One month ago, I wrote about launching a fictitious candidacy for one of the non-existent congressional districts to which the federal government had laughably claimed to have distributed stimulus funds. See, Press Release: John Adams to Run for Wisconsin’s 55th Congressional District.
In my campaign platform, I was critical of the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Here’s what I wrote:
5. PBS. It’s just got to go. NPR, too. NPR must be the third-biggest cause of traffic accidents, after drunks and deer. How can anyone stay awake to those soporific tones? The end of NPR would be like an espresso shot for the nation.
Few things I have written have drawn more consternation among my readers than teasing about PBS and NPR. (Many of the seemingly controversial posts I publish are nothing of the kind; outside of a few lemmings, most people see that Whitewater officials’ grandiose statements are false, often absurdly so. That’s not surprising — mediocre and self-serving efforts produce mediocre and ridiculous results.)
But PBS and NPR, unlike municipal bureaucrats, have real fans and diehard supporters.
So, what’s not to like about PBS and NPR? First, two quick comments, about content and style. I don’t care that PBS and NPR lean left-of-center. They’re one voice among many, and their politics don’t bother me. Second, of course, I really don’t care if their announcers adopt a soporific tone.
My concern is simply that government should not subsidize broadcast networks, or newspapers, except for limited, exceptional purposes (newspapers for service members, or broadcasts as a part of foreign policy, like Radio Free Europe or the Voice of America).
Government should not be a news publisher, and virtually all people — and all sensible ones — understand that politicians should not be publishers. There are no sensible people who believe, for example, that Bill Clinton should — or could — simultaneously serve fairly as president of the United States and editor-in-chief of the Washington Post.
PBS and NPR may go on as they wish; I just wouldn’t fund them from public coffers. (I know that federal funding amounts to a minority share of NPR’s budget.) For more information, see the fiscal year 2008 NPR financial statement.
Even small amounts may prove tempting, and exclusively private funding removes even the possibility of government persuasion through subsidy.
By the way, I do, in my own way, support NPR, and those who speak on its behalf should consider supporting it with private contributions.
One way to support public radio is through donations. Alternatively, as in my case, one may do so through private subscription to a service that carries NPR programming. I subscribe to Sirius radio, and one of that service’s channels is NPR.
Re-transmission on private networks, for a fee, is just one of the many private arrangements by which NPR and PBS can make their way in the world, free of any intoxicating government subsidies.