Defund public broadcasting
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I was being grilled by the Inspector General for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting about emails I had written when I was CPB chairman.The folks at NPR say that public funding is not that important to them anymore. It is time to find out. It is time to find out how the local stations can survive without the subsidy and if they can't it is time to find out how NPR can survive without the local stations.
Waving a sheet of paper for emphasis, he declared, “This email is the worst of all. This demonstrates you were seeking to politicize public broadcasting.”
I asked for the email and saw that in response to a question from the head of White House personnel about what are the qualifications to be President of CPB, I stated, tongue-in-cheek: “Loyalty to the President—and patience to put up with the left wingers who control public broadcasting.”
I looked up at the IG, and explained, seriously: “Accusing me of politicizing public broadcasting is like charging someone with introducing lipstick to Las Vegas!”
National Public Radio’s outrageous firing of Juan Williams has prompted an outpouring of demands that Congress defund the operation. (Who can forget the arrogance of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller as she looked into television cameras to assert that Juan’s feelings about seeing Muslims at airports should be “between him and his psychiatrist or his publicist—take your pick.”)
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I suspect that the current funding mechanism was set up by liberals to keep the funding because of the parochial concerns of the various members of Congress. That is likely to change after this election.
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