where do you see specific opportunities to move that line, to start addressing some of the things that are urgently needed? >> i am going to hold lines of the epa can move the line for word. i want the rest of the government to be able to spend the money under the recovery act, to adopt appropriate regulations under existing law, and to use whatever administrative tools they have their disposal that did not require congress to pass official legislation. at some point, we will pass additional legislation, hopefully in a positive direction. if they do the job that they can do now, and they are proposing to do, it will move us forward. it is only going to be two years.

>> i think we have time for one more question. i should go to that side. >> wait for the microphone. >> you said in your speech? you were finding that the industry was much more on board into a dozen 9 with some kind of a positive vote -- 2009 was some kind of a positive vote. where is the balance? where are you saying you support from industries or regulation? >> i mentioned the coalition that we have behind legislation. that was an impressive coalition. it would be addressed eventually ended the to have some rules of the road.

the two industries that come to mind, one is: the other is oil. -- coal and the other is oil. i am reminded of the situation we had been we were reviewing the acid rain problem. we were so. to get legislation passed and to answer the plight of the people in the midwest due to bear the cost. we will have the charge on electricity throughout the country, a small charge of pennies per family. the coal industry said, there is no problem. leave us alone. after the cap-and-trade legislation on sulfur emissions, we did not give the many subsidies. we said that they have to figure out how to reduce the emissions.

we're just telling you the goal. you figure out how to reach the goal. the result was reaching a goal at a lot less of a cost, a fraction of the cost of what people were testifying before. the biggest change was that those high sulphur people who said there were no problem, they were displaced by the low-sulfur coal. that was the cheapest way to achieve the results. rather than protect high sulphur coal, we'll let the market force it's worked. they suffered a real disadvantage. some industries can overplay their hand. the coal industry they overplay its hand, especially when we are reaching their hands out and saying, we will try to develop a

program so that coal be a viable industry. we will help pay for it. perhaps they will have to pay for it. they are not as interested in the financial well-being. they are interested in ideology. they are uniquely involved in the right wing of this country. they are financing the tea party movement and the republican party and they are making the politics pay off for them both ideologically and economically. there are industries that we will never completely satisfied. we will do our best to hear their concerns and try to be responsive to them, but if their position is, nothing, no way, no how, it is hard to compromise. >> thank you so much.

[applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> the head of the npr, vivian schiller, argued today about eliminating public -- funding for public broadcasting. her remarks are next.

a republican form in iowa. tomorrow, an update on piracy. civil unrest is driving more of the world's poor people to result to piracy. live coverage starts at 8:15 on c-span3. transportation secretary ray lahood will testify about his department's budget request for next year. live coverage begins at 2:30 eastern. >> president obama fy12 department allows us to continue to meet these threats and challenges.

>> as cabinet secretaries meet with members of congress over the department's budget request for next year, which the hearings on line at the c-span video library. it is washington, your way. >> the head of npr said earlier that the current federal budget deficit has made cuts to public broadcasting more likely now than during past budget debates. during her speech, vivian schiller also addressed the firing of news analyst juan williams last year. this is an hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the national press club. i am a broadcast journalist with

the associated press. we are the world's leading professional organization for a journalist and we're committed to our profession's future through our programming and by fostering a free press around the world. for more information about the press club, i ask that you visit our web site. if you care to donate 20 of our programs, that you should visit the web site maintained by our library. on behalf of our members worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker and attendees of today's events. we would also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences as well as those listening to our podcast. after the speech, i will ask as many audience questions as time permits. i would like to introduce our head table guests. we begin with the president of strauss radio strategies and a member of the plus club. -- press club.

barbara corcoran is with the university of missouri. she also mentioned that she has written a paper on public media. a little visual age for today's presentation. next we have the editor for research magazine, the foundation for biomedical research. patrick butler, president and ceo of the associated of public television stations. mike palmer, director for the direct -- for the associated press. we will skip over the podium and the next go to alice and fitzgerald. she is vice chair of our press club's speakers' committee. maryland is the senior business editor for npr.

patricia harris and its president and ceo of the corporation for public broadcasting and a guest of our speaker. andrea's down is washington correspondent for aol news. how about a warm round of applause? [applause] lindsey arent usually delivers the news, but in recent months -- and he are usually delivers the news. last october, the decision to cut ties with juan williams infuriated conservatives. npr is in the news again. it would be a blow to local member stations and destabilizing for npr itself, which celebrates its 40th anniversary on the air next

month. this battle is not the first crisis that vivian schiller has faced. when she came to npr in to douse the nine, the u.s. economy was unraveling. -- 2009, the u.s. economy was unraveling. she had to start her career just as corporate underwriting was traveling. programs are being eliminated and budgets for being cut to the bone. even as she helped npr retrench, she began pushing hard for innovation and excellence in our digital world. her efforts seem to us paid off. npr has stabilized financially and as flourished on the air and in digital spaces. under her leadership, they have continued to halt in top awards for journalism. her job is to ensure the fiscal operational integrity of npr,

his program -- nearly 30 million people a week. before joining npr, she served as a general manager for "the new york times website. previously, she headed up the discovery times channel and served as senior vice president of cnn productions. she has made some controversial decisions. one may seem particularly strange to longtime listeners. last summer, she pressed to quietly changed the name of the organization itself. it no longer refers to the radio. it is now just npr. the media outlets delivers news to some need digital devices, the board radio does not fit any more. as the personal side, i worked for public radio stations early in my career. i remember fondly the satellite

radio network distribution was news and npr was on the cutting edge even back then. what of my goals this year is to use this forum to engage in a more robust discussion about journalism. i think it is something both the public and our members are eager for us to do. i am grateful that our guest speaker has agreed to grace our podium once again today. please give a warm welcome to vivian schiller. [applause] i want to begin by reading an e- mail from and npr reporter.

we basically pushed away end. we walked across the border and were incredibly lucky to find people to drive us and guide us. yes, we had an unfortunate incident at an army base for people were nervous about being photographed. we were surrounded and the photographer had his camera smashed. but that has proven to be the exception. everywhere else we have gone, we have been greeted with cheers and shouts. this is a country that has not been exposed to western media. everyone just said they were so relieved to see us, at they were desperate to have their story told. the first meeting of the new local government was being held. everyone was stunned to see us. they gave us a standing ovation and started shouting and crying. i know it is corny, she writes, but i've never been prouder to be a journalist.

her note is a potent reminder of the meeting in impact of the free press. it is that the court of npr's mission, powerful journalism and the public interest. this is what i want to talk about today. what we stand for and how we think about our audience, the nature of our funding model, and a vision for the future. for well over a decade, the media conversation has been dominated by reports of shrinking in newsrooms and collapsing business models. it tumbler of what the work of journalists is really about. -- it cannot blur with the work of journalists is really about. all good news organizations

share in that critical work. for those of us in public media, it is our only mission. it has been 44 years since the passage of the public broadcasting act. for those of few are too young to remember, that was a time when the big three networks had foreign bureaus all over the world, not to mention deep reporting staff and blocks on the net burk schedule. yet, even then, there was concern that commercial interest would drive the networks away from quality news and cultural programming. and so public broadcasting was born. i do not need to tell this audience about the changes that happened in our industry in the last 10 years, let alone the last 40. the economic simp -- economics are undergoing seismic changes. demand for the news has never

been higher. mainstream news organizations continue to cut back the number of journalists available to report the news, particularly at local level. npr has worked to try to fill that void in news gathering and we are working with our member stations. the same. what does that look like? 17 bureaus overseas. that is far more than any of those big three has today. we are opening in europe -- new bureaus walt maintaining a full- time presence in iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, jerusalem, cairo, east africa, west africa, china, and other spots around the world. over last couple of weeks, npr journalists have been in tunisia, saudi arabia, bahrain, and lydia -- libya.

we may soon be in algeria and yemen. closer to home, we have reporters on just about every beat imaginable. race, demographics, education, religion, we have the entire unit dedicated to science, arts, books, music. last year, we launched npr's first investigative unit. it now has nine full-time staff. we stay on this story when everyone else moves on. npr's howard is still reporting on the big branch mine of west virginia were 29 workers died nearly a year ago. debbie elliot list of the gulf of mexico and continues to follow developments since the bp disaster. danny has did the story of returning soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injury.

we are the opposite of parachute journalism. our reporters have subject matter expertise built up over years, sometimes decades. member stations have the same. still in the growing void in local reporting. over 900 journalist. across nearly 800 member stations prayed that is in addition to npr journalist. they serve communities large and small, and very small. in fact, one third of the stories you hear on npr are produced by member station reporters. they defined the very character of public radio. in national, they cover fort campbell and the role that it has played in iraq and afghanistan conflict. in oklahoma, kosu has reported on the resurgence of math class in the midwest greg -- meth labs

in the midwest. frank morris in kansas city is the go to guy for agriculture. stations contribute more than just reporting. they also provide critical life- saving information in times of disaster. on the gulf coast, a tornado alley, and a landslide zones of california. this past january, a severe winter storm blanketed much of northern arizona with as much as 6 feet of snow. npr member station kuyi lost power for 48but it was able to o deliver broadcast for their audience. they stayed on the air thanks to

two diesel generators funded with federal dollars. without it, knelt -- nearly 100,000 people would not have access to vital information on emergency relief efforts, platter, and road conditions. this is just one story -- there are hundreds more like it. with journalists on the ground and transmitters their reach far beyond population centers, they provide a vital service that only three broadcasting can deliver. -- free broadcasting can deliver. this results in an engaged audience. almost unique in american media, our audience for the traditional core service radio, which we have not abandoned, mark, it is court to everything that we do and it is more relevant than ever. as witnessed by the fact that the audience to our radio is

growing and has been growing for the past decade. with just that our ratings for last fall and i am pleased to report they mark another all- time high in the top 50 markets. that is four consecutive quarters of record growth for npr. 44 million people listen to npr station -- 34 million people listen to npr stations every week, and they listen on average six hours a week. in the digital arena, we reach 17 million people a month. that is a 100% growth over the last two years. they come to us on npr.org, on the iphone, on the eye when it -- on the ipad, on enjoyed, to read and listen to the radio and they connect to us on facebook or we have a larger audience than any other media outlet, and

on twitter, we reached 3 million. it is not just about the numbers but also about the impact. our social media's strategist here with us today in the audience has become something of a one-man news platform, and i hope you are tweeting this. serving as a hub for news reports out of egypt and anywhere else that news spreads. we are also growing in audience trust. according to a recent pew report, we're the only national news organization to receive growth in public trust of the last decade. our audience is not a left and right and dominant. we are urban and rural, north and south, read state and blue state. our listeners are equally distributed throughout every part of america, because of our unique network of local member stations.

rooted in their communities, locally owned, operated, and staffed, these are citizens serving citizens. our listener is still a personal connection to what we do. not long ago, i was walking in reception with npr "morning edition" hosts, and we are radio, but as we mingled and introduced ourselves, i was struck by their reaction people had when they realized who he was. not merely a media celebrity, but someone with whom they feel a deep personal connection. and then of course, always the same joke, i wake up with you every morning. he is a good sport about it. he laughs each time like it is the first time he has ever heard it. and he is in cairo tonight so you will hear his reports from the region over the next several

weeks. our listeners tell us they appreciate that our reporters report. and so do our hosts. our listeners tell us they come to us for the craftsmanship, the stability of our programming, and the range of opinion and diversity of stories. our region has its limits and our coverage has its critics. we're working to expand the diversity of our audience, our staff, sources, and stories, to do a better job speaking to people across the spectrum of thought, experience, and background. and we are paying aggressive attention to our ethical decision making. standards and practices that journalism at our level demands. in doing so, we hope to deliver an even larger following in the country and better serve our mission to enlighten and inform. let me shift to our funding model. i did this not because i think

you're fascinated with our balance sheet but because it points to the depth and variety of our public support. it is a success story though often misunderstood. npr is successful not because we are smarter than anyone else. we certainly are not. nor because we have different values, we do not. and certainly not because we do not have to worry about the bottom line -- believe me, as you heard in the introduction, we most certainly do. we are successful because of the investment that the american public has made in public media over 40 years. and this is critical -- the way in which we have gradually been able to leverage to that investment to build other sources of support. those sources include listeners, whose contributions make up the largest share of station revenue. corporate underwriters, whose

support is not simply a transaction, they want to be associated with the credibility and the value of the npr name. we are also supported by philanthropic individuals and institutions to share our vision of an informed society. and finally, we rely on continued government funding, grants to stations and the corporation for public broadcasting represent 10% of the economy. it is not the larger share of revenue, but it is a critical cornerstone of public media. this money is particularly important for stations in rural areas. there, the government funding can be a larger share of revenue, 30%, 40%, 50% or more. they may have no other access to free over the air news and information. modest as it is, government

funding is critical because it allows taxpayers to leverage a small investment into a very large one. it is seed money. station managers tell me that 10% plays a critical role in generating the other 90% that makes their broadcast possible. the fact that we have four sources of revenue