I listen to NPR every day and, honestly, I think this might be for the best. It's going to hurt for a while, but in the end, I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
I listen to NPR every day and, honestly, I think this might be for the best. It's going to hurt for a while, but in the end, I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
> I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
What does the "public" in "public broadcasting" mean to you?
Ideally, it would be entirely non-commercial, funded by direct donations from the public.
That is not what "public" means in ordinary language. Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
Support by donations is always dependent on the largest donor.
See Post, Washington to see what "dependent on the largest donor" is revealed to be.
Not going to argue semantics with you.
The US government was the largest donor until now. No single non-governmental donor will ever have that level of influence again.
I now realize (sorry) that my European mindset has tricked me, most likely. The term is very loaded here towards the meaning I gave it.
You are probably right.
My apologies.
it's not a semantic argument. you misunderstand the term in question.
Until this change, public broadcasting got 85% of its funding from donations, so whatever the term used to mean, that's what it means now.
Honest question: apart from the name ("Public BC"), what makes it "public" in the US if most of its income is private?
It gets direct donations from the public.
But then what is the difference between that and any NGO?
>Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
For you, probably, for me it means "from/for the people".
Yeah, as in "We the people". As in "Of the people, by the people, for the people" Taxes are how "we the people" pay for public things (libraries, parks, highways, sidewalks, schools, etc.)
See my comment below: in usual terms, in Europe “public” means technically “supported by taxes” -which is why most “public” media is most of the time pro-government (bar inertia).
Then it becomes an organization dominated by those who donate the most -- and there have already been cases where a PBS affiliate self-censored and modified its editorial in an attempt to placate a potential donor[0].
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/a-word-from-ou...
What are taxes for, then?
The American public's attitude towards using taxes to support media has shifted over the past few decades. There's a perception (right or wrong) that public media is liberally biased, and it's getting government attention now, and so we're seeing the consequences of that.
Voluntary vs. Compelled is the difference.
Are you saying that non-commercial broadcasting does not count as a public good, or that taxes should be voluntary, or that it does count as a public good but taxes should not be spent on it?
Things that are supported by a durable majority of the population. I wish that included public broadcasting, but it doesn't.
Personally, I'm tired of hearing conservatives whine about public broadcasting. This will at least shut them up for good.
I guess we should just support the post office with donations while we’re at it. That’ll work well!
I suspect the post office is still supported by a durable majority. If it isn’t, then it will probably lose government funding as well.
A durable majority doesn't even support funding education, and it is losing federal funding as we speak. Do you think this is a good thing?
I don't think this is correct. The majority of people prefers states to have more influence on school curriculum and federal government to have less. Yes, there are downsides to that, but it generally means that hours on STEM will increase and hours on ideology will decrease.
Removing federal influence in setting agenda while sending federal funding directly to states without federal oversight of programs would not be a bad thing. My 2c.
Banning books and forcing bibles in schools. Right.
No, teaching what the local parents believe is best for their own kids. While there are certainly a few of those who will want bibles, most in my experience put much higher value in the extra STEM unhindered by ideology.
My kids high school recently cancelled advanced math classes because the racial composition of students there was not what the school hoped to see. No, thank you, I want parents to have a much bigger influence on what schools teach.
Which Federal policy was it that led to that class cancelation?
Some equal access policy that it was worried about. Do you have kids? If so, what age(s)?
>I suspect the post office is still supported by a durable majority. If it isn’t, then it will probably lose government funding as well.
To which funding are you referring?
In fact[0]:
"Unlike many government agencies, the United States Postal Service (USPS) does not receive direct taxpayer funding for operating expenses. Government appropriations are limited to specific purposes, such as the Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) Program."
And[1]:
"In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation."
[0] https://govfacts.org/federal/usps/how-usps-stays-afloat-fund...
[1] https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
Same with public schools, public parks, public sidewalks, public libraries, even police and fire departments. We have to give billionaires trillions in tax cuts while watching most Americans backslide into poverty so obviously it'd be fiscally irresponsible for the government to fund public services for the peasant class
> This will at least shut them up for good.
No it won't. The modern GOP is fueled by grievance. It needs an "other" in order to exist. They'll have a new enemy to rail against by this time tomorrow.
Yes, of course, but it won’t be public broadcasting anymore. That’s why this might be a win for public broadcasting in the long run.
This is naive. If conservatives continue to perceive outlets like PBS as a thorn in their political sides, they'll go after their broadcasting licenses or target them with ruinous lawsuits - both actions that have been discussed or taken by conservative politicians already.
Can we call it public broadcasting when it fails to even dimly reflect the diversity of ideas for the areas it serves? Milk toast conservatives like Juan Williams were deemed intolerable a long time ago, so calling it public radio at this point is a misnomer and a sad farce.
I think you mean "milquetoast". The wikipedia link led me to "milk toast", which is interesting in itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Milquetoast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_toast
TIL the etymology for the word
Juan Williams wasn't let go because he's conservative; it's because he's a bigot (unless you think being a bigot is a conservative qualification):
"Look, Bill [O'Reilly], I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
https://www.npr.org/2010/10/21/130712737/npr-ends-williams-c...
"NPR, like any mainstream news outlet, expects its journalists to be thoughtful and measured in everything they say. What Williams said was deeply offensive to Muslims and inflamed, rather than contributing positively, to an important debate about the role of Muslims in America."
https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2010/10/21/1307132...
NPR can also be a bit of a meme sometimes. Maybe it's just circumstance but every time I hear NPR for any period of time longer than about 20 minutes they do a segment on a topic like polyamory, how women are proudly reclaiming the word "bimbo", or people protesting the administration using interpretive dance.
It is certainly not programming with much mass market appeal.
Perhaps not every form of media needs to be engagement-driven?
The beautiful thing about public media is that it can broadcast things that don't have a profit-motive for being broadcast.
> The beautiful thing about public media is that it can broadcast things that don't have a profit-motive for being broadcast.
True, so one would expect to have heard much more about Bernie Sanders when he was making runs for president. Unfortunately the only coverage he usually got on likes of NPR was when it was something negative about him.
So much for straying from profit motive.
Shouldn’t publicly funded media at least be representative of the wide diversity of views and interests that the public holds?
What topics and interests do you think they've never covered?
> when it stands on its own without interference from politicians
Why on earth do you think it will be free of interference? Obviously they will find other ways to pressure and censor them. As they have done in many cases already.
I wonder how the people at NPR feel about all those donations they took from the Koch Foundation over the years...
They feel fine about it. They're run plenty of pieces that run counter to Koch Industries' interests.
(Also, did you mean the Charles Koch Foundation or the David H. Koch Foundation? The Koch Foundation is a different entity with a different mission.)
You obviously know which ones I mean.
Hasn't it been largely free of interference up until now? And would you prefer it suffer from corporate interference like all other media?
It's been a political football for decades. Conservatives use it as an example of liberal spending run amok, so public broadcasting has had to constantly look over its shoulder during that time.
No, I would like to eliminate corporate influence as well, but that might not be possible in a capitalist society.
Take a tax supported public good, remove the public support and then claim to worry about corporate influence? What do you think was holding that corporate influence at bay?
Unfortunately, the necessary level of public support doesn't exist, so relying on government money isn't viable. I hope public broadcasting will get enough money directly from individuals to resist excessive corporate influence, but we'll have to see.
Who do you think the individuals donating will be?
You prefer interference by corporations?
> I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
What does the "public" in public broadcasting mean to you?
Most of NPR's news programming has been terrible for many years.
Pay attention to how many segments—even that are sort-of connected to an actual news event, which, many aren't—revolve around political strategy, poll numbers, and (in season, which is now like three years out of four) electoral race polling.
It's, like... a lot of them, outside the human-interest and arts coverage stuff. They consistently divert into talking about political media messaging strategy and poll numbers and crap, and they do it so very much that it's got to be something they're doing on purpose. This isn't news reporting, it's lazy, safe (because you don't have to engage with substantive questions of policy and outcomes, nor even questions of fact) horse-race bullshit. It's a complete waste of the listener's time, if they're there for actual news reporting.
On the flip side, though, I'm not seeing a lot of "sink or swim in the market" US media doing much better, so I wouldn't bet on them shifting to anything better (though shift they might).
It hasn't been interfered with until now, what are you talking about about?