Multiple officials at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting cried during a board meeting last week and the agency's president recited lines from a Shakespeare tragedy—in an outpouring of emotion and drama over Congress's vote to cancel the organization's budget to fund NPR and other public media outlets because of liberal bias.
CPB president Pat Harrison and the organization's four board members took part in a board meeting on July 24, days after Congress voted to rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding that CPB allotted to NPR and local public radio and television stations. Republicans pushed the bill over what they've called the heavy left-leaning bias of NPR and PBS.
Harrison acknowledged bias at CPB, which she has overseen since 2005.
"Is there bias?" asked Harrison, according to an audio recording of the meeting. "Sure, we're not perfect, but we were working on that," she continued, adding that the leftward slant of public media is "not a legitimate reason to shut down everything."
Those remarks contradict claims from Democrats and NPR chief executive Katherine Maher, who told Congress in March that she has "never seen … political bias" at NPR.
The rest of the CPB meeting was a somber affair, with Harrison and several board members breaking into tears while discussing the funding cuts, which they cast as an existential crisis for American democracy.
"My beloved state of Alaska is in mourning," said board member Diane Kaplan, growing emotional at times during remarks about the cuts.
Ruby Calvert, the chair of the CPB board, lamented that Congress "renewed the assault on public media."
"Never in 58 years, actually, of operations has CPB and our public media system been so maligned and attacked," said Calvert, who was appointed to the board by President Donald Trump in 2018, and reappointed by President Joe Biden in 2022.
"It's a terrible miscarriage," said Tom Rothman, a Biden appointee.
Harrison, too, grew emotional during her remarks, which she ended by reading a speech from the Shakespeare tragedy Henry V given on the eve of the king's battle against the French army at the Battle of Agincourt.
"With apologies to Shakespeare and King Henry V, whose ragtag army was outnumbered by the French at the Battle of Agincourt, but won despite those odds," said Harrison. "King Henry said, sort of, after winning the battle, 'And those now against us shall think themselves accursed they were not here. And hold their honor cheap when any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day.'"
"Aim for that win for public media," Harrison urged.
Rothman followed those remarks, comparing Harrison to a heroic character from the Russell Crowe film Master and Commander.
"The captain of the ship, they're under heavy fire. There's a little boy, a little midshipman, and he ducks down. And the captain, played by Russell Crowe, he reaches over to the little boy, and he says, 'Stand tall on the quarterdecks.'"
"All of us, that's what I think I'm gonna think about you, Pat," continued Rothman. "You've stood tall in the quarterdeck under heavy and unfair fire."
The meeting could also serve as fodder for the Trump administration in its legal battle to fire Rothman and Kaplan, also appointed by Biden in 2022. Trump fired the two members and former board member Laura Ross on April 28. They refused to leave the organization, attending board meetings and casting votes on agenda items.
The Department of Justice sued the trio earlier this month, asserting that they "continue to usurp" the agency by participating in board meetings. "All of this is manifestly unlawful."
Kaplan addressed the lawsuit during last week's meeting.
"We have not only been chastised, we've been sued, and then just last week, three of us were personally sued for serving in a public service role on a board where we were nominated by the President of the United States," she said.
CPB and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.