A foundation set up to help rural economic development has given about $300,000 over two years to UNC-TV, the public television network, which used the money to air positive stories about the foundation's work.
The grants are from the Golden LEAF Foundation, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars from the states' 1998 legal settlement with tobacco companies. The TV station has used the grants to produce sunny stories, with more than half of the episodes in its first 12 shows featuring projects that also received Golden LEAF money.
This month, the station received a second Golden LEAF grant of $112,000 to continue the series, with new shows to start in August.
When it pursued the Golden LEAF money, UNC-TV promised to "raise the visibility of the work being accomplished by the Golden LEAF Foundation and others as North Carolina rises to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century."
Critics said the network should not use grant money to produce stories involving the donor, while legislators said Golden LEAF grants should not go to produce television programs.
Though the "North Carolina Rising" episodes posted on UNC-TV's website do not disclose that Golden LEAF paid for them, Shannon Vickery, the director of production, said those disclosures appeared twice when segments aired as part of the news and information show "North Carolina Now."
The network considers itself "an information provider," Vickery said, and is not out to air the kind of news found on commercial stations. The series fits with UNC-TV's mission to aid the state's economic transition, she said.
Ties criticized
George Padgett, an associate professor at Elon University who teaches a law and ethics course, said UNC-TV's relationship with Golden LEAF "doesn't sound right to me."
The on-air disclosures that Golden LEAF is the donor "alleviates some of the pain, but doesn't make it right," he said.
"It's probably best to avoid that direct coverage as much as possible," said Fred Brown, vice chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee.
The Golden LEAF Foundation is a quasi-governmental agency established under a 1999 state law. The foundation, whose board members are political appointees, receives half the state's share of a national tobacco settlement between cigarette companies and states. As of this month, the foundation has received about $867 million in settlement money and has handed out $446 million in grants.
LEAF's goals drift
When legislators started the foundation, they said they intended to use the money for economic-development projects in communities hurt by tobacco's decline.
Lately, some of the foundation's grants have only a remote connection to that original goal. In addition to the UNC-TV programs, grant money has gone to college scholarships, housing and retail development plans and to help prepare the state's application for a federal education grant. One Golden LEAF project, which helps provide each student at a Wilson County high school with a laptop, was the subject of a "North Carolina Rising" episode.
Foundation President Dan Gerlach, who appeared in the laptops episode, said the TV grant was in keeping with the foundation's marketing.
"They might get some ideas from us," Gerlach said. "They get no editorial control or anything like that from us."
Projects featured in the series generated interest from other areas of the state, Gerlach said. For example, other counties wanted information on student laptops, and an episode on making sweet potato fries sparked ideas from growers of other commodities on what products that could be made from their crops.
The foundation has drawn criticism for grants. Grants to a horse park drew repeated criticism from the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Raleigh.
Legislators weigh in
Legislators said grants to UNC-TV do not fit the foundation's mission. Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger said the public probably did not think when the foundation was established that it would be paying for television features.
"The idea of government self-promoting using public dollars is something that I think most people feel is inappropriate," said Berger, a Republican from Eden.
"It argues for changing the way we handle the tobacco settlement money," he said.
In its grant proposals, UNC-TV said it would "identify and highlight the success stories of rural areas that once thrived on tobacco but are now effectively transitioning to be part of the new, global economy."
Generally, the shows have little discussion of how the featured projects fit in the world economy. Vickery said that the town hall meetings the network organized and the related Web site discussed those issues.
"Our focus was to take a look at what's happening successfully with the rural economic development," she said, "really focus on what's working, what are those projects that are working in one community that can be replicated in another community."
The Golden LEAF Foundation, the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and others were contacted for ideas, but the network picked the stories, Vickery said.
