Do You Support Tax Payer Dollars Funding NPR, Cowboy Poetry ?

[padcrasher]

NPR according to the link receives $420 Mil per year.

$1.37 per citizen.

or

.00014% of the Federal Budget.

Got that? It's 1.4 1000th of the budget. It's a non-factor.

Why don't right wingers get real and start talking about the defense budget....where the money is!

[silverkris]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Which brings up another interesting issue. When you consider PBS's major underwriters (Fortune 500 corporations and their philanthropic trusts) it begs the question of what kind of bias PBS, and NPR might possess that keeps assumably conservative boards of directors and CEO funneling money to such a biased organization.

You hit it on the dot. NPR only gets perhaps 10-20% of its funds from the federal government, they get the rest from private corporations and other non profit organizations. Which is why they shy away from real investigative journalism these days, such as on corporations that might be funding them.

I'd actually like to see a BBC or NHK model, in which it really IS government funded but has editorial freedom with NPR, but it's probably not going to happen.

[KrazeeKrewe]

NPR Muslim Brotherhood Investigation Part I


NPR Muslim Brotherhood Investigation Part II

[kiki99]

I do support NPR funding. It's not just money given away freely, it's money set aside that they have to apply for through grant applications. That means their programming has been getting reviewed by people in the government on all sides over many years and constantly supported by being awarded grants. I do also donate.

NPR isn't perfect, but they do try to provide multiple sides to every story. When they don't, they have no problem reading complaints from listeners on the air, and expanding their story if possible. NPR and PBS also give us access to the BBC news, which is indeed a fresh viewpoint on everything in our country.

For nearly every story NPR does, there are usually complaints from listeners that it is both too liberal and too conserative. My thoughts are, if you are making people on both sides mad, then you are probably in the middle.

Instead of extreme options, which our politicians on both sides seem to love because it makes the news more, maybe a decrease in funding should be in order. I love some of the entertainment shows on NPR, but I can understand slimming down on those for a time. However, the news, public interest and policy shows should definitely stay. I don't always agree with everything I hear, but I feel more educated by hearing many sides to a story. We should all strive to open our selves up to public discourse, the more we understand those we disagree with, the better we can compromise.

Someone commented that our tax dollars should not support things we don't agre with. If that happened, there would be a lot more than NPR cut I am sure. Some people don't agree with libraries, police forces, public schools etc. Would you like to see those things cut too based on that generalization?

As usual, I feel like as a country we sway too much to the extremes on all sides. We really need to work more on trying to come together and be in the middle somewhere instead of our politicians bickering like toddlers or just saying inflammatory things to get news coverage.