Save CPB
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011In a budget proposal made public recently, House Republicans announced plans to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more. In Fall 2008, NPR programming reached a record 27.5 million people weekly, according to Arbitron ratings figures. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) adds 21,000 jobs which in turn generates 1 billion to the American economy. It supports stations that do not further any one religious philosophy and the stations must remain noncommercial.
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Most Republicans and the politicians they vote for don’t even watch NPR and PBS yet claim the programs have a socialist bias. What is actually happening is member stations are required to be noncommercial or educational and cannot be designed solely to further a religious philosophy or be used for classroom programming. (“Nova” is socialist?) This can only mean that they relate socialism to anything that does not promote Christianity and commercialism. If you are a centrist who leans to the right and you listen to NPR — you will like Wait…Wait Don’t Tell Me, Car Talk, Marketplace, and Prairie Home Companion. If you go to http://www.pbs.org/programs you can see all the wonderful programs to choose from that are much too numerous to list here. If you are a centrist who leans to the left you will like many of those same programs (and probably already watch them). If you are far right or far left than you really have no interest in truth so this doesn’t apply to you. Just carry on with your Fox and MSNBC and their frequent commercials.
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The entire public interest media sector and all the jobs it creates are threatened by these Republican house members. Write your Senator and your Congressman and let them know if they zero out funding for CPB they must also zero out oil subsidies and bail outs of car manufacturing. Zero out public libraries and the USPS. Zero out — so all of our news and information comes from commercial or Religious funding. Can you imagine corporate censorship and commercials interrupting Sesame Street? You think the government is about censorship? Wait until Monsanto has a say in childrens’ programming, or JP Morgan controls PBS programing.
