Wife and I having a little "spat" about donating money to public radio

Kcpi wrote:

My wife gives about $120/year to Minnesota Public Radio. She said she feels like she "should" donate because she enjoys public radio and listens to it often. I told her she should stop donating that money and put it to some better use. She didn't like that much. I told her to look at it this way: if you stop giving your money to public radio, nothing will change - you'll still be able to listen to all of your shows as you normally do. In other words, whether you donate or not makes no difference in the service/product you get.

What do you think?

I agree with you. Those stations are probably owned by Monsanto or Dupont. They don't need your money, and every cent that they get will be used against you.

I personally feel it is stupid to donate your money to anyone, unless you want to give it to a homeless person on the streets. You don't see any of the big companies donating anything to the rest of us, and you won't. When is the last time the IRS gave you back more money than they stole from you? Right. Never.

MPR and "commercial radio" do not represent "multiple forms" of media IMO. Disregarding for the moment McLuhan's contention that the medium is the message and that what we normally think of as content is irrelevant, I see the only difference between commercial radio and MPR as the direction of the bias, and the acknowledgement/unacknowledgement of said bias.

Just because a commercial ad is done in an MPR or NPR host's voice rather than in some other paid actor's voice doesn't meaningfully alter the form, and content of course is the same.

In a "pluralistic democracy", if you honestly believe that there are significantly different forms and contents of radio, then you must believe that they should all be supported, equally, considering a particular species of support. This type of requirement is met when it is required that all candidates get equal time on the airwaves as a condition of the license.

For instance, the FCC cannot deny a license when such a denial could demonstrably be based upon a prohibited ground of discrimination, or when such a denial would demonstrably constitute an unlawful restriction of any constitutionally-protected right.

Nobody has here argued that redneck radio should be banned, and nobody has made any suggestion that so-called "public" radio should be banned--but neither should one be favored over any other by the government. If the government wants to operate a purely informational service, they are free to do that, and do in fact do that in many ways--for example, the Official Gazette. Take a look at it and you'll see the type of thing I'm talking about, which looks nothing at all like MPR or NPR.

Finally, I leave you to consider the Juan Williams situation, especially as it related to senior MPR management.

Neither MPR nor NPR is a public service--it is simply a government-funded mouthpiece for the federal Democratic party. Everybody who matters understands this at this point, which is why cutting NPR funding is now an option in Congressional negotiations. It is not a bluff, and it gets good mileage, because the federal Democrats strongly want to preserve it--for obvious reasons.

The Current is like any other MPR property. None of your expressions of personal preference for the Current constitute valid arguments for supporting it through public subsidy.

Can you explain to me why the benefit of the Current should be considered a general public benefit, and why that benefit cannot be achieved without public subsidy, and why that benefit should affirmatively receive public support?

Same goes for KFAI, which receives a significant amount of federal funding through the CPB.

And, BTW, I listen to BOTH the Current, and KFAI, 99.5, and occasionally the flagship MPR station 91.1