Jennifer Ferro, general manager of KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., was among pubcasters who spent time on Capitol Hill this week urging members of Congress to preserve funding, reports the Los Angeles Times. But it’s a tough challenge without bipartisan backing. “The Democratic lawmakers I talked to said, ‘We can’t help. There’s nothing happening across the aisle,'” Ferro told the paper. Steve Bass, president of Oregon Public Broadcasting and a member of the NPR board of directors, said he’s worried that the bipartisan support the system historically enjoyed has been eroded by former NPR exec Ron Schiller’s comments in the video sting.

American Public Television announced that has promoted two staff members, Virginia Hamilton and Hilary Finkel Buxton. Hamilton, previously senior manager of APT’s distribution services, now becomes director of that department. She came to APT from WGBH’s production services and audience services, and she is a current member of the PBS Traffic Advisory Council. Buxton, senior manager in APT’s Exchange Service, has been promoted to director. Prior to her arrival at APT, Buxton also worked in production at WGBH.

Tom Currá is the new second in command at WVIA in Pittston, Pa., the northeastern Pennsylvania and Central Susquehanna Valley PBS and NPR station. The move will allow WVIA President Bill Kelly to concentrate his efforts in national advocacy and a WVIA endowment, according to a station statement. Currá came to WVIA in 2004 after a career in commercial television and as an independent filmmaker. His previous title was senior vice president and executive producer.

“Let’s take a breath and put this NPR fracas into perspective,” advises pubcasting newsman Bill Moyers in Salon, writing with his Public Affairs Television colleague Michael Winship. The two say that NPR walked into a trap “perpetrated by one of the sleaziest operatives ever to climb out of a sewer,” activist filmmaker James O’Keefe, who caught NPR’s Ron Schiller in a hidden camera sting. The two call O’Keefe “a product of that grimy underworld of ideologically-based harassment which feeds the right’s slime machine.” They point out that in the wake of the Juan Williams firing, Fox News chief Roger Ailes called NPR execs “Nazis” — and then, while apologizing for that remark, characterized them instead as “nasty, inflexible bigots.”

Executives at several NPR member stations tell the Poynter Institute’s Mallary Jean Tenore they want NPR’s next c.e.o. to appreciate for the digital initiatives that Vivian Schiller helped create, but they don’t want to see NPR abandon its broadcast culture to make the organization a “multimedia company.” Commenting are John Weatherford, chief operating officer of Public Broadcasting Atlanta; Sam Fleming, managing director of news and programming at WBUR; and Torey Malatia, c.e.o. of Chicago Public Media.

In the second part of the right-wing undercover sting of NPR, released Thursday (March 10), a senior fundraiser told one of the men posing as a wealthy Muslim donor that she would explore whether NPR could shield his organization’s gift from government auditors. The phony donor recorded phone conversations with Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving, in which he inquired whether his organization’s planned $5 million gift to NPR would be subject to a government audit, given that NPR receives federal funding. NPR released e-mails from its top executives to document that ultimately the fake philanthropist didn’t pass scrutiny. Joyce Slocum, NPR general counsel who was appointed interim c.e.o.

A letter to listeners from 22 NPR journalists, posted today (March 10) on media blogger Jim Romenesko’s website: An Open Letter from Journalists at NPR News . . . Dear Listeners and Supporters, We, and our colleagues at NPR News, strive every day to bring you the highest quality news programs possible. So, like you, we were appalled by the offensive comments made recently by NPR’s now former Senior Vice President for Development. His words violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect. Those comments have done real damage to NPR. But we’re confident that the culture of professionalism we have built, and the journalistic values we have upheld for the past four decades, will prevail.

Former NPR President Vivian Schiller told the Associated Press today (March 10) that her staying on as network chief executive would have complicated the federal funding battle. “We took a reputational hit around the Juan Williams incident, and this was another blow to NPR’s reputation,” she said, referring to this week’s NPR video sting. “There’s no question.” Howard Liberman, a communications attorney who represents several NPR affiliates, told the AP that many stations were unhappy with Schiller and the release of the video was just the final straw. In addition to firing Williams, Schiller shortened the organization’s name from National Public Radio to NPR (predicting that broadcasting towers would be gone within a decade) and attempted to push listeners toward the NPR.org

The Public Broadcasting Caucus has suffered its first defection in the aftermath of the NPR video sting, reports The Hill. Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) is a former co-chair of the bipartisan caucus. “As a father of five children, I have been supportive of PBS children’s programming in the past,” he said. “However, the recent events involving NPR undermine their claims of objectivity in their reporting. Because NPR has crossed the line to political bias, I will no longer serve on the caucus.” McCaul voted in favor of a 2005 amendment that rescued CPB support in the House (Current, June 27, 2005).

“More than a dozen WGBH honchos at PBS’ taxpayer-subsidized flagship station are raking in upwards of $200,000 a year while toiling in the lap of a luxurious $85 million multimedia palace dubbed the ‘Taj Mahal’ that boasts a 200-seat amphitheater, state-of-the-art recording studio and Hamburg-Steinway grand piano,” reports the Boston Herald in a story today (March 10) about the pubcasting powerhouse’s finances. Update:: Abbott responded in a letter to the newspaper. The Herald‘s review of the latest IRS records (2009) for the station, which then employed around 950, found that four vice presidents and producers pulled in more than $300,000 in compensation; 10 employees took home more than $200,000; 145 earned more than $100,000; ex-WGBH president Henry Becton Jr.,

Harvard scholar and PBS documentarian Henry Louis Gates said he can’t imagine that any “self-respecting” member of Congress would vote to cut or zero out pubcasting support. In an interview with the Zap2it TV and movie news website, Gates called public broadcasting “one of our truly great national resources,” and added that the funding fight “just shows you how politicized the arts have become by the Right, and it’s disgusting. And I think we should all be embarrassed by it.”

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University who blogs at PressThink, has a 10-point response to public media’s tactics for recovering from the video sting that brought down NPR’s chief executive and its top fundraiser. Rosen views the ouster of President Vivian Schiller as a “stupid and cowardly act” by the NPR Board that reveals a fundamental weakness in public broadcasting’s political strategy and its commitment to positioning itself as an impartial news service. Culture warriors of the right wing “want to destroy you,” Rosen warns public media. “You don’t get to decide whether you have political enemies or not.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) — the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, which oversees pubcasting funding — says it’s now time to discontinue federal support to NPR. In a letter to subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Shelby said he intends to “look at all available appropriations vehicles to discontinue funding directly related to NPR programming.” It is also signed by Labor/HHS subcommittee members Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

A link roundup of last night’s (March 9) reactions to NPR President Vivian Schiller’s resignation in the wake of fundraiser Ron Schiller’s remarks caught on undercover tape: Juan Williams on Fox’s Hannity program, saying in part: “This to me is finally is a window into how they [at NPR] really think.” ABC  World News with Diane Sawyer, hosted by George Stephanopoulos. The report featured pubcasting foe Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) saying, “There are some real serious problems at NPR,” and supporter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) noting, “Obviously it doesn’t help when somebody does idiotic things.” WAMU’s Diane Rehm on CNN, telling John King that inside NPR, although Schiller’s resignation was a shock, “you had the feeling that another shoe was going to drop.”

Veteran pubcaster Dennis Haarsager, who steered NPR through its last executive leadership transition, weighs in on the turmoil at the top of NPR on his blog Technology 360. Noting that he wasn’t plugged into the decision-making process behind Vivian Schiller’s resignation yesterday, he writes: “Boards and c.e.o.s rely on mutual trust and confidence. Boards and c.e.o.s part ways when this is out of whack. It’s that simple and that complicated. It’s tempting to speculate beyond this….But this speculation is almost always wrong.” Haarsager was responding to Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, who blasted the NPR Board for sending Vivian Schiller out the door, describing it as “ballless in the face of pressure,” and asserting that member stations’ parochial objections to Schiller’s agenda for digital news undermined support for her in NPR’s boardroom.