Public Broadcasters’ Donor List Use Assailed Sharing With Partisan Groups Deepens Gop’S Suspicions

A House subcommittee blasted public broadcasting officials Tuesday over recent revelations that at least 28 public television stations had shared donor lists with political organizations or advocacy groups.

The practice, which some legislators said was a possible tax-law violation, has drawn the ire of both Democrats and Republicans. Some lawmakers criticized publicly funded broadcasters, which are supposedly nonpolitical, for involvement with partisan organizations.

“We’re going to make these practices illegal before we are through,” said Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Commerce Committee’s telecommunications subcommittee.

Robert Coonrod, president and CEO of the private, nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said 53 of the nation’s top 75 stations share the computer lists they use in station fund-raising campaigns with outside firms. And 28 of those stations share their lists with firms that also trade lists with political organizations.

Coonrod pledged to the panel that CPB would try to make uniform donor list policies for all public television stations.

“Here’s a case where we have to say, `We blew it,”’ Coonrod said. “We should work to guarantee the privacy of the donors.”

Nonprofit organizations, which are prohibited from partisan activity, are allowed to share their donor lists with political organizations, but only if they make them available to all political parties.

The practice of trading lists with political groups has enraged Republicans, many of whom have accused publicly funded broadcasters of pursuing a liberal agenda. The disclosures deepened their suspicions, since many of the groups that used the lists were affiliated with the Democratic Party.

“It threatens the integrity of public broadcasting,” Tauzin said. “It further deepens the suspicion that many people have had about public broadcasting (favoring the Democratic Party).”

But Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan said some donor lists were shared with organizations with ties to both Democrats and Republicans.