The President/CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has responded to Sen. Ted Cruz‘s questions and opinions regarding the group’s Community Service Grant program and CPB’s commitment to diversity, objectivity and balance.
As the leading Republican sees it, CPB has a “mandate” that broadcast stations “must engage in affirmative action to qualify for grant funding.”
In a letter sent to Cruz just before the Christmas holiday weekend, Patricia Harrison outlined how The Public Broadcasting Act tasks CPB with supporting telecommunications services that “will constitute an expression of diversity” and to “encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.”
She explained how CPB defines diversity “broadly” as Congress implied in the Act, including geography, age, economic status, ethnicity, gender, race, ability/disability, and point of view. “This inclusive definition informs what CPB does to fulfill its principal statutory responsibilities to fund public media content and administer the Community Service Grants,” Harrison wrote in the letter sent to Cruz on December 22.
Harrison then addressed, point by point, “certain opinions or conclusions” addressed in a letter from Cruz to Harrison asking her to respond — a form of an inquiry that requires some level of response. She first tackles the claim that CPB is restricting its grant to stations that strive to be “diverse” by considering race and ethnicity in hiring and workforce development, rather than as a mandate to fund different types of TV and radio stations.
Her reply? “CPB’s current and former CSG diversity policies do not require any unlawful
employment preferences or quotas.” Harrison continues, “CPB encourages its CSG grantees to reflect their local communities in their employment and governing boards under this definition of diversity. They are no more discriminatory than the policies for federal agencies with which CPB, as a private corporation, voluntarily complies. Hiring decisions are still based on non-discriminatory selection of the best qualified applicants. Moreover, CPB has never denied a CSG to a station based on its diversity requirements.”
In response to a second claim from Cruz, which purports to state CPB board members openly discuss circumventing civil rights laws to allow for unlawful discrimination, Harrison states, “Under 47 U.S.C. § 396(k)(4), CPB’s Board of Directors meets to consider policies
and initiatives affecting CPB’s mission, ensure compliance with the law, and provide clear
direction on corporate strategies and initiatives which management must execute. CPB’s Code of Ethics charges Directors with three fiduciary duties to the Corporation: Loyalty, Care, and Candor. The latter two ensure that Directors are fully informed of the facts necessary to make decisions about CPB policy, and that they disclose to their fellow directors everything they know that is relevant to the Board’s consideration of the issues before it.”
COMMUNITY REPRESENTATION DEFINED
At its October 2023 meeting, the Board reviewed CPB’s 2011 policy requiring CSG recipients to produce and publish a 500-word statement reflecting on elements of diversity they found important to their public media work, including the extent to which their staff and governance reflected such diversity. As Harrison sees it, this also included a review of the progress they had made to increase diversity in the last two to three years and the station’s diversity plans for the coming year.
The Board approved a change in the 2011 policy that eliminated the 500-word statement requirement and instead required stations to publish a “community representation statement.”
Thus, Harrison argues, “The Board’s full discussion of the issue and of management’s recommendation reflect no discriminatory intent or consequences. The Board decided to simplify the CSG diversity policy solely because (a) the Inspector General’s limited review audits found that several stations failed to comply with its non-substantive requirements; (b) the policy unnecessarily overlapped existing FCC and EEOC requirements, as well as CPB’s civil rights enforcement responsibilities under 47 U.S.C. § 398; and (c) emerging state laws barring DEI activities or initiatives could potentially disqualify state-owned public media stations from accepting CSG funds.”
The Board, therefore, revised the policy to require a brief community representation statement with fewer detailed requirements, Harrison says, adding, “Importantly, the revised policy is equally non-discriminatory.”
To read Patricia Harrison’s response to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in its entirety, please click here.
