Should Federal Government fund NPR and PBS?

The difference between the arts and news/TV is that in many cases, the funding for the arts is so low that the gov't is the only game in town. There is not enough private support for the arts to counter gov't funding should it be needed.

That was never the case for news and TV. The vast majority of professional news/TV is still designed to service corporate advertisers.

When the government has an outlet that is not bound to service corporate advertisers--that is a good thing because it increases-- rather than limits-- the information sources available to the public.

Like I said in my post-- with the Internet-- reporting that is not dependent on corporate sponsors can be found. The quality of those sources is however in some cases suspect and government news may still have a role to play.

My personal preference is to wait and see-- no need to disassemble a system that has served relatively well for generations because of a developing situation. However, I admit that I'm an essentially conservative person in the traditional no-rush-to-change sense. Reasonable people may disagree.

deraylicious wrote:

I just gave you one, the plain language of Article I empowers Congress to spend money for the General Welfare of the Country, the necessary and proper clause allows Congress to effectuate its powers. Congress decided it would benefit the General Welfare to have radio stations that have Car Talk, play jazz, etc., so they spent money to create a nonprofit corporation that was necessary to establish a radio station. What part does not add up?

Under your theory of the general welfare clause anything can be justified. James Madison (who should know, since he basically wrote the thing) did not consider the general welfare clause an an enumerated power--he wrote that this merely pointed to the enumerated powers elsewhere--this is in his Federalist papers.

luv2run wrote:

The school newspaper at Georgia stopped accepting student activity fees because it could not report fairly on the university if it were receiving funding from it. If it reported on the bad things the university was doing, it would be threatened with losing money; if it did not report, then people would think "they are paid for by the university". So it became an independent newspaper. Those college students at the time had more scruples and ethics than the entire NPR/CPB structure.

Do you really think that's an appropriate analogy? Do you have any idea how NPR is actually funded?

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Under your theory of the general welfare clause anything can be justified. James Madison (who should know, since he basically wrote the thing) did not consider the general welfare clause an an enumerated power--he wrote that this merely pointed to the enumerated powers elsewhere--this is in his Federalist papers.

Well my theory is the generally accepted one, yet somehow life has gone on...if you wanted to argue constitutional nuance go ahead and start another thread, you wanted a coherent argument in favor of the legality of CPB and you got one, by attempting to go past plain language and logic to the federalist papers and Framers' intent you want to change your question to what is the "right" interpretation, not what is a coherent interpretation. Start a new thread for that.

They do that in some other countries. Let me list some:

Cuba, China, Russia, Morrocco, Libya, ..get the picture?

Conservatives love NPR, PBS, and NEA. The cost peanuts ( something like 500 million) and in exchange they can blather on about it every year instead of actually doing something about the deficit. Heck the bridge to nowhere that Sarah Palin pushed for cost almost this much. Until people start talking about bit defense cuts (none of this not growing as fast crap), medicaid, SS+medicare(note both come out of a separate tax base and will for the next 20 yeas as we spent down the trust fund. Hah) and the rest of the stuff that makes up 90% of the budget we are not going to lower our deficit. If you got rid of all non defense discretionary spending ( you know including things like courts, FDA, veterans benefits, ....) the budget still wouldn't be balanced. We have a huge revenue problem to go along with our spending issues.

Here is the way it is wrote:

Liberal: Yes

Conservative: No

EOT

I'll leave this little video clip here in hopes of furthering this discussion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

It's Fred Rogers defending PBS to the Senate.

Yes, because I trust the politicians in Washington DC to give me a fair rendition of the news. Why wouldn't I?

The government should never function to propagate ideas of any kind regardless of what is written in the constitution. Note that 'propagate' is the base word of 'propaganda.'

4runner wrote:

The difference between the arts and news/TV is that in many cases, the funding for the arts is so low that the gov't is the only game in town. There is not enough private support for the arts to counter gov't funding should it be needed.

That just isn't true. In 2006 the NEA spent $121 million on the arts. That same year, private donations to the arts was over $2.5 BILLION. NEA money is a small fraction of arts funding in this country. Not only that but NEA funds end up going to the artists who are adept at filling out government grant applications, not necessarily the best artists.

npr and pbs are needed to get the truth out to the public. npr and pbs are essential to national security.

One NPR exec admits they would be better off without government funding.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/08/npr-exec-shown-slamming-the-tea-party/

[quote]towhee wrote:

Yes, because I trust the politicians in Washington DC to give me a fair rendition of the news. Why wouldn't I?

Right. It's the politicians who make all the editorial decisions at PBS.

There's no single body who calls the shots at NPR/PBS. Both produce a wide-range of high-quality news/arts/entertainment content through separate programs, each with their own producers. That they do so with minimal or no mind rottin commercial bombardment is great and a welcome change from typical network or cable fare. Money well spent.

After hearing the sentiments of the NPR executive I wouldn't want a single cent of tax money to go to NPR. And I am a listener and contributor. And a conservative.

Personally I think we should cut NPR's federal funding just so that the GOP would shut the hell up about it. Of course, they'd rather keep it around so that they can complain.

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

Personally I think we should cut NPR's federal funding just so that the GOP would shut the hell up about it. Of course, they'd rather keep it around so that they can complain.

Sounds like liberals and WalMart, et el. If they only shopped local, these "evil corporations" would shut down due to lack of profits. It's far easier and more fun to just complain about it though.

Hugh Akston wrote:

The government should never function to propagate ideas of any kind regardless of what is written in the constitution. Note that 'propagate' is the base word of 'propaganda.'

Fine, but PBS' role is to educate.

Dissemenation of information are essential to national security so obviously NPR/PBS are mandatory functions of the US Gov't.

Taxpayer funded worker entitlements to federal workers, politicians, judges, military, safety civilians etc. should be barred. No tax money for pension fund management, medical, dental, early retirements, military pensions, etc.