Years ago, I listened to NPR radio broadcasts fairly often. They had interesting commentators, good program formats and best of all, the primary attraction to me, virtually no commercial messages at all.
As far as content went, the station had a profoundly liberal agenda, slanted all it's programming, and shaped and molded its offerings to meet and support its positions. However, they did no more in their efforts to present only their side of the picture than stations and networks on the other side of the political coin. So, in any case, whatever the particular bias of the broadcaster, all a listener has to do is realize the bias exists and sort out the truth from the pap and propaganda.
In my case, not having commercial interruptions was well worth having to listen to some rhetoric I didn't always agree with. And, in fact, bias and manipulation of information occurs due to virtually all broadcaster's particular persuasions. Consequently, so as long as there were no breaks for hammering, valueless commercials, I really didn't care.
As for today, it's been a long time since I listened to talk radio of any kind. In truth, I find all of it extremely repetitive and boring, but I do stay current by reading news on the web. Which brings me to today's subject.
Juan Williams, a commentator who's been affiliated with NPR for ten, or so, years was fired yesterday for comments he made about being nervous when he flies alongside devout Muslims. Now, whether the comments merited his termination or not is another subject, but what interested me most was NPR's remarks afterward.
It seems that The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parent company of PBS and NPR, received $420 million in taxpayer funds in 2010. They've requested $608 million for the next funding cycle that begins in 2013. And, according to NPR, government funding makes up less than 2 percent of it budget. They say the rest comes from station fees, sponsorships and grants. In fact, this week, they received $1.8 million from George Soros, to hire journalists to cover legislatures in all 50 states.
The item that really struck me in all the discourse was that, apparently, $420 million accounts for only 2% of the budget. If my math's correct, that means CPR raised $21 billion this year. That's about the same as McDonald's earned worldwide, operating 31,000 locations and having 400,000 or so employees. So, my question is, what does CPR do with all that money?
It seems to me that this organization is doing quite well on it's own to clearly promote a political agenda, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, taking an additional $420 million dollars out of taxpayers pockets to help their cause is not only wrong, it's theft.
That's it for today folks,
Adios
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