As a strong supporter of public broadcasting, I just sent the following message to the CPB Board. If you are so inclined, please follow my lead. Also, Common Cause has a petition on the subject at
http://www.commoncause.org/protectpublicbroadcasting
To the Board of Directors, CPB,
I found the recent New York Times article by Stephen Labaton (5/16/05) very troubling indeed. Of particular concern is the statement
"The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations."
For my part, I find the news and public affairs programming on both NPR and PBS to be far and away the best broadcast sources for such information, bar none -- not FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and certainly nothing on radio. I have never found anything on the broadcast media that comes close to the quality and depth of NPR and PBS news and public affairs programming. - nothing!
Accusations of bias will always be with us. Anyone with an ax to grind will complain, especially those with strongly opposing viewpoints. I believe that adding programs like the WSJ's Journal Editorial Report is all to the good. (No doubt you will get complaints from the left as you do from the right.) The point is, we need the highest quality programming we can get. In my experience this has primarily come from the public airways. I have read the published comments from the CPB Public Forum of 9/21/04. To me the comments of Celia Wexler and Andrew Apostolou are the most cogent and compelling. I urge you to attend closely to these voices.
If there are, indeed, attempts to weaken CPB support of public affairs programming, I strongly exhort you to think again. This is a very slippery slope. Study your history; take the long view.
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Well said.
If you'd like to advocate any show and have your words read by PBS executives meeting later this month, follow the link on my latest blog. http://www.progressiveu.org/184019-question-day
The Once-ler: Well, what do you want? I should shut down my factory, fire a hundred-thousand workers? Is that good economics, is that sound for the country?