The chasm is widening between NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that funneled federal dollars to public media until Congress killed that funding earlier this year.
NPR's legal team privately questioned the CPB's longtime chief executive, Patricia Harrison, under oath earlier this month, according to the radio network's legal filings, and is scheduled to do so publicly at a court hearing Tuesday morning.
In court documents, NPR has presented evidence to bolster its case that the board of the nonprofit corporation first approved a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract for NPR to operate a satellite distribution system for public radio stations. Then, NPR alleges, CPB unlawfully yielded to political pressure by yanking the contract just days after President Trump warned that NPR should receive no more federal dollars. NPR contends it is yet one more example of a major institution yielding to the president's whim.
CPB rejects that, saying that it awarded the contract to a different group to better serve the nation's diverse array of public radio stations. NPR and CPB each declined comment for this story, citing the litigation.
The two institutions — along with PBS — have stood together at the core of public media for more than a half century. They formed a united front, at least publicly, as they lobbied lawmakers against clawing back the $1.1 billion already approved by Congress and signed into law by the president for the broader public media system.
Behind the scenes, however, CPB and PBS officials signaled they would not object to pulling funding for NPR, which has drawn the lion's share of Republicans' accusations of liberal bias.
A White House budget official warns CPB of her "intense dislike for NPR"
NPR's legal documents offer the following chronology: In late March and early April, Trump called NPR and PBS "monsters" and demanded Congress eliminate federal funds for them.
On April 2, CPB's board directed officials to negotiate the fine print of a contract with NPR to operate the satellite for the next three years, according to NPR's filings. The radio network has operated the system, through which local radio stations receive and share programs, podcasts and other content, for four decades.
Two days later, a senior White House budget official met with three CPB executives.
"It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bath water," the administration official, Katherine Sullivan, said, according to accounts from CPB officials cited by NPR in its legal filings. She suggested CPB could salvage its future and relayed her "intense dislike for NPR," Harrison wrote to NPR CEO Katherine Maher a few days later, according to NPR's recent filings in the case.
Harrison expressed deep fears that the White House could take an ax to CPB and public media more broadly. "These rumors have potential to turn into boy who cried wolf," Harrison wrote in her email to Maher. "Except the wolf is really coming." Within days, CPB's board moved to direct executives to refashion the terms of the contract so it could only be granted to an entity that stood entirely apart from NPR.
Even as they moved to sever the NPR contract, and linked the decision privately to the political climate, court documents show several CPB executives told a newly hired Republican consultant they could not simply announce they were withdrawing the satellite contract from NPR to appease the White House.
"There are obvious political challenges, but we can't 'own that' outright," Debra Sanchez, CPB's chief of staff, wrote to the Republican consultant, Carl Forti, in one of several such exchanges captured in NPR's court filings. "So we are in a tight spot sort of. What are the strongest messages we can make about the 'why' or the 'because?'"
For all those efforts, when Trump and his Republican allies in Congress stripped public media of subsidies, it was the beginning of the end of CPB. The nonprofit laid off most of its staff last month and expects to shut down in January. Layoffs also have ensued at PBS and many public media stations.
NPR and CPB are battling in court over a separate pot of money, worth tens of millions of dollars, to operate the satellite system.
CPB argues NPR and public media stations may have separate interests
CPB argues that NPR is wrongfully acting as though it is entitled to operate the satellite in perpetuity. Its legal team has waved off NPR's arguments that it acted due to political pressure. Instead, CPB contends that, with the elimination of federal subsidies, the radio network's interests may diverge from those of local public media stations. CPB's lawyers say the decision to grant the contract to another group is intended to ensure that stations' long-term interests are protected.
The offer pulled from NPR — a three-year contract worth nearly $36 million — pales in comparison to the new one announced in September. That one is valued at $57 million over five years. CPB has awarded it to a consortium that includes New York Public Radio, American Public Media, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and a consulting firm called the Station Resource Group, among them. It is called Public Media Infrastructure, reviving the dormant nonprofit Public Radio International.
Earlier this month, Harrison told officials at public media stations receiving a final round of federal grants that she would be compelled to reveal unflattering critiques of NPR's leadership as a result of the litigation.
"As this lawsuit moves forward, CPB will be required to place into the public record evidence of its concerns and the concerns of others about NPR's management, its resistance to innovation and reforms that many in our system have urged it to undertake, and its repeated dismissal of the importance of the federal appropriation that sustains public media," Harrison warned Oct. 13 in an email to station officials.
In court filings, CPB says the April decision came "after decades of studies by outside consultants" and embodied "a strategy of having an independent entity that was more inclusive of the broad range of public media entities across the country" than NPR.
NPR alleges political pressure behind a change of mind
By NPR's telling, the allegations represent a case study in what happens when institutions wilt under the president's unprecedented exercise of executive authority. CPB and the Trump administration are co-defendants in this case, which was filed by NPR and three Colorado public radio stations over Trump's executive order which sought to simply order the ending of all federal funding for public media. Yet CPB earlier sued Trump over his efforts to oust its board members, calling that unconstitutional.
As CPB pulled back from the contract understanding with NPR, Sanchez hired Forti, the Republican consultant. On his first day on the job, April 10, he wrote a memo defining CPB's challenge as he saw it: "BIAS: Belief both in Administration and among general public that the media is biased against conservatives and more specifically against Trump. NPR is high on those lists."
That same day, Trump posted online: "NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!"
On April 14 — the same day that news broke that Trump would formally request Congress to rescind all future funding for CPB — CPB Chief Operating Officer Kathy Merritt called her counterpart at NPR, Ryan Merkley, to say the board had changed course. It would no longer award federal money to operate the public radio satellite and distribution system unless it were spun off NPR.
On Capitol Hill, as Trump's push to eliminate all federal subsidies for public radio, CPB executives mapped out a strategy to appeal to Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — red states where statewide public media networks carry broad appeal. (CPB's board chair had previously headed Wyoming PBS.)
But it was to no avail. The senators voted along with all but two of their Republican colleagues to successfully eliminate all funding for public media — helping to seal the fate of CPB.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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