What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL
I haven’t seen any explanation for why three public radio outlets in Colorado joined NPR in suing the Trump administration over its threat to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I’m glad they did, but it seems to me that all 246 member stations ought to sign on, including GBH and WBUR in Boston.
The Colorado entities, according to Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio, are CPR (which reaches 80% of the state through a network of transmitters and translators), Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio of Ignacio, a Native American station that serves the Southern Ute Tribe.
When I was in Colorado several years ago to interview people for the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” CPR was perhaps the largest news organization in the state, with a staff of 65 journalists. (I say “perhaps” because executive editor Kevin Dale thought one or two television stations might be bigger.) Some cuts were made last year as business challenges hit a number of public broadcasting outlets as well as NPR itself.
The basis of the lawsuit, writes NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, is that CPB is an independent, private nonprofit that is funded by Congress. The suit claims that the president has no right to rescind any money through an executive order; only Congress can do that. Moreover, the suit contends that this is pure viewpoint discrimination, as demonstrated by Trump’s own words — that NPR and PBS, which also relies on CPB funding, present “biased and partisan news coverage.”
As Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab notes, the lawsuit slyly quotes a dissent by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in arguing, “It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. But this wolf comes as a wolf.”
No doubt you’ve heard that NPR gets only 1% of its budget from the CPB. That statement is both true and false. The network depends on about 30% of its funding in the form of fees paid by member stations for the right to broadcast popular programs such as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” Many of those member stations are highly dependent on CPB funding, especially in underserved rural areas.
Trump’s authoritarian agenda includes an all-out assault on a free and independent press. Outlets such as ABC News, CBS News, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all bent the knee to one degree or another. So far, the two largest, most important news organizations that have stood firm are The New York Times and NPR — and, of those two, only NPR offers its journalism without placing it behind a paywall. This is a fight that really matters.
A Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor
You might have thought that negative publicity over two Catholic religious statues to be installed on public property in Quincy, Massachusetts, would have been enough to stop that ill-conceived plan. Apparently not.
So now the ACLU of Massachusetts, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation are suing the city for violating the separation of church and state, a principle enshrined in the First Amendment.
Peter Blandino reports for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy that Mayor Thomas Koch has moved ahead with a widely criticized plan to include two 10-foot tall statues of saints on the facade of the new public safety building when it opens this fall. Blandino writes:
The statues depict St. Michael and St. Florian, the patron saints of policed officers and firefighters respectively. Plans for the statues, which have already been paid for at the price of $850,000, were developed by Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch and a close circle of advisors without informing residents or city councilors.
According to earlier reporting by Blandino, the statues have been criticized by at least one member of the city council as well as some local religious organizations. The ACLU voiced its objections as far back as February. But that didn’t stop Koch, has insisted that the statues represent bravery, courage and service rather than religious messages. For that refusal to acknowledge the obvious, Koch has earned a New England Muzzle Award.
As Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham put it back in March, “How wrong is all of this? Where to start? … It’s one thing for a police officer to choose to carry around a medal that her faith says will offer divine protection. It’s entirely another to erect two giant effigies outside a public building that will be used by people of all faiths, or of no faith at all.”
What’s more, St. Michael, the patron saint of police officers, will be depicted with his foot on the neck of a demon — reminiscent, as Abraham notes, of George Floyd being murdered at the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who’s now in prison.
As ACLU lawyer Heather Weaver puts it, “The new public safety building will be home to many critical government services, but the moment they walk in the door, Quincy residents who do not share the City’s favored religious beliefs will get the message that they are not welcome.”
A little AI comedy
I had to laugh when I read that Nick Clegg says artificial intelligence — I’m sorry, the AI industry — won’t survive if our overlords are somehow forced to get permission before stealing our intellectual property. Uh, so?
Clegg, a former deputy prime minister in the U.K. and a former top Meta executive, does say that creators should have the right to opt out, but that the default should be that the industry is free to hoover up your output unless you say something ahead of time.
“I think the creative community wants to go a step further,” Clegg said, according to a report in The Times of London that was picked up by The Verge. “Quite a lot of voices say, ‘You can only train on my content, [if you] first ask.’ And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.”
The right of affirmative consent, he said, would “basically kill” the AI industry.
Well, bring it on.
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