Columbia Journalism Review

The much-discussed President Donald Trump federal budget proposal zeros-out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, both of which also support some public broadcast programming. What not everyone may realize is that the partisan threat to federal funding is at the core of public broadcasting’s origin story a half century ago—and that its first, and unlikely, prime-time stars won fame by allowing the most significant presidential scandal in our history to unfold right in America’s living rooms.

When it was proposed by the 1967 Carnegie Commission, an essential recommendation was that public broadcasting not be subject to the unpredictability and political pressures inherent in the annual congressional budget process. But President Lyndon Johnson'’s decision not to push for a dedicated, politically insulated funding source—like the kind of trust fund supported by an excise tax on television purchases that funded the BBC—meant the creation of a small but highly visible political football that has been kicked around Washington ever since. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established to provide a “heat shield” protecting stations and producers in the system from political pressures that could come with congressional appropriations—an approach that seemed especially wishful after President Richard Nixon took office.

[David M. Stone is executive vice president for communications at Columbia University.]

Public media operations—and loyal listeners—are expected to put up a fierce fight against potential funding cuts. But hanging on to the hope that federal funding will always be around could potentially be a fatal mistake for local stations, former NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller says. All public media players, she says, ought to double down on efforts to court listener support and philanthropic giving as a hedge against the continued, and perhaps complete, reduction of government support.

Schiller notes stations should move aggressively to pursue non-governmental revenue streams. “It would be irresponsible not to have those contingency plans in place, and even without the threat of federal dollars being pulled, it would be irresponsible to not begin to act on ways to replace that money through other sources,” says Schiller.

[Commentary] A spectre is haunting journalism—the spectre of solidarity. For ages the idea of reporters banding together against a common adversary has seemed thoroughly alien to the character of American journalists. We’re back-stabbing, iconoclastic individualists. Could the Age of Trump finally change all of that? Can—and should—journalists join with reporters from other news organizations to meet the journalistic threats posed by Trump? Or to use the phrase of political activism, should reporters “resist”?

There’s a long history of attacks on the press that cried out for collective action, especially during the dark days of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Yet the experiences of the past are instructive—even heartening. They provide a road map of sorts for the rocky terrain that lies ahead.

[Gary Weiss is a New York-based investigative journalist.]

[Commentary] In the end, what kind of change did Edward J. Snowden bring about? In the realm of privacy protection, not much—at least so far. For all the talk on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2013—immediately after the Snowden leaks—about a reassessment of the balance between security and privacy rights, no significant legal changes to the authorities of the National Security Agency or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have passed Congress since the Snowden leaks...

In the end, Snowden’s legacy will be mixed. He wanted to be known for the changes he would bring about in altering the government’s monitoring of American citizens. That seems unlikely. But he opened the world’s eyes to a new world of surveillance and cyberwarfare. There, what he revealed cannot be stuffed back into a black box—and will change the way we view American power over the next decade.

[David E. Sanger is chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.]

A Breitbart new editor called the publication he recently joined “the most innovative and exciting source of journalism in America”, calling out mainstream media bias and inaccuracy while accepting no similar responsibility for the misleading and at times incendiary work for which his organization is criticized. “The real threat to public confidence in the media is all these demonstrably false stories that our colleagues have produced,” Breitbart economics editor John Carney told a packed audience at Columbia Journalism School. “I don’t think you’re reading a lot of false news in Breitbart.”

Carney asked his fellow panelists, “Do you think you have enough people who understand and sympathize with Trump’s worldview in your news organizations or do you think you are predominantly staffed by people who view Trump’s point of view as not just wrong but probably also evil?” To which, New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller responded, “Do you have enough people in your organization who disagree with Trump’s point of view?”

[Commentary] The 2016 Presidential Election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory—with theories ranging from Russian hacking to “fake news.” We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world.

This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.

[Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman are the authors. Benkler is a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard; Faris is research director at BKC; Roberts is a fellow at BKC and technical lead of Media Cloud; and Zuckerman is director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.]

The 2016 Presidential election, which upended voters, journalists, politicians, and special-interest groups, was remarkable for a number of reasons—not least Trump’s unconcealed contempt for the press, whose role was challenged again and again on the campaign trail.

The New York Times went further in a December 13 story detailing Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, describing “every major publication, including The Times,” as “a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.” Running more than 7,000 words, the story broke down how, in 2015, hackers linked to the Russian government compromised at least one Democratic National Committee computer system; how those hackers later accessed the DNC’s main network and targeted people outside the DNC, most famously Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta; and how “by last summer . . . Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day—procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media.”

[Commentary] The White House’s vicious attacks on the press and the often-timid response from journalists stem from the fact that, as a business, the press at this moment couldn’t be more exposed: Most of the biggest media companies in the country still haven’t settled on a business plan that works (and the smaller ones, in ever-larger numbers, are simply closing up shop); reporters continue to lose their jobs; and magic-bullet answers that once offered hope for turning things around—video or live events or virtual reality—seem to disappoint by the day. No wonder the ridicule from Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, propelled by historically low approval ratings for journalists, has turned into an existential threat to journalism that is gleefully fanned by the commander in chief.

There’s nothing new on the horizon, no business-model savior set to rescue media companies at the very moment they are facing their most critical journalistic test. There are, though, strands of hope, little bits of ideas that are working, albeit in limited ways. By mixing and matching them, we can begin to compile a recipe for a new journalistic model that may work—emphasis on the may.

A Q&A with attorney Floyd Abrams, who represented the New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case and went on to become America's leading First Amendment litigator.

Asked, "Shortly after the election, you said Donald Trump 'may be the greatest threat to the First Amendment since the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798.' Why is he a threat?" Abrams responded, "I don’t think we’ve had anyone who ran for the presidency in a manner which suggested the level of hostility to the press than did Donald Trump. And we certainly haven’t had any president who has made as a central element of his presentation while in office a critique of such venom and threat as we’ve heard in the last month. Now, we don’t know how much is talk and what if anything he may do as president apart from the impact of his words. That in and of itself is important. Any effort to delegitimize the press as a whole and any recitation of statements such the one just a few days ago, saying that the press “is the enemy of the American people,” itself raises serious issues even if he never took any legal steps against the press. Words matter. And the words of the president matter particularly. So a president that basically tells the people that the press is its enemy is engaged in a serious—and deliberately serious—threat to the legitimacy of the press and the role it plays in American society."

[Commentary] Around the world, media outlets are taking millions of dollars from private donors and foundations in order to pay for news. But in a world where news credibility has become a burning issue and government leaders in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, and the US (among others) have gone on the attack against journalism, the question of funding sources and the effect they have on media independence is an important one.

Funding quality journalism and giving reporters the resources to carry out important work is critical. Many of the publications that receive donor funds uncover important stories overlooked by mainstream publications, and many wouldn’t exist without foundations. But as donor-media relationships increase and with it editorial influence by foundations, it’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of how this financial model influences news coverage. Best practices may help to make the model of donor funding media better for both sides and help protect independent media.

[Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. ]