The House bill approved Thursday (March 17) to keep pubradio stations from spending federal money for NPR dues and programming are “unlikely” to go anywhere in the Senate, the National Journal reports. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the White House are both opposed. “I listen to NPR every day,” Reid said in a statement National Journal Daily. “Like many Americans, my children and I have benefited from the educational and news programs public radio provides every day of the year. Public radio and the top-notch journalists it employs are valuable resources to people of all ages across the country and I can’t understand why Republicans would want to take that away from them.”

Conservative muckraking videographer James O’Keefe has released a third video from his recent NPR sting, which Media Matters for America notes “instantly falls apart.” On his Project Veritas website, O’Keefe says “the public will learn for the first time that George Soros’s Open Society Foundation has donated to NPR in the past, starting as many as 15 years ago.” As Media Matters points out, that’s long been public information — because NPR has issued press releases about the grants. Plus, they’re all listed on NPR’s tax documents.

NPR issued this statement after the House voted today (March 17) to keep stations from spending federal money on dues or programming: Today, NPR expressed grave concern about the impact of the approval of H.R. 1076 on the entire public radio system – hundreds of stations, dozens of program producers and the communities that rely on them every week. The bill is a direct effort to weaken public radio that would ultimately choke local stations’ ability to serve their audiences. Many small-budget stations would be placed in a serious financial bind. They would no longer be allowed to purchase any programming with federal funds.

The president’s Executive Office of Management and Budget just issued this statement on the House’s decision to ban use of federal funds for NPR dues and programming: The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 1076, which would unacceptably prohibit Federal funding of National Public Radio (NPR) and the use of Federal funds by public radio stations to acquire radio content. As part of the President’s commitment to cut spending, the President’s Budget proposed targeted reductions in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides a small amount of funding for NPR, and the Administration has expressed openness to other spending reductions that are reasonable.

Here are statements that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting just released on today’s (March 17) House vote to prohibit federal funding for NPR dues and programming: From CPB: Today, the House passed a bill that would significantly restrict public broadcasting stations’ ability to acquire programming that they feel best serves the needs of their communities. Every day, these stations serve the informational and educational needs of the public with programming that contributes to the health and well-being of the country in a way that would not be possible without federal support. The American people overwhelmingly agree that public broadcasting is a service worthy of the federal investment.

H.R. 1076, to prohibit federal funding for station dues or NPR programming, has passed the House by a vote of 228-192. “This bill is insidious,” pubcasting champion Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told Current Wednesday (March 16). “This is a fascinating metaphor for what is going on with new Republican majority. This isn’t about cutting budgets, it’s very much ideologically driven and pretty diametrically at variance with where most of the American public is.”

Debate is now set to begin later today on H.R. 1076, which would prohibit federal funding to NPR. During morning discussions, some of which focused on a procedural rule associated with the bill, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) reported that he offered an amendment that would “prohibit federal funds — taxpayer dollars — from being used for advertising on the partisan, political platform of Fox News.” According to a Rand Study, he said, the Department of Defense spent $6 million in advertising in 2007; he called for the Government Accountability Office to study “how and where this money is being spent.” His effort to amend the bill was defeated in the House Rules Committee during an emergency meeting Wednesday (March 16).

In what the New York Times is editorializing as “the latest example of House Republicans pursuing a longstanding ideological goal in the false name of fiscal prudence,” the House today (March 17) votes on H.R. 1076, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), which would prohibit federal funds to be spent on NPR dues or programming. According to today’s Majority Whip schedule, debate on the bill will begin at 9 a.m., with a vote expected at 10:15 a.m. C-SPAN has live coverage. The bill would eliminate the Radio Program fund, which makes possible initiatives including Radio Bilingüe’s national program service and Native Voice One, the Native American radio service.

The House bipartisan Public Broadcasting Caucus, formed in April 2001 to educate lawmakers and defend pubcasting from funding attacks, has disbanded — at least for now. It is not registered as a Congressional Member Organization for the current House session, according to this month’s list from the Committee on House Administration, which is required. Co-Chairman Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a founding member, tells Current he is “just letting it go” as he focuses on the current fight for federal support. “The whole purpose of the caucus was to provide a neutral forum to talk about public broadcasting issues and give people a way to support it,” he said.

About 100 WGBH employees demonstrated outside its headquarters Tuesday (March 15) as managers implemented a contract rejected by its largest union, reports the Boston Globe. The union last weekend voted to reject the final contract offer from management, which calls for allowing the station to assign individual employees to work across various platforms — radio, television, and the Web — and outsource work without negotiating. “We are at an impasse,” station spokesperson Jeanne Hopkins told the paper, “and we are implementing our best and final offer. This new contract provides wage increases, for the fourth consecutive year, only for AEEF/CWA members that no other union, nonunion, or management employees will be receiving.’’

A Maine man is in jail on federal charges that he threatened to kill or harm Melissa Block and Guy Raz, hosts of NPR’s All Things Considered, the Smoking Gun website is reporting. According to an FBI affidavit, John Crosby sent more than 20 bizarre and often threatening messages to NPR through its “Contact Us” website form. NPR contacted the FBI on Jan. 17 after Crosby allegedly described Block in a message as “an annoying [expletive] who is helping to destroy me to use me as a human sacrifice. She will be raped, beaten, tortured, and murdered very soon.” A Jan.

On a party-line vote, the House Committee on Rules today (March 16) voted 6-5 to allow H.R. 1076, which would ban federal funding to be used for NPR programming, to proceed to a floor vote on Thursday. No amendments are allowed. Members will have one hour for debate, controlled by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, 68, has announced that he plans to retire in the spring of 2013. He tells the AARP Bulletin that he must find his replacement first. “I’m pushing forward, and also I’m in denial,” he says. “It’s an interesting time of life.” Keillor created the show in 1974 in Minnesota. It is now distributed by American Public Media to 590 public radio stations across the country, and heard by more than 4 million people each week. As for his legacy, “I just want people in St. Paul and Minneapolis to feel that I was some sort of community asset and not a big embarrassment.

Juan Williams, writing on the Fox News website, wants to see NPR defunded. What NPR exec Ron Schiller said in the recent video sting “is just an open microphone on what I’ve been hearing from NPR top executives and editors for years. They are willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money and then they will turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view.” “The work of NPR’s many outstanding journalists is barely an afterthought to leadership with this mindset and obsessed with funding,” he says.

Peter Osnos of the progressive Century Foundation has discovered an upside in all the recent NPR turmoil. It’s “the likelihood that, for the first time, many more people among NPR and public radio’s devoted audience of over 34 million across the country will have a clearer understanding of how the system works.” Osnos, writing today (March 16), is a senior fellow at Century who focuses on media coverage of politics and policy.