NPR Takes CPB to Court Over Interconnection Funds
NPR and CPB are battling in court over the disbursement of interconnection funds, according to documents filed Friday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. NPR wants a federal judge to force CPB to distribute public radio interconnection funds to NPR stations, it said in motions for a preliminary injunction and summary judgment. CPB filed its own motion for summary judgment the same day, arguing that NPR’s lawsuit would prevent CPB from “serving its Congressionally mandated role to serve as the steward of public dollars for public media.”
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There's “a veritable arsenal of smoking guns” showing that CPB’s actions to stall the disbursement of funds for NPR’s public radio satellite system (PRSS) were based on government pressure over its perceived viewpoints, the network's filings said.
In September, CPB awarded a $57.9 million grant of funds appropriated to support interconnection to a newly created coalition of public radio stations (see 2509260060). For decades, such grants for interconnection had gone to the NPR-owned PRSS. Under pressure from the Trump administration, CPB reversed a grant it had already voted to pay NPR, pushed NPR to spin off the PRSS and awarded “nearly $58 million in federal public radio interconnection funding that CPB had previously told Congress would go to NPR to support the PRSS to an entity that does not exist,” said NPR’s filing.
In its motion for summary judgment, CPB condemned NPR's arguments. “Far from an attempt to vindicate First Amendment rights, this lawsuit is an anti-competitive gambit aimed at entrenching a monopoly over taxpayer dollars that the law simply does not grant NPR.” NPR’s filing argued that CPB’s actions toward the PRSS were a response to the White House executive order on defunding NPR and PBS, but CPB noted that it has argued in court that it isn’t subject to the executive branch or bound by that order. CPB said it was advised by consultants before President Donald Trump’s reelection that the interconnection system “needed reformed governance.”
CPB “cut off NPR’s interconnection funding to give a political ‘win’ to the Trump Administration and the President’s congressional allies,” said NPR. “In doing so, it effectuated the Administration’s patent desire to punish NPR for the content of its journalism in violation of the First Amendment.” NPR’s filings also argued that the Public Broadcasting Act bars CPB from awarding satellite interconnection funds to any entity but NPR. Money appropriated for interconnection is held separate from other federal dollars for public broadcasting, and the statute requires it to be distributed to the broadcasters participating in the PRSS, NPR said.
CPB said the law refers to money in the “Satellite Interconnection Fund,” and the most recent appropriation didn’t use that term. But NPR countered that the appropriations language otherwise mirrored past appropriations for funding the PRSS. CPB’s interpretation that “magic words” are required would invalidate provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act, NPR said.
All past interconnection grants have involved a grant agreement with NPR, CPB noted, and the funds in question aren’t currently the subject of such an agreement. It added that the law doesn’t constrain it from awarding the interconnection funds to the newly created nonprofit Public Media Infrastructure, which consists of public radio entities including New York Public Radio, Station Resource Group, American Public Media Group and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. That coalition submitted a bid that was chosen by an independent consultant as the superior bid, CPB said. “And that is what NPR’s claim in this Court -- masked as one grounded in ‘the First Amendment’ -- is really all about,” said the CPB filing.
NPR said it wants the court to permanently enjoin CPB from disbursing the interconnection funds to other entities and require that they go to NPR. But CPB argued that it “cannot have tortiously interfered with NPR’s contracts because NPR’s contracts did not entitle NPR to the funding it seeks.”