A covertly recorded video of NPR Foundation President Ron Schiller meeting with prospective donors was released by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe this morning. Schiller, whose appointment to a new job with the Aspen Institute was announced last week, was recorded in February describing members of the Tea Party as “white, middle America, gun-toting…..They’re seriously racist, racist people.” Schiller was having lunch with two men from a fake Muslim foundation who said they were interested in donating $5 million to public media. In the heavily edited, 11- minute video, Schiller told them NPR would “be better off in the long run without federal funding.”

NPR Foundation President Ron Schiller has taken a new job as director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program and Harman-Eisner Artist-in-Residence Program. Schiller, who joined NPR in September 2009, worked to build fundraising collaborations between NPR and member stations through projects such as Impact of Government. Schiller starts his new position on April 1, and will work out of the Institute’s offices in Aspen, Colo., where he has lived on at least a part-time basis since 2006.

Usually the only speakers in the “public comment” period after an NPR Board meeting are several regional reps of stations, but they were joined Feb. 25 by Sue Schardt, executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio. Schardt spoke extemporaneously to the board and NPR execs about how public radio could address criticism that has undercut its case for continued federal aid. This is an edited transcript. I speak as someone who has 23 years of experience in the industry. What I’ve been thinking a lot about lately resonates, I believe, for those of us who have been around a long time.

NPR should have its journalists phase out any long-term contracts for appearances on other media outlets, monitor those appearances more carefully and make clearer distinctions between reporting, analysis and commentary in its programming, the network’s ethics-policy task force advised Feb. 25 [2011]. Bob Steele, head of the task force, presented recommendations for revising the ethics code to the NPR Board last month. Steele, director of the Prindle Institute for Ethics and distinguished professor of journalism ethics at DePauw University and a journalism values scholar with the Poynter Institute, was retained by NPR President Vivian Schiller to head the task force. The 13-member task force included NPR employees, outside journalists and citizens at large.

WNET/Thirteen has a unique fundraising offer: A guitar autographed by Rolling Stones legendary musician Keith Richards. “To show his personal support of music programming on New York Public Television, he has generously donated an autographed Midnight Wine Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar,” it reports on its Inside Thirteen blog. Add it to your collection for a “generous donation” of $40,000. “Like public broadcasting, Keith Richards is a towering original, who continues to walk his own path, speak his mind, and do his own thing,” the blog adds.

UPDATE: Text of the speech is online here. NPR President Vivian Schiller’s speech to the National Press Club is being live-streamed here starting at 1 p.m. Eastern today (March 7). From the Press Club’s release: “As NPR celebrates its 40th anniversary, listening to public radio is at an all-time high and the audience for NPR’s digital services has sky-rocketed. In a keynote speech today at the National Press Club, Schiller will address the powerful journalism at the root of public radio’s mission – evident no more so than in recent weeks of continuous coverage from the Middle East – and NPR’s vision for the future.

Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy group, calls the Congressional attempts to de-fund CPB a “mortal threat” in today’s (March 7) USA Today. He also notes that the $430 million reduction in aid would do little to reduce the $1.6 trillion federal deficit. He tells the paper that APTS has hired two lobbying firms, and that its 170 Million Americans outreach has generated some 300,000 notes to Congress. (More on 170 Million Americans in the Dec. 13, 2010, issue of Current.)

Shelly Palmer, host of NBC’s Live Digital with Shelly Palmer, a weekly half-hour show about living and working in a digital world, writes on his blog that public broadcasting needs just three more years of government funding to see it through to its next incarnation. “I have listened (and been drawn into) many cocktail conversations debating whether or not Public Broadcasting should be an Internet-only service,” he says. Now is the time for that decision, he contends. “Would an online, broadband, app-centric, wireless, wired, fixed wireless, over-the-top, IPTV, Internet-Television, 4G, WiMax, Digital Tier ATSC, MSO Public Channel, LPTV, Web, Blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Social Media-ized version of Public Broadcasting work?”

After a four-show trial run last spring, Minnesota Public Radio is mounting another season of Wits, its concept for a next-generation stage-show broadcast pairing smart, literary humor with contemporary music and powered in part by social media. For the season’s opener, March 25, host John Moe welcomes comedian Patton Oswald and musician Grant Lee Phillips to the stage of MPR’s F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre, the St. Paul home of A Prairie Home Companion. That performance of Wits will be live-tweeted, webcast with video on Ustream.net, and recorded for statewide radio broadcast. Lineups for subsequent shows, monthly through June 24, will feature pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman, comedian Sandra Bernhard and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman.

“At this point, any and all funding for public broadcasting is at risk,” the Association for Public Television Stations said.

NPR is proposing to give public stations more help in building and maintaining dynamic websites and mobile apps by reconfiguring its Boston-based tech services group.

Whenever public broadcasting is threatened by hostile politicians, the conventional wisdom is to circle the wagons and fire back. As a member of the public television community for almost 50 years, I would rather see today’s challenge as an opportunity to reassess public television’s goals and achievements. Perhaps we should do this every few years to make sure we haven’t gone astray in our aims and practices. In many ways I think NPR has surpassed its original goals and promises, but public television is another matter. We have accomplished many things. We have reached a larger audience than anyone originally imagined; created lots of polished programs, and some rough-edged ones; caused controversy and laughter (the good kind); made children smile.

The nonprofit DFM News, launched in June, last week received a big (but undisclosed) funding boost from a major and ongoing sponsorship from the Corporation Service Co., a Wilmington-based business, legal and financial services firm, reports Delaware Online. The site focuses on state and local government, business, science and education. At the helm is Micheline Boudreau of WHYY’s Delaware Tonight newscast, which ended production in 2009. Delaware First Media’s staff is currently made up of three full-time employees and a dozen freelancers, and is planning to add more of each as it expands over the next two years.

In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives, points out the Associated Press. In one of CPB’s local news initiatives, stations in Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico have hired nine reporters for its Fronteras: The Changing America Desk bureau. “I think we have a place at the table,” and more respect, said Natalie Walsh, senior news producer, “now that we have the boots on the ground to back it up.”

Tampa-based WUSF bought WSMR for $1.2 million last year to shift its classical music to the Sarasota station and offer daytime NPR programming (Current, Aug. 9, 2010). But technical delays and interference issues delayed the station’s full-power debut from Sept. 15 to Feb. 22 — and even now, signal woes continue, reports the St. Petersburg Times. Some listeners to the south still can’t receive the signal through the static. Nancy Preis, board member of the Florida Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Opera, still can’t receive the programming. “I consider this to be a major screwup,” she said.