Communications Law Firms and Broadcasters Among PPP Recipients
Law firms, broadcasters and advocacy groups were beneficiaries of 2020’s federal Paycheck Protection Program. More than five dozen law firms and other organizations in communications and media got a total of more than $142 million to forestall job losses due to the pandemic. That's per our analysis of PPP data using the Accountable.US and ProPublica databases. The figure excludes forgivable loans of less than $1 million.
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More than 1.1 million PPP loans, totaling in excess of $100 billion, have been forgiven nationwide, the Small Business Administration said Jan. 12. PPP just reopened for new borrowers and some second-time borrowers, with $284 billion authorized for job retention and other expenses through March 21, SBA and the Treasury Department said.
Among the biggest law firm recipients in our space were Wiley, which received $8.92 million, Kelley Drye ($9.97 million), Boies Schiller ($10 million) and Best Best ($6.14 million). Others included Wilkinson Barker ($2.46 million) and Harris Wiltshire ($1.1 million). The Gerben intellectual property law firm listed more than 14,000 law firms that received PPP awards in excess of $150,000. That has more than 150 Washington firms, including 31 that received more than $1 million each. Getting less than $1 million were Potomac Law Group, Telecommunications Law Professionals, Lerman Senter and Spiegel & McDiarmid.
Best Best, "like businesses around the country ... applied for and received a Payment Protection Program loan from the Small Business Administration to help keep hundreds of people employed," the firm emailed. Because its "clients are largely public agencies, including cities, school districts and special districts, our finances are different than those of typical mid-size or large law firms. This also means that our clients, many of whom perform essential services, could not close because of the COVID-19 pandemic.” None of the other firms we contacted commented.
Among broadcasters and programmers, we found more than 40 that received in excess of $1 million. Major recipients included Chicago Public Media ($2.85 million), New York Public Radio ($8.92 million), Philadelphia's WHYY ($3.66 million), Chicago's Window to the World Communications ($3.7 million), Oklahoma City's Griffin Communications ($5 million), Florida's Southern Stone Communications ($1.32 million), Alabama's SummitMedia ($5.47 million) and Los Angeles' Lotus Communications ($5.08 million). National Religious Broadcasters received $327,300.
Among interest groups, recipients included the Bipartisan Policy Center ($1.82 million), Public Knowledge ($316,660), the Electronic Privacy Information Center ($245,100) and Government Accountability Project ($292,390).
The $319,972 the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation received was used for payroll, a spokesperson said. She said the economic uncertainty at the beginning of the pandemic "had the potential to undercut the financial support we rely on. Our goal was to make it through without having to lay off any of our staff. So far, we’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had to."
New America Foundation, which received $3.3 million, said the funding covered payroll and benefit costs, plus lease expenses and utilities. A spokesperson said it's difficult to know what would have happened without the funding, but it applied "as an important step in ensuring fiscal responsibility and employment stability" for its employees. She said New America isn't endowed and fundraises its entire budget yearly, so the loan let it offset some immediate financial impacts from the pandemic "as we assessed our financial health for the longer term."
R Street Institute, which received $1.15 million, says it doesn't seek contracts with governments, but as a business it takes part in government programs such as state workers' compensation funds and healthcare exchanges. It said it committed to staff there would be no layoffs, furloughs or across-the-board pay cuts in 2020.
PPP funds were "very helpful to us in facing the economic downturn and the early days of the pandemic, when -- like everyone -- our team was navigating healthcare, homeschooling and other challenges," said Craig Aaron, co-CEO of Free Press, which received $501,315. Aaron said due to PPP funding, "we were able to keep our full team in place for all of 2020 and ensure we could continue all of our work. Nonprofits are small businesses, too, and we’re very grateful to have gotten this support at this key moment."
Cable programmers also received funding, including Newsmax ($2.56 million), Ride TV Network ($1.06 million), EWTN ($4.68 million), First Media ($2.33 million), Fuse ($2.06 million) and Revolt ($1.93 million). MVPDs and ISPs MCTV and Mid-Hudson Cable each received $1.3 million, Schurz Communications received $8.47 million, and streaming service fuboTV received $4.7 million.