CPB backs NPR's foreign coverage

CPB has awarded a $500,000 grant to NPR in support of its international news coverage.

The grant, announced during a March 26 awards dinner honoring NPR correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, supports travel costs for reporters and their producers, as well as the work of NPR's foreign desk editors, according to CPB Chair Bruce Ramer.

As NPR's foreign desk steps up its reporting from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, reporters are putting themselves "on the frontline of historic news events," Ramer said."This will help NPR stay on the story as long as it takes."

"This is going to be so important for our work," said NPR President Gary Knell. "There's nothing more important to me and my colleagues than the foreign reporting work that we do."

Garcia-Navarro, recipient of CPB's 2011 Edward R. Murrow Award honoring outstanding contributions to public radio, described the grant as "a real gift to those of us who work in the field, and it has actual, practical implications."

"Never has covering the world been more dangerous and more vital," she said.