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NPR, Inc. has received no direct operating support from the federal government since 1983.

This statement is disingenuous, at best.

I took a quick review of the financial statements of Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB), NPR and one local station, WOSU.

My quick review (info. subject to change) is that the CPB received most all of its $484 million in revenue from the Feds in 2009.

CPB paid all of the $484 million to local stations or for programming seen on local stations such as WOSU.

WOSU received approximately $1.9 million in 2009 from CBC (mostly) and other Federal grants (much smaller amount). State and local governments contributed $1.1 million and I assume this is mostly from Ohio State University. NPR received $65 million from member stations, such as WOSU, in 2009. Also, NPR received about $15 million from CPB and may have received more from the local stations, but I cannot immediately tell from the financial statements.

So, what does this mean:

Even though money is fungible and cannot be traced directly, it is clear that money from the Feds flows through CPB, money flows to local stations and NPR from CPB, and money flows from local stations to NPR.

It is an incestuous relationship and any claim by NPR that they do not receive Federal money is trumped by the fact that they receive the benefit of money from the Feds that flows through CPB and the local stations. Further, NPR would not exist but for the money pumped into these organizations by the government.

FREE SPECTRUM!

The Federal government under the Roosevelt Administration allocated 88.1 megahertz to 91.9 megahertz to non-profit broadcasting. This spectrum was deliberately removed from visibly commercial use. Radio stations broadcasting in this spectrum may not sell advertising time.

These stations were not worth much money until the 1960s, when Japanese transistor radios got cheap enough to create a large audience for FM radio. FM signals are cleaner than AM radio. They are high fidelity. They soon became stereo.

Any station operating in this spectrum receives a subsidy. The value of this subsidy is whatever money the station would bring at an open auction. If these frequencies were sold off, once and for all, to investors, not one of these stations would be able to buy back its frequency. Commercial stations that most people want to listen to would buy them.

These stations are used mainly by college radio stations and Christian stations. At least one college station in every region broadcasts NPR in the afternoon.

The only way that NPR stays on the air is through this ancient subsidy. Without it, NPR would go off the air. For good.

Of note, and as is explained in that site, NPR, Inc. has received no direct operating support from the federal government since 1983.

This was taken from the very link she provided regarding federal funding which, as you can see above, she *claims* they do not recieive.