Argues diversity conditions on NPR, PBS stations post-SCOTUS Harvard admission decision flout civil rights laws 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently sent a letter to Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison, expressing objections to a CPB mandate that radio and television stations must engage in affirmative action to qualify for grant funding. The letter, which comes ahead of a CPB Directors meeting on Monday, December 11, 2023, reveals how CPB board members recently voted to modify existing affirmative action mandates for publicly-funded media outlets like National Public Radio as a workaround to state anti-DEI legislation.

After this summer’s Supreme Court ruling that affirmative action, which considers traits like race as a plus-factor in college admissions or employment, violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, Sen. Cruz’s letter questions the legality of the requirements. The letter also details discussions about the amendment at CPB’s recent annual board meeting.

As Sen. Cruz wrote,

The Public Broadcasting Act states that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“CPB”) should support telecommunications services “which will constitute an expression of diversity.” This is a mandate to fund different types of television and radio stations, broadening the range of public media content. Yet CPB has misconstrued such statutory language to restrict its community service grants (“CSGs”) to stations that strive to be “diverse” by considering traits like race and ethnicity in hiring and workforce development. Meanwhile, CPB board members openly discuss circumventing civil rights laws to allow for unlawful discrimination.

In a particularly ironic example, CPB’s Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) chided two Native American-owned radio stations earlier this year for not meeting CSG diversity requirements. The OIG complained that the stations’ published diversity statements were too short; failed to adequately disclose employee gender, ethnicity, or race; and lacked specific action items. The fact that the stations offered distinctive perspectives from the Zuni and Ojibwa peoples was seemingly insufficient. CPB subsequently revised its diversity rules, perhaps recognizing it would be awkward for radio stations operated by Native Americans to lose funding for lacking sufficient ethnic diversity. But even as it made the rules more open-ended, CPB insisted it was not diluting its commitment to “diversity.” In fact, CPB directors and staff explained that the change was partly driven by a separate consideration: the need to evade state anti-DEI laws and fend off legal challenges in the aftermath of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. […]

CSG diversity requirements originated with an Obama-era review of television grants. A review panel said public media should “ensure that the composition of boards and staff, especially senior management, be at least as diverse as the communities they serve.” Before long, CPB had amended its eligibility criteria for both television and radio CSGs to add “diversity of staff and board” conditions for funding. […]

These requirements remained in place as of 2023, when the CPB OIG began evaluating stations’ compliance with what were by then called the “diversity statement” rules. After it became clear that none of the reviewed stations were compliant, the CPB Board of Directors decided to relax the eligibility criteria for television and radio CSGs. […]

Under the guise of diversity, CPB in fact stifles cultural and ideological diversity in public television and radio at a time when trust in mass media is at an all-time low.

CPB must strike a balance of encouraging objectivity in programs it funds without exercising editorial control or infringing on stations’ creative independence. But the way the CSG diversity amendment was debated—the tacit, but indifferent, recognition that the rules might violate the Constitution’s promise of equality; the knowing allusions to “our values” while excoriating “places like that”—suggests that CPB already knows which side it’s on. And that makes it less capable of fulfilling its statutory mission. The truth is that CPB can support a diversity of stations and programs without auditing individual stations to ensure their employees’ races align with the five racial categories CPB recognizes. It can respect editorial independence without paying PBS to regurgitate Hamas propaganda blaming Israel for an explosion at a Gaza hospital or NPR to blithely air audio of a surgical abortion.

Read the full text of this letter HERE.

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