Forward Kentucky publisher Bruce Maples gets why Kentucky Educational Television accepted an apparently hefty donation from the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce to help fund KET’s longstanding live coverage of the political speechmaking at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic, which is set for Aug. 2.
“KET was stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Maples, referring to KET’s earlier decision not to carry the speeches because congressional Republicans voted to axe funding for public broadcasting.
A KET press release didn’t tell how much the chamber gave, wrote McKenna Horsley in The Kentucky Lantern. But a KET press release said the sum was “generous.”
“We’re grateful to the Kentucky Chamber, a longtime corporate partner and supporter of KET, for helping us to continue this decades-long tradition of bringing viewers across the state coverage of this iconic event,” said KET Executive Director and CEO Shae Hopkins in the release.
Maples doubts altruism or dedication to the public’s right-to-know motivated the chamber to pony up. He doesn’t pull punches either.
“Why does the chamber care about Fancy Farm? They care because they are a Republican institution, and they want to promote the Republican speakers and Republican ideology.”
The chamber donation may also have been prompted by the emcee picnic organizers named this year: chamber President and CEO Ashli Watts. Maples also has a problem with the picnic being emceed by the head “of a Republican-driven organization. We all know that Fancy Farm has turned into a rip-and-snort Republican party.”
As Democratic power has waned in the state, Republican speakers have come to outnumber Democrats at the podium.
“The bipartisan event has become more Republican-heavy in recent years as Democrats have lost significant ground in the state,” Hannah Pinski wrote in the Louisville Courier-Journal. “This year, picnic-goers can expect to hear from all three high-profile Republicans running to replace outgoing U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell: U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and businessman Nate Morris.”
To date, just one Democrat, John “Drew” Williams, has agreed to speak, according to Pinski. He is taking on Republican First District U.S. Rep. James Comer.
"On the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, state Rep. Pamela Stevenson, who is also running to replace McConnell, have declined to speak." Pinski added.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the object of so much GOP disaffection, was created by Congress in 1967. It was supposed to “ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services … by distributing more than 70% of its funding to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations.” They include KET and NPR affiliates.
For decades, conservatives have claimed that PBS and NPR have a built-in liberal bias. Project 2025, the rightwing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, proposed “stripping public funding” because it “would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting.”
Soon after President Donald Trump was inaugurated a second time in January, he and his administration targeted funding for public broadcasting. But all along, government funding for public broadcasting in the U.S. has been far lower than in other democracies, according to Michael Swerdlow. “Fifteen peer democracies spend an average of $70 per person on public media,” he wrote in The Columbia Journalism Review before Congress acted. “In this country, we spend a measly $3 per person.”
He suggested that “We could correct this imbalance by mandating that just 0.1 percent of the federal budget be spent on local news.”
Even before Trump and the Republicans opted for the reverse, public broadcasting had to rely heavily on private funding, including money from large corporations and their allies like the Kentucky Chamber.
More than a few journalists and others have worried about the growing corporate influence on what was supposed to be independent news-gathering and presenting. “I would much prefer that public broadcasting be independent of anybody’s money, but that has been rendered impossible,” said Bill Straub, a Northern Kentucky Tribune columnist, veteran journalist, and Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer.
Chamber Watch, among the most vocal chamber critics, says that “while its name may conjure up wholesome images of your hometown chamber, the hyper-partisan U.S. Chamber pushes a reactionary agenda that is dangerous for workers, consumers, and the environment.”
Unions consider the national and state chambers among their fiercest foes. In 2017, the Kentucky chamber strongly championed the state’s “right to work” law, which was passed by the Republican supermajority House and Senate and eagerly signed by GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.
Watts, then chamber vice president of public affairs, said RTW was “at the top of the list [for the Chamber of Commerce’s economic development agenda]."
Since, the chamber has backed several Republican bills designed to weaken unions. In addition, the chamber offers a variety of programs to help business owners avoid unions.
Concluded Maples: “The fact that the chamber made the donation so KET could cover Fancy Farm just puts an absolutely Republican spin on it.”
--30--
Comments
