Facing the prospect of losing public funding, the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting decried “fake news” and demeaning attitudes toward rural voters Tuesday in defending the organization before Congress.
“People in this country yearned for content they could trust. And where are we right now — we’re living in this environment of ‘fake news,'” testified Patricia de Stacy Harrison, the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to an appropriations subcommittee.
Harrison told the subcommittee that she is seeking only flat funding for the CPB. In his fiscal year 2018 budget, President Trump called for ending federal funding of the organization.
Asked by Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., to explain how commercial successes like the period drama Downton Abbey aired by PBS factor into the organization’s funding, Harrison launched into a defense of the CPB that touched on the need for “fact-based journalism.”
She also speculated that there may exist a “soft bigotry of low expectations” for rural viewers who most rely on public broadcasting, quoting former President George W. Bush.
“There are people who can afford to get on a plane and go to Broadway and get that — what is it now, I don’t know — $1,000 ticket to Hamilton, go to the opera,” Harrison explained, referencing the hit hip-hop musical biography of Alexander Hamilton. “And there seems to be this feeling that because maybe you live in a rural area, you’re not interested in those things.”
In defending federal funding, Harrison also warned that the impact of cutting off federal funds would be “disastrous” for early childhood education.
The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, appeared not to to be interested in eliminating funding for the CPB.
“This is an agency we all admire,” Cole told Harrison. The two have a shared history: Cole served as chief of staff to the Republican National Committee during the time that Harrison was a co-chair.
