Posted on 01/15/2012 2:43:08 PM PST by Drango
Leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney insistently pledges that he will end public funding for NPR and for PBS (the latter partially funds NPR). Other congressional Republicans agree with him.
For decades as a reporter, I have continually found vital information on public radio and television that at first was available nowhere else. A current example that may be of importance to many of you, particularly parents of schoolchildren:
An NPR story ("No, the School Nurse Is Not in," Jan. 3) reveals that, "More than half of American public schools don't have a full-time nurse, and the situation is getting worse as school systems further cut budgets. This year, 51 were laid off in Philadelphia's public schools, 20 in a Houston suburb, 15 in San Diego and dozens more in other school systems nationwide."
In my reporting on education, I have been in various cities where I see kids in crowded classrooms with evident hearing, vision and other problems. Sometimes, unnoticed by burdened teachers, these students, having no nurse to go to, remain silent. Also, on such regular programs as NPR's "All Things Considered" and PBS' "Frontline," I get leads for further research on information suddenly new to me — on such subjects I've reported on as our disappearing right to privacy and other Bush-Cheney-Obama raids on the Constitution.
What Mitt Romney and other Republicans eager to defund NPR and PBS don't apparently realize is emphasized by the very credible Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, who told NPR: "You probably have stations, particularly (in) more rural and smaller markets, that would cease to exist ... There will be a lot of collateral damage at the local level" ("Public Broadcasting Funds Caught in Budget Battle," 2/17/11).
In an attempt to demonstrate his concern for the kids who — like my 5-year-old grandchild — would terribly miss public television's children's programs, the slick Mitt Romney assures everyone:
"We're not going to kill Big Bird (on "Sesame Street"). But Big Bird is going to have advertisements. All right?" (Hollywoodreporter.com, Dec. 28)
It's not likely to be all right once "Sesame Street" is festooned with commercials. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who has worked on resolutions to stop proposed spending cuts, reminds us that, "In the commercial market ... the stuff for kids is targeted to sell things to kids, not to educate them" (npr.org, 2/17/11).
If Mitt Romney and his defunding colleagues have their way and commercialize "Sesame Street," Big Bird and the other puppets are going to be cajoling their young audience to keep bugging their parents to buy what Big Bird is selling.
Fred Friendly, who was Edward R. Murrow's producer before becoming president of CBS News, used to tell me that the original purpose of television in these United States was to be a source of education. But, he added, it largely lost its purpose. Fred did his best to stay within its original purpose with the deeply educational reports and documentaries he produced with Murrow.
These days, however, there is nothing on commercial television that equals the educational impact of the investigative Murrow-Friendly combination. Right now, the only informative series of any value that continually and probingly educates its audience is "Frontline" on PBS — whose public funding Romney and his associates want to cut off.
Last year, a story in U.S. News and World Report ("Liberals Mobilize to Save PBS, NPR Funding," usnews.com, 2/11/11) reported on a warning from television station WOUB at Ohio University that indicated what we would be missing if the defunders then, as now, succeeded in their mission to kill the educational alternatives to commercial radio and television:
"The (public) money that would be lost helps to better educate viewers and listeners ... 'It helps us to deliver educational and commercial-free programming that expands children's minds, documentaries that open up new worlds to you, trusted news programs that keep you informed, and exposes you to the worlds of music, theater, dance and art as an adult.'"
Meanwhile, kids experience the joy of learning from the ever-enlivening Big Bird.
This same U.S. News report quotes the liberal website PoliticusUSA: "In an era of media consolidation, fewer national and foreign bureaus and mass newsroom layoffs, NPR is one of the only media outlets actually bringing listeners more reporting (actual reporting, not warped pontificating) from around the country and around the world."
Finally, an indication of how essential public radio and TV are locally around this nation comes from Rep. Earl Blumenauer: "Every month, more than 170 million Americans have their lives enriched by tuning in or logging online to public radio and television stations. These local stations serve every major city and many small towns in America. In many rural areas, they are the only source of free and high-quality local, national and international news, children's shows, music and cultural programming" (blumenauer.house.gov, 1/21/11).
If Mitt Romney makes these cuts, he will create a dark hole in our lives that will defy James Madison's warning — which becomes more contemporary every day: "A people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives ... a popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both." Commercials won't tell us that our public schools no longer have nurses in our neighborhood.
This is CATO? What the hell?
When did CATO turn Socialist?!
Answer. No.
Dogs and cats sleeping together happens in my house all the time. That should be the least of our worries.
It’s really simple: follow the money.
Please keep in mind that Romney is a malleable man with no real core values except greed. He wants what his daddy never could buy - the White House.
The Globalists in the Republican Party want to get back into the center of government, and do not want all those troublesome conservatives who cling to Bible and guns insisting on their God-given rights, getting in the way. The Globalists believe they can control Romney. Yeah, right!
Obama is a Marxist-Leninist Muslim puppet the Democrats thought they could control, but he is now driving the Democratic Party over a cliff to the advantage of the Global Social Justice group at the United Nations and international labor unions.
The Democrats and Republicans are hopeful Obama won’t try to stage a coup d’etat and cause a race war!
What a mess.
Hentoff is a old time socialist of some ill-defined variety. Cato’s association with him is, no doubt, meant to prove that Cato isn’t like those icky serious libertarian-conservatives. No, Cato is to the liberty agenda what “compassionate conservativism” is to conservatism.
Cato should have stayed outside the Beltway; perhaps they would then have felt less of a need for the approval of those trafficking in inside-the-Beltway group think.
Oh, and a reduction in the number of nurses means that there are fewer psychotropic drugs being pushed in the schools and fewer abortion, birth control, and STD referrals being made without parents being informed. Hentoff is too old and uninformed to know that that is 90% of what the “nurses” do today.
If it is so vital then it is a profit haven for business to take over of the demand is so intense.
Government doesn't belong in broadcasting via taxpayers in any way shape or form.
Thanks NPR, the government funded network, for pointing out that government funded schools don't have enough government funded nurses. I'm sure this sent a panic into viewers like it was supposed to that we don't have enough government funding. But the debt is $15 trillion now even without those nurses. Start by cutting NPR to fund the nurses. If that doesn't work, cut the schools entirely and have them privately run, just like they were for hundreds of years before liberals showed up.
The game is over faux conservatives, and surprise, the followers you collected actually mean it. Let's not get wobbly.
Please tell me this is CATO’s satire page.
While listening to the most recent beg-a-thon where they ask for donations, I realized what is wrong with that model: They leave the businesses out of the loop. They produce shows that lots of people are listening to, and those people would not mind hearing some messages from advertisers, The advertisers would love to sponsor shows, but the PBS model is to go directly to the public and ask for donations.
I would rather see the businesses benefit from sponsoring the shows, rather than having PBS skip over them.
Of course it should be said that "public" broadcasting can and does have commercials, especially on their TV channels. Why they don't just go to a regular market model, I have no idea.
Why the government funds and beg-a-thons?
Actually the real question should be would Romney sign a bill into law defunding public radio.
I don’t know about anyone else but I want a less powerful president.
Well, I think it would be wonderful. PBS is too leftist and should raise their own funds.
Well, I won't tar the entire Institute with Hentoff's opinion just yet, but it is still the weirdest thing I've ever seen posted there. Very, very weird.
NO President will end PBS funding as that would require the veto of an omnibus spending bill or a line item veto which doesn’t exist.
Who did not know this 30 years ago? Nat, please! Go back to writing about the First Amendment and jazz music.
Hey I got hook on Downton Abby how about that selling merchanide from that show that be awsome
There is zero chance of defunding PBS/NPR if the right flank of the GOP as represented by the CATO think tank is deflecting. Frankly I’m disappointed in them.
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