Forget Dismissal of CPB's Directors, Just End the Government Subsidies

By Randolph May

President Trump is attempting to fire three of the five members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors. Congress established CPB as a non-profit corporation "which will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government." CPB is challenging the attempted dismissal of the directors in court.

CPB may be a private corporation, but it was created by the government, and it's funded by the government. And its directors are appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. So, whether the president may dismiss its directors at will presents an interesting question, obviously more difficult than that presented by the president's authority to fire the heads of executive branch agencies.

But amidst the current controversy regarding whether, in this age of media abundance, government funding for public broadcasting should be continued, little attention has been paid to the provision in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, under which CPB was created, that declares that the Corporation shall facilitate programming "obtained from diverse sources" and "with strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature."

In evaluating whether CPB directors should be retained or dismissed, a relevant consideration should be the extent to which they have made any efforts to ensure compliance with the "objectivity and balance" requirement in the programming CPB facilitates. The statute put it on their "job sheet," so to speak.

Considering the long-standing pronounced leftist tilt of the programming of PBS and NPR, the recipients of CPB's government funds, I'd say that the directors – maybe many of them from all political stripes – haven't done a very good job in overseeing compliance with the "objectivity and balance" stricture.

So, a question more fundamental than whether the president has authority to dismiss CPB's directors is whether, in this present age of media abundance with outlets catering to all conceivable audiences and interests, taxpayers should continue to be required to subsidize public broadcasting. As I explained in this op-ed a short time ago: "It's Past Time to End Public Broadcasting Subsidies."