Public Media Policybase

NPR Underwriting Guidelines, as of 2000

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Undated document supplied by NPR, January 2000. No Commercial Obligations or Influence
NPR is an independent, nonprofit organization that carries no on-air advertising. One of the ways NPR helps fund its programming and general operations is by seeking underwriting support from corporations, foundations and associations. These tax-deductible donations provide virtually all of NPR’s contributed income. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations govern all underwriting announcements by NPR and public radio stations.

Programs/Content

Terry Gross: engaged with subject and listeners

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Terry Gross is interviewing the actor Dustin Hoffman. He is about to launch what is probably a set piece about his work with Mike Nichols on The Graduate, an obligatory story in most of his interviews. She knows this, having set up the subject. She also knows it is a story the audience may have heard before. He explains that Nichols offered him three pieces of advice.

Public Media Policybase

Bylaws of National Public Radio Inc., 1999

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 These bylaws include all amendments through Jan. 20, 1999. See also original NPR bylaws from 1970. ARTICLE I – OFFICES
1.1 Principal Office. The Corporation shall maintain its principal office in the City of Washington, District of Columbia.

System/Policy

Merger: we’re not talking now, but we might be talking later

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It may be a simple question–are PRI and NPR talking about a merger?–but that doesn’t mean it gets a simple answer. To keep their options open, the presidents of the two networks are employing nuances that reach beyond the English of newspaper headlines and into metaphysical realms of potentiality. Asked to clarify their positions Feb. 19 [1998], NPR’s Delano Lewis said talks with PRI are still ongoing and PRI’s Stephen Salyer said they’re not, “currently.” Lewis was questioned at the NPR Board meeting after trade periodicals delivered conflicting assessments that both came from Salyer:

“NPR-PRI merger talks are off, says Salyer,” said the headline of Current’s Feb.

Programs/Content

Will research bring comeback for radio drama?

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Talking about the current status of drama on public radio, NPR’s cultural programmer Andy Trudeau thinks back 10, 15 years ago, to a panel session on audience building. Someone had asked the speakers, “When is the best time to air drama?,” and a panelist shot back, “1939.” Despite this pervasive belief among station programmers — that radio drama doesn’t draw or hold modern audiences — Trudeau is spearheading an effort to revive the genre. At the very least, his is an attempt — perhaps a last-ditch one — to bolster the only regularly distributed national outlet for radio drama, NPR Playhouse. Trudeau is asking the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) to fund research on the appeal of drama to NPR’s core audience, and he is asking drama producers to be signatories to the proposal and give the project some cash.

People

Abu-Jamal sues NPR to force broadcast of commentaries

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Death row inmate, journalist, and international cause celebre Mumia Abu-Jamal has filed a $2 million censorship lawsuit against NPR over the network’s 1994 decision not to air his commentaries recorded for All Things Considered. The suit, filed by Abu-Jamal and the Prison Radio Project in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., argues that NPR nixed the commentaries under pressure from Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), other members of Congress and the Fraternal Order of Police. In addition to seeking damages, Abu-Jamal asks the court to force NPR to air the essays on ATC and then turn over the tapes to him. NPR and the Prison Radio Project recorded 10 of Abu-Jamal’s essays in Pennsylvania’s Huntingdon prison in April 1994. He was convicted in 1982 of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Programs/Content

What we offer: the case distinguishing NPR news

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A longtime NPR correspondent — then vice president in charge of the network’s news division — adapted this article from his remarks at Washington State University. Buzenberg later held top news posts at Minnesota Public Radio before moving to a prominent nonprofit newsroom, the Center for Public Integrity. Critics of sleaze, sex and violence in movies, music and the media have given public broadcasters their best chance yet to make a positive case for the value of public broadcasting to American society. In contrast to the anything-goes-as-long-as-it-makes-money values of some commercial media, public broadcasters have a compelling story to tell. It is a story of high standards and public-service journalism, even though public broadcasting also has been under attack, the most serious since it was established by Congress in 1967.

People

Commentaries from prison nixed, but —

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NPR’s decisions to air, and then not to air, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death-row commentaries might yet take another turn. The network is committed to airing prisoners’ voices — perhaps Abu-Jamal’s, in a form different from the stand-alone commentaries originally planned, NPR Vice President Bill Buzenberg said Wednesday. “I see this as a decision to pull back” and “postpone,” he said. “We’ll make other editorial decisions down the road.”
The silence from prisons allows a public hysterical about crime to maintain its stereotyped image
of prisoners and not think about them as complex human beings, says Sussman. The NPR-distributed Fresh Air interview program, meanwhile, may hire an inmate commentator (separate story below).

Development

GAO statement on NPR financial crisis, 1984

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NPR was shaken, President Frank Mankiewicz and other top managers toppled and some 60 staffers laid off in the network’s 1983 financial crisis. NPR, then largely dependent on federal aid through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, had expanded activities to generate nonfederal money. But those efforts contributed to NPR’s near-collapse. The U.S. Government Accounting Office found that revenues lagged behind budget, expenditures exceeded budget and management lacked systems to monitor the situation, resulting in a $6.4 million deficit in fiscal year 1983. In this statement, Frederick D. Wolf, director of GAO’s Accounting and Financial Management Division, reviewed factors in NPR’s fiscal crisis and cutbacks that barely enabled it to break even at that point.

Public Media Policybase

National Public Radio, Inc., By-Laws, 1970

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NPR’s original bylaws were put into effect when it was incorporated on Feb. 26, 1970. ARTICLE I.
Name

The Corporation shall be known as NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC.

ARTICLE II. Offices

2.1 Registered Office. The Corporation shall maintain a registered office in The City of Washington, District of Columbia.

NPR

NPR Articles of Incorporation, 1970

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These articles were attached to National Public Radio’s certificate of incorporation filed with the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds, Feb. 26, 1970. ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC.
We, the undersigned, natural persons of the age of twenty-one (21) years or more, and citizens of the United States, desiring to form a nonprofit corporation pursuant to the District of Columbia Non-Profit Corporations Act (23 D.C. Code Chapter 10), adopt the following Articles of Incorporation for such Corporation:
ARTICLE I.
The name of the Corporation is: NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC.
ARTICLE II. The period of duration of the Corporation is perpetual. ARTICLE III.