Pajiba

My dad has worked in public radio for my entire life, and I worked in the field for about 4 years, and I say NOOOOOOOOO. That lack of funding would just get passed down to the stations that pay to broadcast NPR (which are in part govmnt funded themselves) and the smaller ones simply wouldn't be able to afford it. This is doubly true if the individual stations lose funding as well, which would be quite likely if such a debate were to take place in Washington.
My dad's station is tiny, and currently the only way they can afford NPR programs is because they are grandfathered in to the cheaper rates from the 80s.

Austrian TV and radio stations are state-run (akin to the BBC), a fact I'd never considered til I took a media ethics class in the US in which they showed a world map with China, Austria and various third world countries colored bright Commie red. My fellow students looked at me with pity, saying "We didn't know you grew up in a dictatorship!"
When I tried to explain we were actually not censored and far more objective and less biased than, say, Fox News, they glanced away hurriedly muttering "brainwashing..."
I was bought a lot of meals and given second-hand clothes after that though, so it was totally worth it.

No.

No, absolutely not. Best programming out there on both counts. Plus, it's important that the government support the arts. For an angry rant, please see Toby in The West Wing "Take Out the Trash Day" episode.

"The Fox News of the left" is unlikely in the near term. Of course, in the long term, if all the people providing funding are left wing, power corrupts, etc. But for the moment, and at least until the current heads of NPR age out, the people running NPR are nearly unique in the American media landscape for having journalistic integrity. If anything, they err in the direction of going extremely far out of their way to avoid any allegation or appearance of bias.

Honestly, NPR and the BBC are the only news sources I feel I can remotely trust, in part because they are publicly funded and feel a strong compulsion to report facts.

Facts, as it turns out, are very, very moderate. The problem is that this country is so far to the right that facts look comparatively "liberal." Or, as Stephen Colbert has said, "Facts have a known liberal bias."

When you honestly believe that the world is 6000 years old (or are playing to that audience), facts about geology, biology, physics, etc become "liberal propaganda." The whole "liberal media" thing is a huge smokescreen kicked up because there really aren't rational counter-arguments to data and scientific fact. So you accuse purveyors of honest-to-goodness information of bias.

Yeah, definitely a huge NO. It would hardly shut down public broadcasting (cpb doesn't provide most of the money for this sort of thing) but it would cause distribution problems for poor/rural areas. People from these areas deserve good journalism, and even if everything FOX thinks about NPR is true (and it isn't) NPR/PBS are far, far, better than FOX/CNN/MSNBC. You don't feel like you're losing brain cells when you watch the News Hour or or listen to Fresh Air.

The private news media sucks a variety of ever-changing cocks.

I want more government funding of news.

I know I have lefty ears, but I honestly can't tell how anyone can listen to NPR for thirty minutes and then listen to any of the other news outlets mentioned above for the same amount of time and claim that NPR does not easily trump them all in terms of the objectivity that true journalism demands.

Evidently, in Jonah's world there's no such thing as a news organization that doesn't represent one of the exactly two political "sets of views". Enemy creation, it's fun and profitable!

@Chris: So, you're contending that NPR does not exist in a marketplace? The program "News and Notes" was one of my favorite shows to listen to, but it got canceled. Why? Because not enough stations bought it, because not enough people listened to it on the stations that did buy it. NPR does exist in a marketplace and shows do compete for airtime.

Do they have a liberal bent? Sure, I'll cop to that. Even so, the quality of the content is still head and shoulders above the cable news networks, who all have their own implicit leanings as well. (Possibly excepting CNN, but their programming has been shit for almost a decade now)

Also, anyone bashing the news hour formerly known as McNeil Lear can go die in a fire. That show is about as good of news, both in terms of objectivity and quality, as you can get in this day and age.

Chris, that argument ignores history, human nature, and the fundamental needs of democracy.

A functional democracy requires an informed electorate. That's straight from the mouths of the Founding Fathers, as well as just being a rational requirement of representative government.

Facts cannot compete with bias and rhetoric. You cannot bring a fact to a rhetoric fight. You will lose. People are not, on average, remotely rational about anything that is actually important.

Good journalism therefor can't compete with bullshit. The history of the press is one long, repetitive example of this. Fox News and MSNBC are simply the modern examples of the yellow journalism we saw with Pulitzer vs Hearst at the turn of the century.

Bad journalism is in our DNA. But it's not a good thing like a strong chin or wicked sexy red hair. It's a genetic disease. NPR and other examples of good journalism are the insulin that keeps us (sorta) functional.

Probably not going to be a popular opinion around here, but here goes- Yes, they should be defunded. I simply don't think that it is (or should be) the government's function to pay for things like this (however small or large the contribution, whatever the bias or lack thereof.)

Chris, your and Goldberg's argument is spot-off.

It's not a question of, "Can NPR sustain itself without public funding?" Whether it could, or not, isn't the issue. It's about should. The answer is no. Simply put, the private sector will not do everything that needs to be done in order to have the type of society and culture we have today. Parks would be non-existent, replaced by Starbucks and McDonalds or Wal-Mart or a new home office for Haliburton or Google. There'd be no more public schools or police departments or libraries or non-profit hospitals. Say goodbye to our interstate highways. If those things did continue to exist, there'd be a lot fewer of them because it's just not worth the money to a private business. Without public funding, NPR ceases to exist or becomes MSNBC. Neither is good for our country. And it's not because it's "NPR", it's because public broadcasting is needed.

I'm sick and tired of this "We have to go back to a time before the New Deal to restore America" bullshit. When Bush was in office and liberals and Democrats criticized him and his policies, they were labeled "anti-American", "un-patriotic", and "un-American". Now we have conservatives wanting to take us back to the days before FDR, to the way America hasn't been for approximately 70 years, who threaten violent overthrow of the government (re: "Second Amendment Rights") if they lose an election, and that's somehow pro American and patriotic? How? Why does one side get to choose what counts as "American"? The only answer I see to that question, and maybe I'm just pissed off at the moment, is entitlement based on race. Or, maybe it's bigotry. Either way, it's a positive form, wherein some white people just don't recognize that they were born into a higher socio-economic class because of 200 years of racial stratification. We've had over 200 years being the top dog of skin color in this country, but we've been on a steady forward motion toward equality -- legally and, very, very soon, demographically. Don't tell me it's "government overreach," either. That argument holds no water.

Sorry, bit of a rant there...

And you can take my Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and my Car Talk from my cold dead hands.

Sorry, esteemed host, I'm calling bullshit on this:

"Collectively, we have the luxury here on Pajiba to have a bright, intelligent and somewhat politically diverse community"

especially when it follows this:

"It is mostly a conservative talking point — because many on the right believe that NPR is a liberal media establishment ...".

If you want to claim to be fair and balanced (See what I did there?), you could try not to load the question quite so blatantly. Let people make, or fail to make their case. BTW, if you must speak for the 'other' side, what's wrong with this:

" ... and aside from the operatives and blowhards, the folks in favor of defunding seem (otherwise?) like decent enough people who may have a point, even though I don't get it."

That is, if you must start by characterizing "them."

I stop listening when an advocate makes the other guy's argument (invariably straw man), or talks about the bad guy's reasoning, motives, biases, breeding, sexual habits or etc.

I've had a lot of free time this election season.

I've seen PBS News. It's about as bipartisan as you can possible be (more so than CNN or BBC).

The answer is no. There's no reason to debate.

Yes.

But not because of politics or fairness or balance. Because if I don't value or support NPR - or if I don't have access to it, why should my money be taken to fund it?

Why should the government endorse NPR over any other news or art outlet? If our taxes fund NPR, why not "Coast to Coast," or "The George Carlin Tribute Hour?"

The government has a lot of important work to do. I think private citizens can handle funding radio and TV on their own. And if we aren't willing to pay, than we mustn't value it too highly despite all our rhetoric.

The government has a lot of important work to do. I think private citizens can handle funding radio and TV on their own. And if we aren't willing to pay, than we mustn't value it too highly despite all our rhetoric.

Posted by: Sbrown at October 29, 2010 3:44 PM

When you ask people what they value, education is always one of the top things on the list. But when you ask them to vote on funding, they gut it like a fish every time.

History does a pretty good job of indicating that the health of our education system correlates very strongly with our competitiveness on the world stage. We have hard data. Factual proof that every dollar put into education returns HUGE dividends, and we claim to put intrinsic value on it as well. But when given actual input, we fuck the next generation in the ass with a fire hose, every time. We don't even seem to realize how much harm we're doing to ourselves in the process.

Can we be trusted to make important decisions collectively?

No.

That's one of the reasons why we're a republic, not a democracy. We send people to government to make the decisions we're too stupid, ignorant, and lazy to make as a collective.

Do they have a liberal bent? Sure, I'll cop to that.

Socrates,
Don't cop to shit, man. I freely admit that I have a liberal bent. I want to believe that NPR doesn't, but then I'd naturally want "the unbiased truth" to match up with what I believe. So, maybe NPR does have a liberal bent. But I have tried to hear it, and I can't.

But, fuck it, who gives a shit? This will all die down soon. It's just another non-issue being brought up before elections. I want to hear more pontificating about the "ground zero mosque"!

Dear ZombieScientist,

Who's DNA do I need to get wicked sexy red hair? I loves me some ginger.

Mrs Smith

PS. Please don't tell Mr Smith I asked.

Oh and on the debate question: NO

Sure pull their funding. While we're at it let's pull the funding from that extremely radical right thing...the umm...whatsitcalled....yeah the military. Damned military totally republican biased. Pretty sure thats federally funded.

On-point ...

I'm a huge fan of muppets - especially that furry dancing with Katy Perry's boobs, Ken Burns documentaries and Bill Moyers Journal. Still, some arguments against:

1 - I'm not sure government funding for NPR passes "the gun to grandma's head test."

I mean, I believe with all my heart - and a bit lower - that furries & boobies on the TV makes this a better world. BUT, one inescapable difference between "public" and "private" funding - public funding includes forcing people who disagree to pay up anyway. How sure do we have to be, and about how big a deal, to justify putting a gun to grandma's head to make her pay for something she doesn't support?

2 - Localism & minority opinion. (Note 1)

Money doesn't evaporate when you remove federal funding. It's still somewhere. Money that isn't replaced privately was allocated against the preference of the money's owners to begin with. Yet, along with losing some of the bad guy's money, the champions of good and right are less beholden to the lumpen general opinion when money and decisions stay nearby.

Say the People's Republic of the West Village wants to fund Bert & Ernie Get Closer. Funding nationally, they've got to convince a whole lotta people. Funding locally, or on specific interests, most of the money that would have gone up to the national collective then back (Less a little - "Carrying charges, my dear boy.") stays local, free for tPRotWV to allocate as they like. (Note 2)

3 - Production or distribution or endorsement?

Why Federal government funding of NPR anyway? When a (mostly) movie-review site with a name that's "fun to say" & a devotion to one-eyed cephalopod gathers enough snarkley-hordes to self-sustain, is it needed? Add that most NPR funding comes from non-government contributions anyway and the gummint funding ain't about The Benjamins.

4 - Hijacking & shenanigans.

"Mighty nice network you have there. Would be a shame if anything happened to it."

"BTW, you know some people might be a bit put-off by that skepticism you're broadcasting about WMD in Iraq. Not us, of course. Just something we heard. BTW, isn't your funding up for renewal?"

In a world where the Feds so often are the story, and for media access is the coin of the realm, do we really need to tempt them with more ways to influence what gets out there?

5 - Incompetence.

That CEO left them open to about 15 lawsuits and a huge dose of embarrassment with the way Juan Williams was handled. Then the ombudsman made it worse. Their media relations and corporate council are asleep on the job too.

Do we really want public money from grandma - that could be making "Bert and Ernie Get Closer" - paying legal fees for idiots?

Note 1

"Minority opinion" as in the statistical minority opinion, not the opinion of designated minorities.

I can't think of a better word.

Note 2

The point of limiting centralized control is letting minorities of opinion make their own choices.

For what some polls say is a "minority-liberal" segment of a "center-right" nation", one would think the more freedom for minorities and local interests to operate on their own, the better.

Kudos to ZombieScientist for acknowledging what most liberals are afraid to speak aloud - that the people can't be trusted to decide for themselves. Do many conservatives also believe that people shouldn't be free to decide certain things for themselves? Certainly. Frankly, I totally disagree. I think the people should be free to choose whether they want "objective news," although I dispute the term. You folks would be shocked how many people think that Fox News is objective. It all depends on your perspective. If your worldview isn't too challenged by a program, you find it to be reasonable. It's a natural reaction. Back to NPR, I think in a day and age in which we have soaring deficits, and a sputtering economy, there's absolutely NO reason for government to be involved in funding the arts. No excuse.

@ZombieScientist

Are you serious?

If people are so stupid they habitually make bad decisions, then why would you trust them to elect a representative who'd make good ones?

@ZombieScientist

Are you serious?

If people are so stupid they habitually make bad decisions, then why would you trust them to elect a representative who'd make good ones?

Posted by: Nat Almirall at October 29, 2010 5:28 PM

They don't. They elect terrible people. To steal shamelessly from Douglas Adams, no one capable of getting themselves elected should on any account be allowed to do the job.

This is just more proof that a benevolent dictatorship is the best government for a large group of people. True democracy and true communism both fall apart with anything larger than a small town of a couple hundred people. They both work when literally everyone knows everyone personally and our primate social mechanisms for regulating cheater behavior are actually in effect. The minute it's possible to think of people in the system as "the Other," high-minded ideals like democracy and communism fall apart.

But I digress.

As the founding fathers were fond of pointing out, government by the people is a goddamn clusterfuck. (I'm paraphrasing). It just beats most of the alternatives.

Collectives make very bad decisions, IME. This is partly because it's so easy to manipulate them with rhetoric and bullshit. Which brings us back to NPR.

NPR isn't liberal. It's a goddamn unicorn: an honest journalism organization that trades in facts. This presents as a liberal bias in some cases.

Here are some FACTS: When you reduce access to abortions, people do NOT have fewer abortions. They seek out illegal abortions instead, which are a huge risk to the health of the woman. As a result, in every country or municipality that has decreased abortion access, women suffered increased rates of death, mutilation, and sterility as complications of botched illegal abortions.

These are cold, hard facts, backed up by reams of data. But people don't like to hear facts that seem to be against their beliefs. So, if you so much as present this data in the States, you are accused of being a pinko commie liberal nutjob.

Honest journalism is RIGHT OUT.

@BierceAmbrose: Good point. It seems that straw-manning has become par for the course. Or maybe ... I was just too naive/ignorant to realize it.

Well, thanks but it's your method I'm using, @Socrates. Ask questions and let the bloviators hang themselves on their answers.

If you want to see something wonderful - whatever you think of his views or ultimate culpability - Milton Friedman's TV interviews rock. There's one from Donahue, where he takes apart the presuppositions in the big-D's question. Leaves Marlo's better half speechless.

Free-floating presuppositions are a problem, especially about motive. There's a great bit in the opening scene from Elizabeth R, where, under accusation of her motives, thinking, and what she knew, the princess confronts her accuser: "Can you see into my soul, sir?" We seem to do a lot of soul-gazing these days, not in a good way.

Defending from presuppositions preempts actual communication, which is sometimes the point.

I half wrote two entries on the Juan Williams / Racist "discussion." One started as a meditation on my friend Muhammad. We met at work where he prayed to Allah 5 times a day in Bethlehem, PA, a town named by the Moravians early, peaceful, communal evangelical Christians who settled there in the 1700s. My friend Muhammad isn't a terrorist problem any more than those Moravians were expanding Christendom at the point of a sword. Neither Muhammad nor those Moravians are the whole story.

So, how much ink, how much typing, how many bits have to be expended before I, a white US citizen can say, well, anything on the topic and be heard?

Short answers:

No. Any argument in favor of cutting funding to public broadcasting is placing a much, much higher standard on those dollars than what is applied to spending decision for the rest of the federal budget. Think of all the grants, corporate tax breaks, and special interest earmarks that go on. Public broadcasting is a drop in that bucket, and is no less valuable than thousands of other organizations, public and private, that are subsidized in whole or in part by the US government.

And to Mr. Goldburg: MSNBC, CNN and Fox News are embarrassments; NPR is actually a pretty good source of information.

And calling it "state-run news" is beyond disingenuous. It is "state-partially-funded" news. Dipshit.

No. I just donated money to my local npr's fall fundraiser last week & will continue to do so. I also give money to my library. If you live in Columbus, Ohio, then vote on #4 to keep our library strong!

If our government didn't fund anything else according to somebody's entirely biased list of priorities or "values," I'd say, sure, defund the news part of NPR and PBS. But it does. All the time.

The mortgage interest deduction alone costs the govt. (from the govt's point of view) over $100 BILLION a year. People are allowed to deduct mortgage interest supposedly to encourage home ownership, but what it really is is price supports for the home builder and home mortgage industries. And you better believe that if either of them has anything to do with it, the mortgage interest deduction is not going away, ever.

In FY 2010, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting appropriation was $420 MILLION (per the CPB website).

But yeah, I can see why people would think public broadcasting is a giant waste of money.

BTW, you do realize Jonah Goldberg is a goddam idiot, right? Asking his opinion on journalism (esp. regarding PBS and NPR) is like asking Britney Spears her opinion on wearing a bra. (I know you didn't ask him yourself, just sayin'.)

So, how much ink, how much typing, how many bits have to be expended before I, a white US citizen can say, well, anything on the topic and be heard?

First off, BierceAmbrose proofread your posts, because I have no idea what you're rambling about lots of times. Pronouns need to tie to nouns, otherwise you're talking about no one.

Second, I have no idea what the relevance of this comment is. Are you arguing that was a white citizen your opinions aren't being heard? Because that's obviously bullshit. You've got the number one rated TV news network to yourself. Are you saying that Juan Williams and Bill O'Reilly were misunderstood? Because that's also bullshit, and they've had more than enough time in their careers to make clear their feelings about minorities and Muslims in particular, and they've almost always chosen the racist path, especially O'Reilly. So I'm not seeing where the defense is for their actions.

I'm sorry if I'm completely misinterpreting you. You strung a lot of barely complete sentences together with a lot of buzzwords and said basically nothing. You threw out several names of faceless people I've never heard of (or maybe I have and you're just referring to them in a way I don't understand). In any case, I don't understand you.

I wish NPR/PBS got all of thier funding from the government...then I wouldn't have to endure those damn pledge drives.

Yossarian
Any argument in favor of cutting funding to public broadcasting is placing a much, much higher standard on those dollars than what is applied to spending decision for the rest of the federal budget.

Not true. I am applying the exact same standard. I don't want the government to support media favoring creationism over evolution, or abstinence over birth control. I realize that there are others that don't want their money to support NPR and PBS.

You can't draw a line that says public funding is ok on this side of a random preference issue, but not the other. Therefore, the only truly fair and free choice is to keep the government out of these things altogether.

Hence why the Constitution is very clear - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I don't recall any bit of the Constitution that provides power to the feds to fund public media or entertainment (or most of the other shit they fund). That is a power that belongs to individual states or to us, the people.

While the reasoning Goldberg provides makes sense (the Government underwriting a media outlet smacks of conflict of interest) the argument is nonetheless fundamentally flawed. This would be evident to anybody who actually listens to NPR, and who has had the opportunity to compare it to the "independent" alternatives of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

NPR and PBS are the closest thing we have to "fair and balanced" news in this country. They never, in my estimation, present one point of view over the other, and engages even-handed and sober debate over contentious issues. They're calm, reasonable and engaging, the way news ought to be.

Because they operate on a not-for-profit basis, they don't need to be sensationalistic to survive. Their bottom line is not based on scaring or shocking it's viewership, or ginning up faux-populist rage. They also doesn't need to corner an ideological market the way Fox or MSNBC do.

If NPR and PBS are allowed to be defunded, they will likely fail- or at least disappear for a while until they reemerges as yellow-journalism outrage-mills, at which point they WILL become sounding boards for liberal demagoguery- just another "Air America" or MSNBC.

NPR and PBS are two of the one things government has gotten 100 percent right. They have to survive- if they don't, we'll have lost the last bastion of reasonable and intelligent mass media discourse.

- public funding includes forcing people who disagree to pay up anyway. How sure do we have to be, and about how big a deal, to justify putting a gun to grandma's head to make her pay for something she doesn't support?

Bierce, darling, light of my life, you know I love you, but this argument is ridiculous. Huge amounts of federal money, i.e. my tax dollars, go to many many programs that I might disagree with. For example, I have no children, have never wanted to have children, and will never have children; why, therefore, am I being forced to pay taxes for programs that benefit children, not to mention extra tax refunds for people who do have children? My grandmas are both dead now, but one of them would be all for the - what, couple of pennies out of her taxes?- that fund public arts and education broadcast programming and the other one would be against it. So which of my grandmas are you suggesting I put a gun to? There are all sorts of things that taxes fund that some people agree with and some people don't: the death penalty, welfare and foodstamps, medical research, space exploration.

I guess I'm saying, not very eloquently, that what's in the best interest of the general population is not something every individual member of that population is going to believe in or agree with. I'm also going to venture to say that the majority of people have NO IDEA what-all their tax money funds. All of a sudden one item comes up in the news and people get all outraged over it. I find it both hilarious an disingenuous.

In other words, whether or not I agree with it, yes, those small amounts of federal funding should still go to NPR and PBS. Private donor money is never guaranteed, and that little percentage of federal funding is.

Also, I'd like ZombieScientist to marry me.

ZombieScientist - I quoted the constitutional reason for feds not to fund public broadcasting - (clearly, I have read it - as well as the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers), can you provide a similar citation in favor of funding?

And the fact that more money is spent on hookers and blow is very relevant. We allow the government to do things that it has no business being involved in and it balloons out of control until we think giving billions of dollars to private banks is a necessity.

Plus, it makes us lazy. I don't actually have to do anything for my community because I pay taxes, dammit.

The goverenment shouldn't be in the road building/fire fighting/crime preventing business, period.
Posted by: pissant at October 30, 2010 2:41 PM

----------------------------------------

Please tell me you are not equating basic government services to arts and entertainment.

Please tell me you are not equating basic government services to arts and entertainment.

Define "basic". One could argue that road building could be privatized.

I think the arts are extremely important. But, mostly, I was providing as much support for my statement as you were.

*siiiigh*

I hear what you all are saying but I will not ever consider funding for roads, education, health etc, on the same level as public broadcasting or the arts.And while I will admit that right at this moment these institutions are sputtering along and managing to present themsleves as fair, balanced and unbiased. However, under the current political climate. How long do you think it will take for an extremist Roger Ailes type to turn them into precisely the opposite? I rather not give them that opportunity. I would consider the following: Have a special check-box on the Federal and local income tax form where the taxpayer voluntarily agrees to have the government donate money from their return/payment to the NPR/PBS/NEA as they are. THAT would make the whole affair public YET voluntary.

Well I figure, that those who oppose giving their money to Public Broadcasting will not check on that box no matter how it is defined. So a basic and straightforward "As it is allocated now" will be more than adequate.

@ A von B, my darling (Sincerely, you make me laugh all the time.) ...

Oh, indeed the blather is all out of proportion to the issue, or at least pretty far down the list of stuff to do. It reminds me that Henry Kissinger said the reason academic quarrels are so bitter is that there is so little at stake.

And yet, you make my other point for me.

Huge amounts of federal money, i.e. my tax dollars, go to many many programs that I might disagree with.

Yes. I would not have it taken from you. I would not have you coerced - unless you ask, of course. I trust you more, getting on with your life, than folks who think they know best for the world at large.

I guess I'm saying, not very eloquently, that what's in the best interest of the general population is not something every individual member of that population is going to believe in or agree with.

Well, yeah. I'm trying to say, perhaps not very clearly, that I wonder how we decide to wade in with federal action, some of it funded with other people's money, some of it against their preference.

For me, funding of NPR or not is an example to discuss, conveniently in play because, well, because of the blowhards, really.

So, yay Olberman & O'Reilly?