[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Fwd: Save NPR and PBS

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

Jason Linkins
jason at huffingtonpost.com
The Case For NPR Giving Up Federal Funding
First Posted: 03/ 9/11 04:54 PM Updated: 03/ 9/11 05:29 PM

As you are no doubt aware, an O'Keefian "sting" operation, in which National 
Public Radio's senior vice president for fundraising was caught on tape 
disparaging the Tea Party, has rocked NPR and the blogosphere, costing several 
people with the surname Schiller their livelihoods. It comes at an inopportune 
time for NPR, whose CEO -- the aforementioned, now-cashiered Vivian Schiller -- 
had just this week appeared at the National Press Club to celebrate the 
organization's 40th anniversary and, hopefully, put their recent troubles over 
the firing of Juan Williams behind them.

At her Press Club appearance, Vivian Schiller made a "public case against 
Republican efforts to cut federal funding for public broadcasting." This cast an 
interesting contrast with caught-on-tape Ron Schiller (no relation, in case you 
were wondering), who said on the O'Keefe video, "It is very clear that in the 
long run we would be better off without federal funding."

This is, to my mind, the more interesting part of the story. And today, Gawker's 
Hamilton Nolan makes a pretty excellent argument that Schiller (Ron, not Vivian) 
was absolutely right. Says Nolan: "As long as NPR takes a single dollar from the 
U.S. government, it will be forced to appease and cater to Congressional 
Republicans, who know that NPR is a convenient target in the culture war. 
And--newsflash--NPR will never be able to appease the Republican Party. It 
simply won't happen."

      "NPR has the resources, and the talent, to compete with any news 
organization in America. But as the events of this week have demonstrated, it 
doesn't have the freedom to conduct itself as it sees fit. And it never will, as 
long as it takes government funding. It doesn't matter whether NPR is truly 
hostile to Republican interests; as long as some Republicans perceive it that 
way--or know that they can score political points back home by doing so--they'll 
use NPR as a political football. They don't want to pay for something they 
dislike. So don't make them."

I think this is right, and it goes back to something I've had the occasion to 
say about NPR on multiple occasions in the past -- NPR seems to have a crisis 
every time they encounter a situation where their contributors and staff are 
revealed to be human beings who have points of view on various and sundry 
matters. When Juan Williams expressed a controversial opinion, NPR didn't know 
what to do! Their response wasn't to offer up a countering point of view or to 
have a debate or to otherwise behave as if we are all free people living in a 
free society -- it was to fire Williams over the phone.

NPR is hardly the only media organization with these problems, but they're the 
only one who a) keeps tripping headlong over them in headline-making pratfalls 
and b) have an extant need to keep a bunch of politicians happy. At some point, 
you have to wonder if the spectacles aren't exacerbated by the dependency.

As Nolan points out, NPR has put out that without the slice of the funding pie 
that the Corporation For Public Broadcasting receives from the government "up to 
100 stations could go dark." Nolan doesn't buy it:

      "Is there no re-allocation of funds that could prevent such a massacre? A 
10% reduction in funding doesn't necessarily mean 100 dead stations; it can just 
as easily mean a 10% budget cut at each station. In 2008, in the midst of the 
recession, NPR cut its workforce by 7% in a massive round of layoffs. And look: 
two years later, NPR and its member stations are still here."

 From that perspective, it seems to me that even if NPR absorbs the financial 
hit from losing their federal funding, they'll still be in better straits than, 
say, every single newspaper in America. And if ridding themselves of the need to 
please lawmakers helps them to rediscover what it's like to be actual human 
beings who think actual thoughts about actual things, so much the better.

On 3/8/11 3:28 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:
> From
> <http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/npr-executive-caught-calling-tea-partiers-racist/?partner=rss&emc=rss>:
>
> NPR Executive Caught Calling Tea Partiers ‘Racist’
>
> Ron Schiller, the NPR executive, was caught on tape by a conservative
> provocateur...
>
> Mr. Schiller, whose job is to solicit non-federal funding for NPR, says it
> is “very clear” that the organization would be “better off in the long-run
> without federal funding”...
>
>
> On 2/19/11 1:25 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:
>> http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4252
>>
>> "How to Save Ourselves From the 'Save PBS' Routine" 2/18/11:
>>
>> ...A rival to Fox News Channel could be launched with the list of
>> conservatives who have hosted or produced shows on public television over
>> the years...
>>
>> ...public TV's habit of survival through capitulation becomes more
>> ingrained...
>>
>> ...it would only be a matter of time until PBS would need to be saved once
>> again — most likely at the cost of yet more concessions to the right...
>>
>>
>> On 2/19/11 9:44 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:
>>> Andrew--
>>>
>>> It's good that CPB has sometimes contributed to good programming, but
>>> that doesn't seem to be an adequate reason to support it when its purpose
>>> is to be something like a general pacification program for electronic
>>> media. It's surely no accident that DN! takes no CPB money.
>>>
>>> Of course CPB is hardly the sole reason that formerly alternative
>>> stations - WBAI, KPFA, and of course sad WEFT, locally - are so
>>> noticeably decadent today. But it's helped: it was obviously the goal of
>>> the 'liberal' funders. The successful attempt of the Clintonoids to bring
>>> down Pacifica, ur-alternative radio, should have made the liberal media
>>> strategy clear. Similarly to other areas with no left alternative, the
>>> liberals could relax into the posture that they are the only thing
>>> holding off yahoo-commercial right-wing talk radio - just as Obama is the
>>> only thing that stands between us and the fell clutches of Sarah Palin.
>>> ("Always keep ahold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse...")
>>>
>>> Compare the situation with alternative media a generation ago. The
>>> attempt to break thorough the carapace of the peculiar American control
>>> of the press - see "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the
>>> Mass Media" (1988) - produced the "underground press" during the American
>>> assault on SE Asia, which set new standards of news and cultural
>>> reporting. It's hard to imagine its being supported by a "Corporation for
>>> Public Journalism" in its heyday, for obvious reasons. (Eventually of
>>> course business forces eviscerated it, but that took some time - about a
>>> decade.)
>>>
>>> "The power to tax is the power to destroy" has been an American bromide
>>> for two centuries, but it's also obviously true that the power to fund is
>>> the power to debilitate, and it's hard to say that hasn't happened in
>>> alternative media when community radio stations have become little more
>>> than advertising agencies for commercial music producers. It's not just
>>> news and public affairs that have been debased in alternative radio, but
>>> cultural programming as well. As Brecht pointed out, "For art to be
>>> 'unpolitical' means only to ally itself with the 'ruling' group."
>>>
>>> Money from CPB may occasionally largely by accident accomplish something
>>> good, and there is no reason to refuse those moments. But to support it
>>> whole-heartedly is to accept alms for oblivion...
>>>
>>> Much better to spend the energy, e.g., in trying to overcome the
>>> effective censorship imposed on Al Jazeera in the US.
>>>
>>> Regards, Carl
>>>
>>> On 2/12/11 11:51 AM, "Dr. Andrew Ó Baoill" wrote:
>>>> I think it's also important to understand that "defund NPR and PBS" is
>>>> shorthand, designed to explain the proposal in terms of 'retail level'
>>>> brands the general public will know (and, generally, feel fondly
>>>> towards). The actual plan is to zero out funding for CPB, which is the
>>>> main public entity that provides funding not just for NPR and PBS, but
>>>> also for Pacifica and many community radio stations.
>>>>
>>>> There's been continual debate over the merits (and impact) of the
>>>> CPB's approach to supporting non-commercial broadcasting, but are
>>>> critics of the current approach - who, perhaps, want more funding for
>>>> locally-oriented programming, or more programming that undertakes
>>>> critical examination of our political and economic elites - really
>>>> better served by shutting down all federal funding for non-commercial
>>>> broadcasting? Are we really better served by a media system in which
>>>> advertising, wealthy philanthropists, and individual
>>>> subscription/donation (largely in that order) are the only sources of
>>>> funding for our media system? What's the roadmap for restarting public
>>>> funding (and ensuring such funding is 'better' focused than the
>>>> current system?
>>>>
>>>> There are some exceptions out there: Democracy Now! does not receive
>>>> CPB funding, though I'm not sure how many of their affiliates get CPB
>>>> funding that is then available to fund their support for DN! (and, of
>>>> course, the Pacifica Foundation, DN!'s largest funder, receives CPB
>>>> funding).
>>>>
>>>> Andrew
>>>>
>>>> On 2011 Feabh 12, at 11:42, Mike Lehman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> While I really can't dispute the criticisms of NPR (and PBS) and am
>>>>> regularly disappointed by them, I think it's wholly counterproductive
>>>>> to presume that the elimination of either would benefit those
>>>>> seeking alternatives to the present system.
>>>>>
>>>>> Society needs more spaces where something other than FAUX News and
>>>>> Corporate News Network prevail. It may not be a perfect space, and
>>>>> certainly never enough to justifiably satisfy some critics, but
>>>>> eliminating "public" broadcasting would serve FAUX and CNN, rather
>>>>> than weaken the system that make the broader conversations our
>>>>> society needs so difficult. Neither CNN or FAUX is subject to public
>>>>> pressure, while "public" broadcasting is, however much it still falls
>>>>> short of what would be ideal.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can see people saying they won't lift a finger to help PBS and NPR.
>>>>> But urging others to join the Republicans in helping eliminate one of
>>>>> the few spaces left where a progressive argument at least gets aired
>>>>> from time to time isn't something I consider to be an effective
>>>>> strategy to building alternative media spaces that challenge the
>>>>> status quo.
>>>>>
>>>>> The masses of teeming apathy have to have someplace comfortable to
>>>>> start a journey to alternative ways of looking at the world and our
>>>>> society. Slamming the gate to the path to move from the garden of
>>>>> evil into the garden of justice and peace is not going to cause more
>>>>> than a very few to look to jump over the fence instead.
>>>>>
>>>>> And I doubt if either is going away, even if the Repugnicans/Tea
>>>>> Party get their fantasy of eliminating both. They'll just become more
>>>>> dependent on corporate cash -- and that will make all the things they
>>>>> are criticized for worse.
>>>>>
>>>>> Far better to waste such physic and political energy on better
>>>>> alternatives so that once people are roused from their sleep, they
>>>>> have a place to grab a cup of coffee to steel their nerves to go
>>>>> beyond the conflicted American dreamscape that PBS and NPR offer.
>>>>> Revolution is what we build, not what we help reactionaries tear
>>>>> down. Mike Lehman
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/11/2011 10:11 PM, David Johnson wrote:
>>>>>> I have had no use for NPR ( National Public Radio ) and PBS TV for
>>>>>> quite some time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cases in point....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The propoganda campaign they aired when Reagan died a few years ago
>>>>>> ( may his soul rot in hell ) that presented Reagan as an idolized
>>>>>> icon, with NO counter view of Reagan and his disasterous foreign (
>>>>>> can you say " war crimes " ) policy and his disasterous neo-liberal
>>>>>> / neo-conservative domestic policies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then there was the coverage of the People's Historian Howard Zinn
>>>>>> when he died a little over a year ago. The ONLY view about Howard
>>>>>> Zinn presented on NPR was the trash job on Zinn done by David
>>>>>> Howoritz.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> NPR is nothing but FOX " news " for the intelligencia.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The reason of course for NPR's de-evolution is the ever increasing
>>>>>> reliance over the years on corporate funding.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I could care less if NPR goes off the air. It would be one less
>>>>>> corporate news outlet. What suprises me is the large number of
>>>>>> seemingly well educated and supposedly " compasionate and
>>>>>> progressive " people who still listen to NPR's corpoarte trash and
>>>>>> consider it an " opposition " and " objective " news source.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> David J.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. ESTABROOK"<cge at shout.net>
>>>>>> To: "Belden Fields"<a-fields at uiuc.edu>  Cc: "Walter
>>>>>> Feinberg"<wfeinber at illinois.edu>; "Fred Coombs Fred Coombs"
>>>>>> <coombs at rainbowtel.net>; "SFcore"<sf-core at yahoogroups.com>;
>>>>>> <sadougla at illinois.edu>  Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 9:01 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [sf-core] Fwd: Save NPR and PBS
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> National Propaganda Radio? Why?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> NPR reports on Obama's war in the Mideast probably don't differ
>>>>>>> formally from official Russian accounts during their invasion of
>>>>>>> Afghanistan. They would have discussed how can we get victory,
>>>>>>> how can we destroy the terrorists, will this tactic work, will
>>>>>>> that tactic work, we're losing too many soldiers and so on. We
>>>>>>> assume that no one in the official Russian media asked, Do we
>>>>>>> have a right to invade another country? And of course NPR doesn't
>>>>>>> do that either.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But NPR has far less excuse. With media under totalitarian
>>>>>>> control, if you said the wrong thing you'd go off to the gulag.
>>>>>>> Here it's just willing subordination to power. The result is no
>>>>>>> main-stream journalism - even (particularly?) NPR - that goes
>>>>>>> beyond the college newspaper cheering for the home team.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Chris Hedges prefaces his important new book, "The Death of the
>>>>>>> Liberal Class," with a passage from Orwell's suppressed
>>>>>>> introduction to Animal Farm:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which
>>>>>>> it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without
>>>>>>> question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the
>>>>>>> other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian
>>>>>>> times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a
>>>>>>> lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds
>>>>>>> himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely
>>>>>>> unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing,
>>>>>>> either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals" -
>>>>>>> and, he might have added, on highbrow radio.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> During the presidential campaign Obama said that the spectrum of
>>>>>>> discussion in the United States extends between two crazy
>>>>>>> extremes, Rush Limbaugh and NPR. The truth, he said, is in the
>>>>>>> middle and that is where he is going to be - in the middle,
>>>>>>> between the crazies.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Obama has a way of telling the truth about his right-wing
>>>>>>> politics, certain that no one will hear him. NPR certainly won't
>>>>>>> tell.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 2/11/11 7:55 PM, Belden Fields wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> From: Daniel Mintz, MoveOn.org Political Action
>>>>>>>>> <moveon-help at list.moveon.org<mailto:moveon-help at list.moveon.org>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>Subject: Save NPR and PBS To: "Rev. Troy A.
>>>>>>>>> Burks"<burkstroy at yahoo.com<mailto:burkstroy at yahoo.com>>
>>>>>>>>> Date: Friday, February 11, 2011, 7:07 PM
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> <http://pol.moveon.org/nprpbs/?id=26078-17377114-0nf7g3x&t=1>"Congress
>>>>>>>>>must protect NPR and PBS and guarantee them permanent funding, free
>>>>>>>>> from political meddling."
>>>>>>>>> <http://pol.moveon.org/nprpbs/?id=26078-17377114-0nf7g3x&t=1>
>>>>>>>>>