Update: WNET has returned the grant says NYTimes. See update at end of diary.
I hate to write this diary. I once wrote the license and grant applications for my home town's public TV station, and worked in public broadcasting for 10 years.
But both the public radio and TV stations that I helped to found became institutions, and volunteers were discouraged from free expression, particularly about politics and environmental concerns, and I went back to college and on to several other careers.
Until several years ago, I still had faith that the national public broadcasting news organizations were independent and balanced. But then NPR began giving concern trolls Mara Eliason and Juan Williams more and more air time until Williams finally crossed the line and was axed, but I still grit my teeth at Mara's negativism almost every morning.
Well, I thought, at least the PBS News Hour is reporting fairly, even though they give far too much unchallenged air time on their talk segments to right wing pundits as if their lies actually had validity.
But then I was tipped to David Sirota's story on Pando.com today about how the PBS News Hour has been running news segments touting the anti public employee retirement agenda of former Enron trader John Arnold and his Arnold Foundation, funded by his foundation without acknowledging the funding source.
More below the orange smokescreen.
In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.
Apparently WNET officials proposed the series to the Arnold Foundation, in violation of PBS program funding guidelines, and have done their best to hide details of the grant agreement and have failed to publicly attribute funding for the anti-retirement series on the air.
The foundation’s spokesperson said PBS executives approached Arnold “with the proposal for the series, having become aware of LJAF’s interest” in shaping public pension policy, and moving that policy toward cutting retirement benefits for public workers.
According to newly posted disclosures about its 2013 grantmaking, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation responded to PBS’s tailored proposal by donating a whopping $3.5 million to WNET, the PBS flagship station that is coordinating the “Pension Peril” series for distribution across the country. The $3.5 million, which is earmarked for “educat(ing) the public about public employees’ retirement benefits,” is one of the foundation’s largest single disclosed expenditures. WNET spokesperson Kellie Specter confirmed to Pando that the huge sum makes Arnold the “anchor/lead funder of the initiative.” A single note buried on PBS’s website – but not repeated in such explicit terms on PBS airwaves – confirms that the money is directly financing the “Pension Peril” series.
With PBS’s “Pension Peril” series echoing many of the same pension-cutting themes that the Arnold Foundation is promoting in the legislative arena, and with the series not explicitly disclosing the Arnold financing to PBS viewers, the foundation’s spokesperson says her organization is happy with the segments airing on stations throughout the country. However, she says the foundation reserves “the ability to stop funding” the series at any time “in the event of extraordinary circumstances.”
in each episode of the Arnold/PBS series that has aired, the reporting has followed the Arnold Foundation’s rhetorical lead by forwarding the idea that pension benefit cuts should be the primary policy solution to public budget problems. It does this by promoting the need for cuts to guaranteed retirement incomes and/or by refusing to mention that pension shortfalls are dwarfed by the amount state and local governments collectively spend each year on corporate subsidies (many of which do not create jobs).
Well, I guess I know what to write on the direct mail pledge request from my local PBS station: no money for them until the News Hour fixes this!
Jim Lehrer in semi-retirement, are you listening?
Update: WNET has returned the grant, thanks to Sirota's expose!
On Friday, the New York Times reported
WNET to Return $3.5 Million Grant for Pension Series
WNET, the New York City public television broadcaster, said on Friday that it would return a $3.5 million grant it received to sponsor an ambitious project on public pensions in the face of charges that it solicited inappropriate underwriting for the series.
In the absence of the funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the project, called “Pension Peril,” will go on hiatus, although WNET will continue to report on the topic. The series, which began in September, was examining the economic sustainability of public pensions.
Sunshine is the best cure!