The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is not backing down in its fight against National Public Radio. In a filing on Friday, the nearly-defunct federal body sought summary judgment in NPR’s lawsuit against the organization over its decision to appropriate funding for satellite distribution to a select group of NPR member stations before the CPB ceases operations.
In August, CPB, which has long served as the vessel for distributing federal funding to NPR and PBS, said it is shutting down following the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ decision to claw back federal funding for public media. CPB announced plans to grant some of its remaining funds to Public Media Infrastructure, a new consortium of public radio stations that includes New York Public Radio, PRX, and the Minnesota-based American Public Media.
“If successful, NPR’s lawsuit would prevent CPB from serving its Congressionally-mandated role to serve as the steward of public dollars for public media, but it would achieve NPR’s actual goal: keeping a qualified coalition of radio stations, whose competing bid was deemed, both by Deloitte and by CPB, to be superior to that of NPR, from obtaining public funds for interconnection,” the filing said.
A spokesperson for NPR did not respond to Semafor’s request for comment. NPR has previously said that CPB is caving to the Trump administration’s executive order demanding that NPR receive no federal funding (NPR and a collection of member stations are currently suing over that).