WBEZ 91.5-FM in Chicago is sending letters to members concerning the Congressional fight over CPB funding, but isn’t using its airwaves or website to urge listeners to take action. Torey Malatia, g.m., explains to the Chicago Reader, “It is inappropriate for a public service institution committed to independent, fair journalistic practices to use its public service platforms to urge specific legislative action, even if — especially if — that action results in institutional financial benefit. Journalists either report content to the public in a way that rejects politicking or not. You either stick to principles or you really don’t have any.”

A New York U.S. District Court judge today (Feb. 22) granted a preliminary injunction blocking ivi TV from streaming signals from TV stations without their consent. More than 20 broadcasters, including WNET/Thirteen, PBS and WGBH, had filed suit against the Seattle firm, which charges subscribers for retransmission (Current, Oct. 4, 2010) and insists that is permitted because ivi is a type of cable system. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said ivi was “extraordinarily unlikely” to be deemed a cable system under copyright law, and that it was posing that harm to broadcasters’ business. Todd Weaver, ivi’s c.e.o., released a statement that said in part, “This fight is for the people and their right to choice and control over their own entertainment – and it will continue.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is starting an in-house production unit for digital media and video. Sharon Tiller, former series executive director of Frontline/World on PBS and senior producer at Frontline, will lead the unit as the center’s director of digital media. A release says the move is part of a larger business development strategy to create new models for investigative journalism to sustain itself and leverage new technologies to increase and engage audiences. Tiller will supervise a team of seven. The center has had a 20-year relationship with Frontline. The first joint segment will air in spring 2011.

Two public broadcasting collaborations have won prestigious Polk awards for their news projects. Frontline, ProPublica and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans won the Polk for television reporting, and NPR and ProPublica won for radio. In a release, presenter Long Island University called the “Law & Disorder” Frontline collaboration “monumental.” The reporting partners looked at the often brutal actions taken by the New Orleans Police Department in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, investigating charges that officers shot at 10 persons and killed four. The project revealed that law-enforcement commanders issued orders to ignore long-established rules governing use of deadly force. C.

Veteran newspaperman and news industry analyst Alan Mutter weighs in on the debate over CPB funding and concludes that it’s time for public broadcasters to learn to live without their federal aid. Public broadcasting stations are “generally well-funded, well-known and well-established organizations,” Mutter writes on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, noting that local stations derive an average of 15 percent of their annual revenues from Uncle Sam. “The fact that the public media operate with only a modest degree of federal funding is not only fortunate for them at a time of aggressive budget cutting but also a sign that government support of the public media has been an unqualified success,” Mutter writes.

Three public broadcasters are headliners on a 10-day PTV at Sea cruise in November. Gwen Ifill of Washington Week, Mark Samels, e.p. of American Experience, and Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition will be presenters and panelists on board Regent’s Seven Seas Mariner as it sails from Venice to Croatia, Malta, Tunisia, Monte Carlo, Florence and Rome. It’s sponsored by Artful Travelers.

Last time, in 2005, the emissary to Congress was Clifford the Big Red Dog. This time, it’s an aardvark named Arthur. Last time, lawmakers showed off boxes of 1 million petitions with signatures; now, the million signatures are digital. Back then, when the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee tried for a 25 percent cut in the CPB appropriation, public support moved the House to save it by a 2-to-1 vote. This year, no such luck. If saviors arrive, they’ll have to come from the Senate, as they have in numerous past years. Very early on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 19 [2011], about 4:30, the House approved the Continuing Resolution on a party-line vote of 235-189 that would cut CPB’s entire $460-million advance appropriation for fiscal 2013, two years from now, plus billions from federal spending this fiscal year.

Here’s a good analysis by Time magazine about how this Washington showdown is different from back in 1995. “The $61 billion in cuts House Republicans called for in their 2011 budget passed Saturday include many provisions that are dead on arrival in the Senate,” it says. “Proposals to defund health reform, Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting are all nonstarters for Democrats.”

Native Public Media, a minority consortium incubated within the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for seven years, is striking out on its own, establishing itself as an independent nonprofit and pursuing big new opportunities to expand media access for Native Tribes through broadband and mobile technologies. With the realignment, announced early this month, the Native group strengthens its ties with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., its partner for the last several years in research, policy analysis and advocacy to redress huge and historic shortcomings in access to new and older means of communication for Native tribes. Among the collaboration’s most significant achievements so far is last year’s FCC ruling giving tribes higher priority in competitions for radio channels near Indian lands (Current, Oct.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has introduced an incentive auction bill to free up wireless spectrum. S.415 would authorize payments to broadcasters who voluntarily give up spectrum, but also would require the Federal Communications Commission to “establish a maximum revenue sharing threshold applicable to all licensees within any auction.”

Small television and radio stations serving rural, “politically red areas” in California and other states would endure the biggest impact loss of federal funding, reports the San Francisco Chronicle today (Feb. 21), as those stations often rely more heavily on that support. Example: Last weekend, Rep. Wally Herger voted in favor of the GOP’s Continuing Resolution, which zeroed out CPB funding. Voters in conservative Yuba County have sent him to the House for 13 terms. But their local station, KIXE in Redding, “could be devastated” if those cuts pass the Senate, the paper said. The local unemployment rate is 16 percent, so member donations often can be hard to come by.

Ann Powers, the Los Angeles Times pop music critic since 2006, is joining NPR Music and will switch to contributor status at the newspaper, LA Observed is reporting. Powers opined on the recent Grammy Awards on the NPR Music website. “There is no more articulate authority on pop music in the country than Ann,” wrote Sally Hofmeister, Times assistant managing editor, in a memo to staff.

Eric Easter, a board member of the National Black Programming Consortium, has a column on the Root website pointing out if CPB funding is indeed axed, “As usual, the hardest-hit victims won’t be PBS or NPR; they’ll be the people on the ground – minority and independent filmmakers and digital storytellers for whom public grants are often their sole source of funding. We can’t allow this to happen.”

Reactions are coming in to the House vote to pass the Continuing Resolution that zeroes out $460 million in advance funding for CPB. From Pat Harrison, president of CPB: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) provides funding for community-based public television and radio stations and program producers who create unique and trusted content that serves the educational and informational needs of this country. We would like to express our appreciation to the many Members of the House of Representatives who recognize the value of this service to the nation and, especially, to the people in their home districts. Specifically, we would like to thank Representatives Blumenauer, Markey, Lowey and others who are leading the fight to retain federal funding for CPB.

At 4:30 a.m. today (Feb. 19) the House approved a huge package of spending cuts, slashing more than $60 billion that included a $460 advance appropriation for CPB. The vote: 235 to 189, along party lines. John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not vote, as is tradition for Speaker of the House. Three Republicans opposed the Continuing Resolution. Cuts total some $60 billion in spending from last year’s levels in many domestic programs. The CR now goes to the Senate, where and Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), called the cuts “draconian.” Amendment 436 from Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), co-chair of the bipartisan Public Broadcasting Caucus, would have salvaged CPB’s funding but was gaveled down just before midnight Feb.