Should Federal Government fund NPR and PBS?

Liberal: Yes

Conservative: No

EOT

In viable marketplaces public radio and television, does not need the support to survive. It certainly makes life easier, but both have sales departments operating in a very similar way to commericial radio, that is you pay for advertising or "support." In a marketplace like Boston, both WBUR and WGBH are quite expensive to "support" and put your corporate name on the air. They could certainly adjust to a new reality. In less viable "B" marketplaces, public radio and tv would probably have to find deep, local pockets like universities (e.g. New Haven, CT) or major foundations in order to survive, but who cares.

I listen to NPR but no way should taxpayers support this venture. Do you know one of their host gets $300,000 a year ? Its one of many areas that govt needs to get out of.

no, because they are not fair in their production.

Government needs to fund public broadcasting in order to transmit its message of goodness to the public. How can we have a proper, free exchange of ideas in this country if the government doesn't fund the best ideas?

No, the government should fund only one thing and that is wars. If we could quit funding things like education, NPR, Social Security, highways, and medical research, there would be enough money to wage many wars and make the world our slaves. Once we do that, we will all be wealthy and we won't need the government at all.

Largest war profiteering in history and you wonder if NPR is the problem? And giant subsidies to US oil companies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7444083.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html

As far as PBS, that DEFINITELY needs to be changed. The fact that Ken Burns and Sesame Street, etc... can use federal and public money to fund and create their programs and then literally rake in millions of dollars in the marketing of toys, dvds, music albums and other memorabilia, and not have to give one dime of that back to PBS is ridiculous. PBS could probably be self funded if this were so, rather than making other people millionaires off of our tax money.

NPRPBS wrote:

I am torn.

The gov't has a legitimate interest in many of PBS's activities, including educational programming.

As for reporting the news-- it is probably a relic from a time when news was expensive to produce. It may however become more important if newspapers keep dying out.

I'm more concerned about things like the NEA and gov't sponsored arts. The gov't shouldn't be the sole or even overwhelming source of arts otherwise the arts become a gov't mouthpiece. That said-- it would be a shame to lose things like government sponsorship of dance troupes/orchestras/marching bands/et al.

No all our money should be given to the uber rich defense contractors to wage war on people the Zionists want out of the way

Elephant Lover wrote:

No, the government should fund only one thing and that is wars. If we could quit funding things like education, NPR, Social Security, highways, and medical research, there would be enough money to wage many wars and make the world our slaves. Once we do that, we will all be wealthy and we won't need the government at all.

This is spot on!

No, the government has no business engaging in the entertainment industry. Should they produce movies too?

Of ALLLLLL the industries in the USA, the entertainment industry appears to be the one in the least need of taxpayer support.

EZ10Miler wrote:

Should they produce movies too?

Yes. Especially pornograpic ones. And dole out some heroin and crack too while they're at it. Hey why not just have ATMs set up across the country so any citizen or non-citizen can drive up and withdraw any amount they want. Yea, the liberal way, keynesian style. All things to all people. We're bankrupt anyway. Let's just drain it. Why prolong the agony. We're already as good as f***ed. End it!

I am much more comfortable having my tax money go to NPR rather than propping up dictators in other countries. The amount of money public broadcasting gets from the feds is insignificant compared to the defense budget.

Several of the responses in this thread exemplify one of the worst errors of reasoning common in political dialogue today. This fallacy attempts to justify one abuse of government (such as public funding of media) by noting the existence of another abuse (such as a corrupt foreign policy). Somehow, the person reasons, his preferred abuse is justified by virtue of a comparison. In reality, neither abuse is justified, public funding of NPR is just as wrong as propping up a dictator in another country, and both policies should be repealed. Using one wrong to justify another only ensures that wrongs becomes the norm, and those who promote this perverse logic are guilty of enabling all wrongs, including the ones they claim to oppose.

Rampant Irrationalism wrote:

public funding of NPR is just as wrong as propping up a dictator in another country,

Are you sure you meant to write that? Because it sounds really, really stupid.

M.C. Confusing wrote:

As far as PBS, that DEFINITELY needs to be changed. The fact that Ken Burns and Sesame Street, etc... can use federal and public money to fund and create their programs and then literally rake in millions of dollars in the marketing of toys, dvds, music albums and other memorabilia, and not have to give one dime of that back to PBS is ridiculous. PBS could probably be self funded if this were so, rather than making other people millionaires off of our tax money.

You do know that the internet came from the US defense department and was taken over by private companies without any licensing fees or royalties?

And the funny thing is that what you are describing is a reason to support funding for NPR and PBS. It is a good investment that returns lots to the economy. How much economic return comes from dropping a bomb?

I agree - I am torn also. I listen to NPR for a few hours per week while I commute. For the most part, it is unbiased (yes, there are exceptions), and provides a wide range of news stories about science, politics, culture, and so forth. I think it is a valuable service and it is good to have a source of information that theoretically has no bias behind it. They can report stories without a conflict of interest.

At the same time, there is so much news around and so many other programs, through internet and a gazillion TV and radio stations, I do not think the government needs to fund broadcasting in this manner. I do not think they should immediately pull funding, but should have some kind of transition period (ie, 5 years?) where funding will gradually decrease and eventually become non-existent to allow them to try to transition to a self-supported entity.

I think NPR and PBS are great, but there are so many great things the government funds. We have a huge deficit and a huge debt, and cuts clearly need to be made, and unfortunately, some things will have to go. As much as I like these media outlets, I think they are disposable from a government standpoint.

It strikes me as hypocritical and a double standard that the right argues nearly everything would be handled more efficiently by the private sector, yet they won't relingquish the defense industry to be privately funded.

To be fair, we have the Articles of Confederation and other times in our history that show how poorly America's defenses were when the government wasn't in charge of it. So, okay, so let's give the right the consolation that the defense industry is better off being run by the government than the private sector.

So why isn't health care able to be better run by the government? Why can't education be run well by the government? It's awfully suspicious that the right can argue for a large defense budget as being efficient, but at the same time claim education and health care are better run privately. There's no logic in it. If the government is capable of handling a big defense budget well, then they should also be able to handle big budgets for many other services. Likewise, if they can't handle education or health care as well, then logically they can't handle defense, either. To the right I ask, well, which is it?