Commentary
In the age of tailored internet news based on individual predilections and tastes, blogs of every specialty and complexion numbering in the thousands, and cable channels catering to whichever way one leans ideologically, taxpayer-financed media organizations have been dinosaurs for decades.
The argument that has long been made for having the federal government sustain what is labeled “public broadcasting”—although it appears so often to run contrary to public opinion and sensibility—is that there is demand for information that cannot support itself independently. Yet we must see to it that those delivering such material with cash assistance from government enjoy total editorial independence.
According to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, “It is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.” And along came “Sesame Street” and Mister Rogers because, purportedly, it was hurting American children to enjoy watching instead Popeye and Bluto, and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, having fights with each other in cartoonland.More than a half century later, with nearly two billion websites on the Internet, and even the poorest Americans across lines of ethnicity and age now owning or having access to a computer or a smartphone, there is no longer any such thing as “unserved and underserved audiences” when it comes to information and entertainment.
Interestingly, the original 1967 law establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting made no mention of news or journalism as being among its functions, but instead referred innocuously to “the dissemination of noncommercial educational and cultural television or radio programs,” conjuring images of TV shows devoted to needlepoint instruction, radio broadcasts of regional Oktoberfests, and similar fare for which no network or station interested in profit would devote a time slot.
Yet three and a half years later, National Public Radio (NPR) materialized, its very first program being “live coverage of the Senate hearings on the war in Vietnam,” an ominous beginning for an institution infamous for its left-wing, albeit soft-spoken, biases. Should NPR be lumped in with state-controlled media in totalitarian tyrannies like North Korea, whose mission is to provide the public with “articles in which they unfailingly hold the president [Kim Jong-un] in high esteem, adore him and praise him as the great revolutionary leader”? Obviously not. Nevertheless, in the case of prosperous Western nations state-funded media can always be expected to be protective of big government and causes of the left.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for instance, “is a profoundly influential opponent of nearly everything conservatives believe, with the right forced to accede feebly to the left-liberal consensus,” according to Robin Aitken who was a BBC on-air reporter for decades and author of “Can We Trust the BBC?” Aitken quoted a BBC news anchor who “described the sense of superiority that working at the BBC confers on its staff. “It’s the whole thing that ‘we know best’ and it’s our responsibility to educate the poor unfortunates beneath us in how things should be.”
This is the context in which Twitter CEO Elon Musk just sparked a firestorm by labeling NPR “state-affiliated media.” NPR withdrew from the social media platform in a huff, and Musk briskly changed the label to “government-funded media,” but while its reporters are free to stay as individuals, NPR has declared it “will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”
“Defund @NPR” was Musk’s pithy retort.
The Public Broadcasting Service has followed suit, grumbling, “Twitter’s simplistic label leaves the inaccurate impression that PBS is wholly funded by the federal government.” But the fact that even while in possession of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer booty, PBS and its local affiliates will spend hours-long marathons begging for more money from “viewers like you,” plus various foundations, leaves an impression of, more than anything else, chutzpah.
Why after all should Twitter or any other platform where press outfits advertise their wares at little or no cost be obliged to sift through the hundreds of state-funded media organs in the world in an attempt to separate detached independence from party propagandizing, and all the gray in between?
Alberto Ibargüen, former PBS board chairman and former publisher of the “Miami Herald,” has touted the fact that the Discovery, History, and National Geographic channels commercialized the PBS model. If they can do it, PBS can too, and should. And give the taxpayers back their hundreds of millions.
Whether the owner be a wealthy mogul who wiggles out of paying very much in taxes, or the state funding itself by picking the pockets of its citizens and promoting the ever-growing leviathan, human nature is not suspended within the offices of any journalistic entity. But as in any venture, it helps when the owner has committed his or her own money, and good name, to the enterprise.
Musk may have sounded the death knell for state-funded journalism in America. NPR’s response to Musk’s label included pointing out that its funding from federal agencies, departments, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting adds up to less than 1 percent of its operating budget, with sponsorships, member station dues, corporate donations, and listeners constituting the bulk of NPR’s funding.
It sounds like NPR can do just fine without taxpayer funding. And people are going to catch on to that truth.
