and was an early supporter of President Barack Obama. The same week Open Society announced its grant to NPR, Soros’s group, in effect, poked the Republicans’ favorite cable network in the eye by contributing $1 million to the left-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America to “more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

Soros’s defenders have pointed out recently that those who accuse him of being a socialist or Marxist overlook that much of his political activity helped bring down Communist regimes in the former Soviet bloc.

Still, criticism from the right has grown larger and louder, with Fox’s Beck devoting three highly controversial shows in November to “the progressive puppet master.” Also, this past summer, a convicted felon in California armed himself and targeted staff at the Tides Foundation because, he said, of the organization's ties to Soros.

NPR officials say political considerations did not figure into the decision to accept the grant.

The grant emerged from discussions that began in December of last year, as NPR was planning a new journalism initiative that would put government reporters in all 50 state capitals.

The foundation “has always maintained that one of the central tenets of an open society is a free and independent press that can serve as a watchdog of both government and the private sector,” said Maria Archuleta, a spokeswoman for Open Society, which shares NPR’s concerns about what the decline in print journalism has done to state and local reporting.

NPR has had an “ongoing relationship” with Open Society since the late 1990s, but it was not the only foundation that the broadcaster approached, said Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior vice president for marketing, communications and external relations. “As is typical in foundation fundraising, you reach out to a number of organizations whose missions seem to correlate with what you are trying to accomplish,” she said.

Open Society's program staff invited NPR to submit a draft proposal in April 2010 and a full proposal in June.

“Obviously, we are aware of George Soros’s connection with Open Society Foundations, but that hasn’t been a focal point of our conversation,” Rehm said. “We don’t have a litmus test of our donors in terms of eligibility to fund us. If they have a vision that aligns with our mission, and it is a professional foundation, why should we not talk to them?”

Dave Edwards, chairman of NPR’s Board of Directors and general manager of Milwaukee Public Radio, said he has no regrets about accepting the grant “because I’m satisfied it would have no undue influence on our programming.”

Bob Stein, principal of Major Giving, a fundraising consulting firm that does a lot of work with public radio, pointed out that $1.8 million was “not a lot of money” relative to NPR’s total budget.

“My guess is that they probably didn’t think it was going to be seized upon by the Republicans and exploited,” he said.

But timing is everything. The grant was approved in mid-August but was not announced until mid-October, during a week that ended with Williams’s firing.

Rehm noted that while some media coverage of the grant focused on Soros’s controversial profile, “that wasn’t the focus of the media until after the Juan Williams story.”

The day that story dominated the news cycle, Oct. 21, O’Reilly devoted his “Talking Points” commentary to it, calling on NPR CEO Vivian Schiller to resign and tying the matter to the grant from “far-left bomb thrower George Soros,” which he called “a disgrace.”

The day after the Williams firing hit the news, Issa called attention to the grant in his criticism of NPR, The Hill reported.

“With NPR benefitting from the generosity of people like MoveOn.org financier George Soros, it’s obvious that NPR is now a self-sustaining entity that no longer needs to rely on federal funds,” Issa said. “As an independent entity, they will be free to serve Mr. Soros’s far-left agenda.”

Cantor, the new majority leader, championed the failed attempt to defund NPR through the House Republicans’ YouCut program last month, but has so far kept his rhetorical focus on the Williams firing when criticizing NPR.

The Open Society grant showed “that NPR doesn’t need to rely on taxpayer funding,” a spokesman for Cantor’s office said.

But it does rely very heavily on donations from listeners, and many NPR supporters feared that the Williams firing, coming as it did in the middle of many member stations’ fall fund drives, would put a dent in the overall haul.

But so far, this seems not to be the case. Deb Turner, executive director of the Leadership for Philanthropy initiative at DEI, public radio’s fundraising and marketing service organization, conducted a limited survey of member stations’ fundraising goals in the wake of the Williams affair.

“In a general sense, I think most stations have not felt an impact fundraising-wise from that situation either way, really,” she said. “Except for a few stations that are in a more conservative part of the country.”

Doug Eichten, president of DEI, said most stations he has talked to exceeded their fundraising goals, but “that doesn’t mean that their life didn’t change a little bit during that time.”

Bill Davis, president and chief executive of Southern California Public Radio, said the fund drive that his station completed last month “was one of the two best on-air fundraisers that we’ve had in the station’s history.” Meanwhile, Betsy Gardella, president and CEO of New Hampshire Public Radio and an NPR board member, said the station had “the most successful fall fund drive that we’ve ever had.”

Strong fundraising numbers are a boon for Schiller, who, in addition to coming under attack from Republicans and conservative commentators, is having NPR’s handling of Williams's firing reviewed by the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Edwards expects the review to be finished by the end of the year, although there is no firm deadline.

“The board is very interested in having the report sooner rather than later so we can have all the information about what happened,” he said. “Some people have suggested that the board take some action, but we’ve got to have all the facts before we can react.”

Although Schiller apologized for the way the firing was handled, some member station executives questioned her ability to lead NPR throughout the political battle ahead during a meeting two days after Republicans swept the midterms, Current reported. So far, Schiller maintains the board’s support.

The board met on Nov. 12, and “we walked out of that meeting supporting Vivian,” Bass said.

Rehm emphasized that Schiller was also put in charge of the ethics review at that meeting, which represented another vote of confidence.

But if Schiller remains, she is likely to also remain a lightning rod for Republican criticism. Last month, for instance, Franks signed a letter by his colleague Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) that called on Schiller to resign.

And most within the public radio world are bracing for the real fight to begin once Republicans officially take control of the House in the new year.

Cantor’s spokesman said another YouCut vote on defunding NPR next year is “certainly an option.”

“My guess is, when the Republicans come back into session, Capitol Hill will be a much hotter landing zone for public broadcasting,” Davis said. “And we are going to need to get our ducks in a row.”