Posted on 06/22/2003 9:21:50 AM PDT by Drango
For Immediate Release
June 19, 2003
Statement of Public Broadcasters
In Response to the House Labor/HHS Appropriations Mark-up
[Note to editors and reporters: Today, the U.S. House Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations Subcommittee agreed to the President’s budget proposal, which provides no new separate funding in FY 04 to public broadcasting for its digital transition or satellite interconnection. Instead, the Subcommittee opted to allow the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to spend up to $100 million (out of its $380 million 2004 general appropriation) to pay for these important priorities. CPB had requested $60 million in FY04 for digital conversion funds and $20 million in interconnection funds, and $410 million for FY 2006.
Further, the Subcommittee approved only $330 million for CPB’s FY 2006 general appropriation, which if enacted would be a $60 million reduction from CPB’s FY 05 level ($390 million) and $80 million below CPB’s request for 2006.
The House Full Committee on Appropriations is expected to mark-up the funding bill on Wednesday, June 25, 2003. The Senate Subcommittee has tentatively scheduled their mark-up that same day.]
If enacted, the Subcommittee’s recommendations would be a double blow to public broadcasting. Not only would it fall far short of meeting pressing needs for digital conversion and interconnection, it would reduce federal support by $100 million in fiscal year 2004, resulting in a possible 26 percent cut in operating grants to each of the nation’s more than 1,000 public television and radio stations.
Further, these cuts would hit public broadcasting stations at an already difficult time, when they are eliminating programming and cutting other services due to the weakened economy, cutbacks in state funding, and increasing operating costs. And, they would inflict serious damage on programs and services that are essential to children, parents and educators alike.
We believe that the Administration and the House recognize public broadcasting’s need for federal assistance in the digital conversion and interconnection. These technologies are the backbone of public broadcasting. However, cutting operating funds to pay for equipment needs will seriously compromise our mission to deliver quality educational programming and services to the American public. And, such cuts could literally deny the public any new services which the digital investment is intended to make possible.
We are pleased that the Subcommittee recognizes public broadcasting’s unique needs by providing an advance appropriation. However, the figure proposed would take CPB supported programs back to levels of six years ago.
For 35 years, public broadcasters have met the federal mandate of providing universal service, meaning that every community in America has access to a wealth of independent, non-commercial programming and educational resources, as well as local services that are highly valued by their citizens. This service is deeply threatened by this proposal, as is CPB’s investment in new national programming for TV and radio. Given the debate over media consolidation, this is an especially unfortunate time to undermine public broadcasting, the last locally-controlled media in many American communities.
The federal budget process requires difficult choices. Public broadcasters will continue to work with the Administration and Congress to ensure that millions of Americans receive the quality educational public broadcasting services upon which they rely. That is our mission.
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Robert T. Coonrod, President and CEO, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Kevin Klose, President and CEO, National Public Radio
John Lawson, President and CEO, Association of Public Television Stations
Pat Mitchell, President and CEO, Public Broadcasting Service
Robert T. Coonrod, President and CEO, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Appointed to current position by CPB board (which in turn is appointed by potus for 6-yr terms) in 1998 during clinton administration. Was CPB VP and COO since '92 [talk about entrenched!]. While known as cost cutter, he and cpb "encourage partnerships between public broadcasters and community institutions in an effort to address the goals of education, diversity and an agenda to help position public broadcasting for the future [I'll bet he has an agenda.]" Joined the USIA right out of college (1967) and oversaw VOA & office of Cuban broadcasting [which some say had turned into a tool of the clinton State Department].
Kevin Klose, President and CEO, National Public Radio
Came to NPR in 1998 during clinton adm. He spent 25 years as a reporter and editor at the Washington Post. "Radically downsized" Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe [fits in with Coonrod's VOA and Cuban operations above]. Harvard grad & Woodrow Wilson fellow.
John Lawson, President and CEO, Association of Public Television Stations
Joined APTS in 2001. As far as I can see, this organization is strictly a lobbying group to which public tv stations belong. Lawson's "priorities include digital conversion, an expanded role for public television in education, use of DTV datacasting for homeland security, and universal access to public television through all distribution technologies. During Lawson's first year as president of APTS, public broadcasting persuaded Congress to approve the first federal funds specifically targeted for the digital conversion of stations [i.e., he's the bag man: give us digital or children's programming goes down the tubes]."
Pat Mitchell, President and CEO, Public Broadcasting Service
Came to PBS in 2000 as CEO. The bio doesn't say who hired her. 25 years producing tv beginning in Boston, but was a big shot at CNN: "Prior to her current role, Pat was president of Time Warner's CNN Productions and Time Inc. Television, where she was responsible for developing, commissioning and supervising original, nonfiction programming projects for CNN, TBS and other Turner and Time Warner networks and businesses...."
...only a start. Drango you might bump this post to your NPR list. My take is that public broadcasting is one of the biggest liberal scams of the last 50 years. --Bill
Every other channel in this country has to make it one their own. Why not them? The left gripes that the tax cut is fiscally unresponsible and the government can't afford to "pay" for it...well, dropping these two useless broadcasters will help "pay" for our tax cut.
I don't either. Even Sesame Street is overbearingly PC and sometimes out of touch with kids. I have Sesame Street radio in my favorites folder. While they do play some real childrens' music, I can honestly say my 14 month old grandson gets seriously irritated when they jump from the Itsy Bitsy Spider to some R&B song about all of us playing together in happy happy land. Most of the songs are truely awful and have NO appeal at all to preschoolers. Sure he likes some rock...so all we have to do is turn on the radio to our favorite station. Much better quality music. Sesame Street-ised modern stuff is REALLY crappy...and WE pay for this!
"Will Sneer At You With A Fake British Accent For Food"
From our friends at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/4/26/152220.shtml
Phil BrennanThe ultra-liberal Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has a new boss, and the head of the tax-funded network is a perfect choice for the left-leaning network – she's a certified member of America's ultra-liberal elite.
Friday, April 27, 2001
Pat Mitchell, PBS head since March of last year, pals around with the likes of global socialist and environmental activist Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and many other prominent liberals.
Mitchell's leftist credentials are impressive. The new PBS honcho, for example, is a member of the founding board of the Global Green USA organization. Global Green is an affiliate of Gorbachev's globalist environmentalist Green Cross International, which seeks to create an international authority to usurp national sovereignty over the world's natural resources, determine the land use practices of governments and in general impose a socialist order on the world.
The preamble to the Earth Charter, a radical program of Green Cross International backed by Global Green USA, begins with this alarming statement: "The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living."
She also sits on the board of trustees of the Sundance Institute and is especially proud of her role in producing one of the most distorted historical documentaries on the Cold War.
As the co-producer of CNN's controversial Cold War series, Mitchell shares the blame for airing a documentary that trumpeted Ted Turner's perverted view of the struggle between the Free World and what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire as a conflict in which there was no villain, just a pair of equally contentious rivals.
Tapes of the distorted series were sent to schools all across the nation where schoolchildren are exposed to a false view of one of humanity's most desperate conflicts.
Here is some of what the Washington Times wrote about the series: "From Jacob Heilbrun in the New Republic to Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post to Arnold Beichman in the Washington Times and the Weekly Standard, the series was roundly criticized as an exercise in historical distortion and moral equivalence. ... Before Mr. Turner succeeds in permeating the national psyche with his perspective, it is therefore of the greatest importance that counterbalancing arguments be given due attention.
"Many of these articles can now be found in the best antidote there is to Turnerized world history: the volume, CNN's Cold War Documentary: Issues and Controversy edited by Mr. Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a columnist for this newspaper. (Published by the Hoover Institution Press.)
"It ought to accompany every set of Mr. Turner's 24 tapes that goes into American classrooms," Mr. Beichman writes.
"... I hope that our book will be read by school boards, school principals, teachers, especially high-school teachers, as demonstrating that the Cold War was not merely a struggle between a pair of equally demented gorillas whose snarls and wild swings endangered world peace. In the Cold War, the enemy of freedom was Communism, despite its propaganda claims to be idealism in action, a claim that the Turner-Isaacs documentary and textbook appear at times to accept as valid. ..."
Early in her tenure as head of the 347-station PBS empire, it was revealed that some of the top PBS member stations, which compile huge donor lists, had shared those lists with the Democratic Party, enabling them to tap into a roster of proven givers, many of whom share Mitchell's liberal views.
Those who hoped that PBS might discover the error of their liberal ways have little hope that they'll get their way as long as Mitchell is at the helm.
Regards,
TS
Send us some money so that we can continue brainwashing entertaining you...Without your help we couldn't continue indoctrinating entertaining you.
And look at the programming we've got in store for you this week! Our "Specials" are just the kind of quality entertainment that you can expect from us here at ??? Public Broadcasting (though you'll only get to see such "Specials" during begging "funding" promotions).
Be sure to tune in during the next year for our begging funding "Specials".
We now return you to your regularly scheduled bias programming.
Some things are better left unsaid.
P.S...This in no manner reflects on the donation drives here at FR, so don't anyone get in a tizzy. Our donations are gifts and aren't expected as they are at public broadcast stations. Americans are made to feel obligated to keep those stations going when Americans have no obligation whatsoever to do so.
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