PUBLIC RADIO’S GREATEST FUND RAISER MAY REAPPEAR • DUMB, DUMBER & DUMBEST IN COLUMBUS

President Donald Trump is no friend of public media but he certainly makes the pledge phones ring. The blog NiemanLab.org is reporting that Trump’s budget for 2020 will again try to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

Earlier this week the Trump administration released an overview of the federal budget for fiscal year 2020 – October 1, 2019 – September 30, 2020. When the detailed version of the budget is released later in March, NiemanLab.org says [link] it will include eliminating all funding for CPB.

If true, this will be Trump’s third attempt to end funding for CPB. In 2017 Trump and his advisors made, what was considered at the time, to be a serious threat to defund CPB, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). That year Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, the legislative body that has the final word on government spending.

Congress ignored Trump’s wishes and voted to continue funding all three entities in 2017. Trump made another attempt to axe CPB in 2018 and that also failed.

Observers say that zapping CPB is just one of a lengthy list of targets that are “dog whistles” for his core supporters. Trump considers the budget to be a “messaging” vehicle in which he draws “lines in the sand” to demonstrate his gravitas. Like Kabuki theater or professional wrestling, the results don’t matter as long as the show is entertaining for the ditto-heads.

NPR and PBS fit inside Trump’s “fake news” narrative that calls fact-based news media to be The Enemy of the American People.

By our count, the current defunding effort is at least the eighth attempt by Republicans to end funding for CPB. Perhaps the most serious attempt was in the 1990s when Senators Bob Dole (R-Kansas) and Larry Pressler (R-South Dakota) almost succeeded in “privatizing” public broadcasting. It turned out that Pressler was defeated when he ran for re-election in 1996.  The people of South Dakota decided they wanted to keep public broadcasting and privatize Pressler. 

DUMB, DUMBER & DUMBEST IN COLUMBUS

Dan Mushalko

As new facts are discovered, the saga of former WCBE General Manager Dan Mushalko’s attempt to hide almost $900,000 in debts keeps getting stranger. 

Now, according to a report in the Columbus Dispatch [link], the plan included a “coup” of sorts to take the station away from the licensee, the Columbus City Schools.

When we first reported on the story in early February [link], we knew these facts:

• In late January 2019, Mushalko revealed to his immediate supervisor that he had been hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt owed to NPR for membership dues and program carriage fees. Mulshalko was immediately suspended as GM of WCBE and placed on administrative leave, pending the results of an internal investigation.

Don McTigue

• On the same day, the board of the Columbus City Schools received a letter from Don McTigue, a Columbus area lawyer who had once been on WCBE’s community advisory group. 

In the letter, McTigue offered to pay the debt owed to NPR. 

In exchange, the Columbus City Schools would allow McTique’s non-profit organization – WCBE Ohio, Inc. – to assume operational control of the station.

• The Columbus laughed at McTique’s offer and never replied.

HATCHING THE PLAN

New reporting in The Dispatch [link] now tells of a plot to take over WCBE. The plan  unwittingly included WOSU and former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman. Here is some what The Dispatch learned:

• In January 2018 Mulshalko told his contact at NPR that WCBE had fallen behind in making payments to NPR for programming. He told the NPR contact by email “we can get those installments [payments] rolling again ASAP.”

Apparently, WCBE did not make any payments.

• July 2018, a senior manager of business at NPR, informed Mushalko that Columbus City Schools owned NPR almost $870,000. The NPR representative told Mulshalko that the debt was “front and center” with the NPR finance department, and “from what I gather, this will be out of my hands soon without guidance on payments (actual payments) soon.”

Mulshalko agreed to a repayment schedule and told NPR “if it’s not sufficient, I am fully prepared to recommend our licensee sell the station and use a portion of the proceeds to pay (the debt).”

Mulshalko did not have the authority to make the offer (Dumb).

Michael B. Coleman

• Meanwhile, by spring 2018, other stations in the market had learned through the "grapevine” about WCBE’s lRG debt to NPR. 

WOSU wanted to fold WCBE into its operation and switch the format to full-time Triple A music. WOSU hired former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman April 2018 to negotiate the deal.

However, Coleman did not contact the Columbus City Schools. Instead, he contacted and negotiated with McTigue who he assumbed had the authority to speak on behalf of the Columbus City Schools. (Dumber)

• Coleman and McTique crafted a complicated three-way deal that would lead to WOSU managing and operating WCBE. McTigue had no authority make such an offer. (Even Dumber)

• Then, in November 2018, WOSU decided to pull out of the fictional deal. (WOSU may or may not have known that the deal was not real.)

• Finally, eight weeks later in January 2019, Mulshalko informed the Columbus City Schools that the station owed NPR $870,000 and that the City Schools would have to pay it off. McTigue’s letter offering a “sweetheart deal” to pay the debt to NPR arrived the same day,

KEN SAYS: It is impossible to know who was the dumbest person or organization in this situation.   

Was it Dan Mulshalko who hid the debt? 

Was it former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman who didn’t do due diligence about McTigue?  

Or was it McTigue, the attorney who tried to leverage the deal with smoke and mirrors.

No, the dumb, dumber and dumbest entity in this whole mess is the Columbus City Schools. Their lack of supervision of WCBE allowed all of this to happen.

Perhaps WOSU can give this story a happy ending. If the Columbus City Schools can arrange for WOSU to take control of WCBE and then flip the format to full-time Triple A, people of Columbus will be the winners.