The Hill reported that National Public Radio has hired the firm Navigators Global to preserve federal subsidies through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The House GOP majority has organized several votes and bills to defund public broadcasting, and Navigators Global is a lobbying shop chock full of Republicans -- the most notable being Mike Murphy, the former Mitt Romney strategist.
NPR chief marketing officer Dana Davis Rehm told the newspaper "It is part of our mission to represent the interests of NPR member stations to Congress, executive, regulatory and judicial bodies." That's in part because NPR gets its funds from member stations sending in money for programming. Rehm sang the usual song about how public radio is such an effective way to spend taxpayer money:
"At a time when the federal government is running a large deficit, every program and function of the government deserves to be scrutinized, and a review of federal funding to public broadcasting is fair and to be expected," she said.
She said NPR hired lobbyists to "explain how the federal investment in public radio stations and larger public broadcasting system provides one of the most effective returns of any program authorized by Congress."
So Republican lobbyists will tell the Republicans that it's somehow in the national interest to maintain NPR as a taxpayer-funded media outlet that makes the country safe for liberalism.
It's been a very long time since Murphy was counted among the young conservatives like Brent Bozell at the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). He's now hailed by liberal media hardliners like disgraced CBS anchorman Dan Rather as "GOP campaign master Mike Murphy."
