Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-Cleveland) introduced a bill in the House this week that would prohibit federal funding for NPR and PBS.
The Defund Government Sponsored Propaganda Act would disallow both indirect and direct federal support of the organizations, "including through the payment of dues to or the purchase of programming from the organization(s) by a public broadcast station," the bill's text reads. The legislation was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
NPR receives about 1% of its funding directly from the federal government, compared to 16% for PBS. Both are also supported by member stations that receive funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a publicly funded non-profit corporation.
WRVO Public Media gets about 7-8% of its budget from federal sources, mainly in the form of Community Service Grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"Defunding public media's Community Service Grants will harm local stations much more than NPR or PBS," said WRVO Station Manager Bill Drake. "For WRVO, this would likely result in a loss of local jobs, including journalists. In an era when local journalism is an increasingly rare commodity, this will make it even more difficult for citizens to learn about the activities of their local officials and other important events in their communities."
Tenney represents the 24th district in Congress, which is a mostly rural area stretching from Jefferson County to western New York near Buffalo, including the cities of Watertown and Oswego. In a statement, she claimed that NPR and PBS have a partisan bias.
"As a former newspaper owner and publisher, I understand the vital role of balanced, non-partisan media," Tenney said. "Unfortunately, these taxpayer-funded outlets have chosen advocacy over accuracy, using public dollars to promote a political agenda rather than report the facts."
This isn't the first time Tenney has gone after public media funding. Last year, she introduced a bill to prohibit federal funding for NPR, though it never made it out of committee.
"WRVO Public Media is proud that we've been able to provide a significant public service to the central New York community for more than 50 years," said Drake. "We offer local and national journalism, emergency information and other programming at no charge to listeners and users which might not otherwise have access to this type of content, all without political bias."
The bill currently has one cosponsor, Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs.
North Country Public Radio contributed to this story.
