July 17, 1999
3 PBS Stations Let Democrats Use Donor Lists
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON -- At least three public television stations in the nation's largest markets say they have been sharing donor lists with Democratic fund-raising groups, a practice that may be legal but one that some congressional Republicans suggest could jeopardize public financing of all public television and radio stations.
Officials from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have condemned the practice and said Friday that they were trying to determine its extent in preparation for a congressional hearing set for Tuesday.
Public television stations in New York, Washington and Boston acknowledged that they had sold or swapped donor lists with Democratic groups in the past, but added that they had stopped doing so and fired those who were responsible.
The admissions by the stations -- WNET in New York, WGBH in Boston and WETA in Washington -- have angered Republicans on Capitol Hill, who view them as confirmation of long-held convictions that public television leans to the political left and should not be financed with tax dollars. The federal government provides about 15 percent of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's $200 billion annual budget.
Nonprofit organizations are prohibited from engaging in political activity. But the Internal Revenue Service says that such organizations can sell or rent their mailing lists to candidates or parties if they makes the lists available to all candidates and parties.
Spokesmen for the stations said that, in some cases, they had made their lists available to both Democratic and Republican groups. But they said they were concerned about possible misperceptions.
"Anything that our viewers and listeners could reasonably interpret as a partisan act, we shouldn't engage in," said Robert T. Coonrod, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "The health of public broadcasting is built on the trust we have with our viewers and listeners, and anything we do that might erode that trust is just not smart."
Coonrod said the practice of list-swapping was common in industry, but that it was not common with political organizations. He said the corporation did not condone the practice.
Mike Collins, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said that his organization had "never leased a public broadcasting list," but he said that in rare cases it had used lists from charities.
"It's reckless," he said. "It puts these public broadcasters in a very embarrassing position with regard to their donors and a dangerous one with regard to the IRS."
Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said the practice of list-swapping was common and that the television stations had done nothing unusual. She said the list broker employed by the DNC had provided a list of 123 organizations from which the committee had selected 62, including WGBH.
"We didn't have any way of knowing that WGBH had an internal policy against this," she said. "This is standard practice conducted on the open market."
But many public stations prohibit work with political organizations. WNYC, the public radio station in New York, is one.
"We don't make our list available to political organizations," said Ted Roebuck, a WNYC spokesman. "We have to turn down those requests pretty often, and just last week we did."
Concerns about list-swapping were first raised when The Boston Globe reported in May that WGBH had exchanged membership lists with the Democratic National Committee on two occasions -- a move that Republicans said initially appeared to be isolated. But as of Thursday, officials at public stations in New York and Washington acknowledged that they, too, had shared their fund-raising lists.
Stella Giammasi, a spokeswoman for WNET in New York, said that an internal investigation revealed "that without our knowledge and through some misinterpretation of our policy, the list brokers we employ had made our list available to both Democratic and Republican organizations," which she would not name. "We can only guess this was done as a purely commercial gesture. It did not reflect station policy, and they were fired," she said. She would not name the list broker.
Ms. Giammasi said there had been more than one instance of list-swapping but the matter was still being investigated. Still, she sought to assure the station's donors that their names were not being sold for political purposes by noting that donors are given the chance to "opt out" of having their names given to other organizations.
But Ms. Giammasi acknowledged that this still posed a political problem for public stations in general. "We're always worried about our funding," she said.
Republicans came to power four years ago attacking public broadcasting as liberal and elitist and promising to eliminate federal contributions. But broad public support for programs like "Sesame Street" helped silence Republican hostility.
As Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of a subcommittee that oversees public broadcasting, put it: "From a practical political standpoint, it was a public relations nightmare for Republicans to talk about shoveling dirt on Big Bird."
As a result, Congress increased its support for public broadcasting. And earlier this month, Tauzin's committee was preparing to raise the authorization for next year to $300 million from $250 million. It was also providing money to help public television with its $1.7-billion conversion to digital broadcasting in the next few years.
But the disclosures that the stations have shared their donor lists with Democratic interests, including the Democratic National Committee, have prompted Tauzin to scale back federal contributions. He has also vowed to impose restrictions.
"He feels betrayed, misled and lied to," said Johnson. "We had many members committed to some type of increase for fiscal 2000, only to have this blow up in our faces. It reinforces the old stereotypes, it picks the scab off the wound and it opens up public broadcasting to another big fight on Capitol Hill."
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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