One shouldn’t need the latest ratcheting-up of the culture wars to oppose what we call, in America, “public radio and TV.” Taxpayer-subsidized broadcast media is a bad idea. Period. Full stop.
Defund NPR. Defund PBS. No more state-run or -subsidized media.
And, thankfully, that point was made by Governor Kevin Stitt when he vetoed the Oklahoma legislature’s renewed funding for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority.
“OETA, to us, is an outdated system,” he told Fox News. “You know, the big, big question is why are we spending taxpayer dollars to prop up or compete with the private sector and run television stations?”
But he didn’t stop there. “And then when you go through all of the programing that’s happening and the indoctrination and over-sexualization of our children, it’s just really problematic, and it doesn’t line up with Oklahoma values.”
What this implies is that wasting taxpayer money on “public supported” media was fine with Republicans like Stitt. Until a really flagrant violation of their sensibilities.
Sure, the current gender and “critical race theory” nonsense that taxpayer-subsidized media pushes is beyond the pale.
But so is the smug establishment progressivism of “public media” culture more generally.
The whole point of taxes and government spending is to promote the general welfare, or so the standard theory runs. But there’s nothing “general” about the extreme sectarianism of “public radio and TV,” with less well-to-do taxpayers subsidizing the far wealthier public media audience.
It would have been far more inspiring had Governor Stitt dared oppose factional subsidies prior to the latest culture war strife. Indeed, maybe we wouldn’t be now enduring CRT and transgenderism and other aspects of cultural Marxism had conservatives actually stuck to republican principles long ago.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Public TV Vetoed”
Although I cannot comment on Oklahoma’s Public TV, I can on what PBS airs in Los Angeles. In news and public affairs coverage, it is the most unbiased that an antenna can receive. To see leftist bias, all one needs to do is tune in the news on CBS or NBC. Or, worse, BBC. Most of the financing for LA’s two PBS stations comes from viewers and voluntary donations. Remember, it was not a commercial network that aired Friedman’s Free to Choose, it was PBS. Most recently, it was PBS NewsHour, not a report on commercial TV, that documented the drawbacks of attempting a long trip in an all-electric car. Several years ago, that same program carried an interview with the Libertarian candidate for President, something not even reported to exist on commercial TV. It’s only those, who don’t watch it, who claim a leftist bias.
Being simply less biased does not make a service unbiased, and having less of a left-wing bias does not make a service free of left-wing bias.
Finding ideologic bias in PBS and NPR content is trivial, and a cry of “illi magis” isn’t a refutation.
Perhaps more to the point, no one who wants their resources not to be used for some expressive purposes should be made to contribute to such use, even if what he or she wants is gross bias.
My wife is very persuasive when it comes to the television and radio (and a number of other things) and so I watch & listen to my fair share of PBS and NPR. (More NPR than PBS, but still more PBS than I desire.) I’ve also been interviewed on numerous state affiliates of NPR and have yet to meet a non-leftwing reporter or host.
Of course, much of it is in the beholder. Either way, leftwing or neutral, the right move is to get NPR and PBS off the (reportedly) thin public subsidy they now receive.
After which, and my wife will be glad to hear it, I promise to silence my criticisms of NPR as “communist radio.”