The U.S. Senate has until July 18 to vote on a recission package that, if approved, would claw back more than a billion dollars of previously appropriated federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Paula A. Kerger is president and chief executive officer of PBS, the nation's largest non-commercial media organization. She discusses the current threat to previously allocated federal funds for public broadcasting.
Kerger talks with SDPB's Lori Walsh about what's at stake for rural stations in South Dakota.
Lori Walsh:
You have been to South Dakota several times, correct?
Paula Kerger:
I have.
Lori Walsh:
And you're well aware of our operation and other, especially rural operations, throughout the country. How are they being affected by the the possible rescission of funding?
Paula Kerger:
I have in fact been to both Rapid City and to Sioux Falls, to both of your facilities there. I've seen firsthand the great work that you do in South Dakota and how important the station is in the community. And I think what is lost in the discussions right now about funding of public broadcasting is the fact that most of the money goes to support local stations.
This whole great idea that came about out of the Public Broadcasting Act in the late 60s when this was all put together is that this country prior to then did not really have anything like the BBC or any of these other public broadcasters. We had commercial television, which was great, but that wouldn't necessarily do all of the things that public broadcasting would do.
And so in many countries, public broadcasting is funded almost wholly by the government. Here, not. It's a public-private partnership. And in some parts of the country, the percentage of funding that comes from the public side is a little bit smaller, but in many rural parts of the country, it's more significant.
You have to cover a big geographic area, you have a lot of different challenges than if you're in a metropolitan area, and I think that people just don't realize that most of the money that comes in from the government goes directly to stations, and that in aggregate, it's about 15%.
It sounds like a number that maybe could be worked through, but in some cases 30 or 40% of the station's budget is federal appropriation. It'd be very hard to replace those funds.
Lori Walsh:
For tribal stations in South Dakota, it's much higher as well.
Paula Kerger:
Exactly. And that's the risk. I mean, it's an existential risk if you're talking about an immediate cut of such huge proportions.
Lori Walsh:
The U.S. Senate has until July 18th to vote on the rescission package, which was passed by the House, which would claw back more than a billion dollars from PBS and NPR. What is the political work that needs to be done this week and where do you stand?
Paula Kerger:
As you just said, the House voted to approve. It was close. It was a two vote difference, and so now it moves to the Senate and it must go through the Senate by the 18th of July or the bill dies and then the funds stand.
This is monies that have been appropriated out of the last two budget years for public broadcasting. So this money has already been put aside in a bipartisan way by Republicans and Democrats on behalf of public broadcasting.
And so we have this week and next week to make sure that we are reaching out to every legislator, every senator who will be voting and to make sure that they understand the consequence of these votes.
I passionately believe in our democracy. I passionately believe that people for the most part go to Washington with this idea that they want to serve their states, that they want to serve their constituents and their communities, they want to do what is going to be important for the life of the people that they serve, and I think they really do need to understand that these are dollars that are going to stations in their communities in many states, and I think South Dakota is one.
I think you're the only remaining stations that are locally owned by the community. I think it's really important that people understand that this is at risk, and so we are reaching out to as many people as we can just to say, "Look, this is the circumstance. If you care about this, you have an opportunity to let your voice be heard. You should reach out to your senators and just let them know that this is something that you value and that you would like to see continue."
Lori Walsh:
We've heard talk of a variety of amendments. Are there amendments that you find acceptable or interesting to talk more about?
Paula Kerger:
We're in a bill that includes public broadcasting and also is some foreign aid. It's an unusual coming together of things that don't necessarily fit together.
There are some members of Congress that have been very concerned about funding for PEPFAR. That is one of the programs that would be defunded, that was a George Bush initiative that has had very wide bipartisan support. And so there are concerns about that.
A number of people are very concerned about public broadcasting. There have been discussions about pieces of this bill that could be pulled out. PEPFAR has been specifically named, we have been named. It's possible we could be pulled out and the bill could go forward.
There have been some discussions about putting restrictions on the funding, and some have suggested, "Well, maybe news is the problem. Maybe we should just cut out news."
That's a pretty important part of what we deliver. And I think once Congress starts to make decisions about what is appropriate to fund and not appropriate to fund around the content, that begins to pierce what has always been a very strong firewall between federal funding coming into public broadcasting and our ability to do our work.
And so that I think is problematic. There have been some discussions about potentially reducing the amount of funding. That would be difficult, but I think of all the not-great options, that would be the less not great option. So we haven't seen anything yet; I can't tell you what this actually will look like, but I am hopeful that we will make our case.
Just remember, in addition to being broadcasters, we also use our infrastructure as part of the emergency alert system for this country. We are very much responsible for ensuring that information is traveling out, not just through digital, but also through broadcast.
If you have been anywhere during an emergency, you know that digital infrastructure is not always as robust. We've all been in circumstances where you can't get a phone call out because some people are trying to use the network at the same time. And broadcast is a one-to-many infrastructure.
In public broadcasting, we're always looking for ways that we can use all of the tools that we have for the service of people in our community. And that's everything from providing content for young children to providing news to providing cultural programming, plus using our infrastructure in ways that is in the public interest. And so again, this is something else that is at risk. If we can't cover the entire country, which we do right now through our broadcast service, then that puts that at risk as well.
Lori Walsh:
For people who said (you mentioned the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967) for people who say it's not 1967 anymore, if you want children's programming, for example, just carving out a small portion of what PBS does, you could go on YouTube and find 10,000 different children's program examples. How do you respond to people to address the idea of whether or not PBS is relevant in a new century?
Paula Kerger:
I mean, kids is an especially profound example. There is a lot of content on YouTube. Some of it is good, some of it is not so good. None of it, or very little of it, is similar to what we do.
Our content is all based on a very rigorous framework of a curriculum based on what kids need to learn before they enter school for the first time, whether that's at the age of three or four or five. Half the kids in this country are not in formal pre-K, and our kids' content was created with the idea that through broadcast, because we reach out into every home, we can give kids and families the information and the content they need in a way that's entertaining and engaging for them. Because believe me, if they don't like watching it, they're not going to watch it. But all based on those core skills.
And there is no one in this business. I point a lot to the fact that we use the same tools of other media organizations, but we're just in a profoundly different business and there's none I think more powerful than kids.
We have a legacy of many decades of work going back to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers of producing content that is safe. Adults in our programs are not diminished in any way. We've all watched children's television where it seems like all the adults are idiots and all the kids are sort of running the family. And that's not how our shows are constructed. Our shows are constructed based on how real families live and are empowering to help kids be curious about the world and to learn their basic numbers and letters. And that I think is profoundly important.
And if you spend a lot of time in children's media, if you spend a lot of time on YouTube, not all of it is stuff that you want your kids to watch. The either number one or number two show for kids on YouTube is Mr. Beast, which has nothing to do with helping kids be prepared for school.
I think that's something that we are, as we look to the future, looking to continue to do even more in deeper work to make sure that kids are really well-prepared for their lives ahead.
Lori Walsh:
The other main criticism I'm sure you know is that public broadcasting is a "liberal forum for public affairs and journalism." You mentioned this desire to perhaps carve out funding from news to eliminate that aspect of what goes out over the air. Do you accept that criticism that this is a liberal form for public affairs programming and journalism?
Paula Kerger:
No. We are deeply committed to bringing news and information to the people that we serve. Our news programming is news. Frontline is our investigative journalism series at a time when there is very little investigative journalism, and it is committed to really looking at the significant issues that sit around us.
We have point of view programming. We try to bring together lots of different perspectives. Bill Buckley started Firing Line on PBS. It continues on with Margaret Hoover. We just launched a new series called Deadlock. The whole idea behind that is to bring people together of vastly different opinions, not just to talk over each other and debate, but to walk through hypothetical scenarios around real life circumstances that we're dealing with now, questions around voter integrity and executive power and so forth, and get people to actually sort of work through their positions in a way that hopefully will allow people to come together and understand one another.
We look at programs that help us understand how we've come to this place we are now. The best example that sits right in front of us is next year we'll celebrate our 250th anniversary. Ken Burns has an extraordinary series, 12-hour series, on the American Revolution, which I think every person that will watch will have a deeper and better understanding of where our origin story began and where we, as a nation, aspire to be. All of these are programs that are deeply appreciated by people on both sides of the aisle.
Lori Walsh:
Can you articulate the difference between public broadcasting and a commercially run station that is responsible to shareholders and commercial interests? What is the difference? Because people don't always see it on air, they can't always identify it. Is that a behind the scenes thing where you really see how those decisions are being made, or can you identify it from watching the broadcast?
Paula Kerger:
Some of it I think you can certainly see, and some of it is the decisions that get made with the kinds of programming that we bring forward.
If your goal is to sell product, you will put programming on the air that will be entertaining and that will keep people watching and enjoying what you're watching.
If your goal is to be of public service, you make different decisions, you tell stories that may not be as well told, you look to bring forward ideas and perspectives. Again, as I said a few minutes ago, I always view us as being just in an entirely different business. We just happened to use the same tools as others.
And I'm not for a moment diminishing what commercial television does. There's some really great entertaining programming on commercial television. And in fact, some ideas for commercial television come from public television. I mean, remember we started with Julia Child, a whole idea of cooking as not just something that you do in your kitchen but that you watch on television.
You look at so many programs that we produce that hopefully will be inspirational, that will give you just different perspectives, maybe challenge your thoughts about different things, that's the role that we play. And again, different than the commercial broadcasters, where if you look at natural history programming (which we've done a lot over the years), it's not all sharks all the time, which another channel may be tempted to do because sharks are popular and interesting.
We want to be able to show the broad spectrum of life on earth. And that's again, what a public service broadcaster does, a little different than what a commercial broadcaster might do.
Lori Walsh:
What do you want people to do now? What do you want them to be paying attention to? Maybe they have already sent their letters, and what is your ask?
Paula Kerger:
Yeah, I would say that again, we're now up to the 11th hour. I mean the decisions will be made within the next week. And so again, if this is something that people care about, even if you've written once before, write again and just make sure that your senators know that this is something that you do care deeply about.
And as I always say, and of course, support your local public television station and public radio station. South Dakota Public Broadcasting is an extraordinary jewel. I've had the great privilege in the time that I've been in this job, traveling all around the country and meeting so many people involved in public broadcasting, and we have great stations everywhere. You have an extraordinary station in South Dakota, so please make sure that you're supporting it as generously as you can.
Lori Walsh:
Paula Kerger, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time.
Paula Kerger:
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
