Tag: NPR

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Propaganda Shoved Where?

PBS, NPR, public broadcasting, socialism, Democratic Party, propaganda, censorship

The continued existence of “public radio” and “public television” is out of place in these United States. Not because it’s partisan — all news vendors tend to toe some partisan line — but because it’s partisan and taxpayer subsidized.

Though NPR aficionados tend to downplay the subsidies to NPR and PBS, what public media boosters have more consistently done is deny the partisanship. 

They have no standing any longer — if the evidence of our senses weren’t enough. 

In “The Bell Finally Tolls for National Public Radio,” Matt Taibbi explains how the media behemoth’s CEO Katherine Maher admitted NPR’s and PBS’s partisanship in her defense of it.

That won’t help her case in Congress, though, notes Mr. Taibbi. 

While the New York Times insists that tax-funded “public” media “improves the lives of millions of Americans” and “strengthens American interests” (presumably by being relentlessly progressive), it has no defense to Taibbi’s indictment: the branches of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have taken “the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-income audiences micro-dosing on Marx and Kendi.”

Taibbi makes clear just how annoying the dish served by CPB/NPR/PBS is, the entities seeing no “problem with taking funds from a huge plurality or even a majority of citizens and pursuing a nakedly politicized, ear-splitting propaganda project in opposition to the views of those people. NPR is the vegetables we refuse to eat, administered up a different entrance for our own good.”

I was thinking about the blight upon our eyes and ears and reason, but point taken.

De-fund National Public Propaganda immediately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Trump vs. Big Bird

NPR, PBS, Big Bird, public television, public radio,

For decades, taxpayers have been forced to fund PBS and NPR, and with them any political tilts that we disagree with.

For decades, some lawmakers have nominally agreed that taxpayers should be liberated from this unchosen obligation.

But nothing has changed.

Now, however, President Trump has issued an executive order to simply end “Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”

“Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies. . . .”

I say we have a right that our tax dollars not be used at all to fund public broadcasting. And that, also contrary to the text of the order, the government is not “entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.” 

It should have no authority to pay for any activities unrelated to the proper functions of government.

I will, however, accept the result of the executive order, defunding of public broadcasting. If we do get this result.

“The federal funding that supports Public Media,” PBS is alerting its viewers, “is at risk of being eliminated.” 

But this public media is also — and famously — supported by pledge drives and other non-governmental funding sources.

Zero public funding doesn’t mean a world without Big Bird; an absence of subsidy does not mean an absence of the MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour — or its successor show, PBS News Hour. These and many other much-loved shows might well thrive solely on voluntary funding.

“Now is a critical time to act,” urges PBS.

Yes. Tell Congress to ratify the elimination of federal funding of public media now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Internet controversy media and media people social media

NPR’s Wide Stance

deep state, wide state, business, NPR

When the term “the Deep State” entered our vocabulary, establishmentarians and insiders were annoyed. They argued the term was meaningless or vague or designated something that did not exist. 

The rest of us accepted the term to identify the parts of the administrative state — coupled with the military-industrial complex’s corporations — that keep big secrets and act mostly independently of our democratic-republican institutions, including those who work behind the scenes to effect policy and mold public opinion.

The Deep State is all-too-real.

Now that National Public Radio has been dubbed “state-affiliated media” by Elon Musk’s Twitter, it may be time to add a new term to our lexicon: the Wide State.

“It was unclear why Twitter made the move,” writes David Bauder of the AP. “Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, quoted a definition of state-affiliated media in the company’s guidelines as ‘outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.’”

When NPR objected on Twitter, Musk tweeted back: “Seems accurate.” 

But, but, but, they sputter: only 1 percent of NPR’s budget is from the federal government, and the organization has a well-established editorial independence!

Well, as the power of the Deep State has shown, directorial independence does not really constitute a non-state nature. 

It’s obvious that many “private” institutions do exert immense political and governmental power: corporations through regulatory capture; news media through rank partisanship; all organizations that express eagerness to (and have demonstrated repeated instances of) collaborating with partisans in power. 

These constitute the Wide State. 

Of which NPR is a part.

Besides, if NPR lives “only” with a single percentage-point subsidy, why not cut the umbilical cord and prove its independence? 

And get Twitter to change the label.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling government transparency national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

A Faulty Gun Report

While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-data.”

“This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools . . . reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats we’ve seen cited on social media, that seems unbelievably high. 

And yes, it is — “far higher than most other estimates,” reporter Anya Kamenetz noted. “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened.”

Were they fibbing? Well, never underestimate the power of incompetence. 

Even that’s harsh: remember that reporting requirements are a burden. And filing bureaucratically-designed forms with the Education Department may be no easier than filing tax returns with the IRS. One of the biggest errors in one school district report resulted from a simple data entry error.

That is not a sophisticated statistical problem, but a simple typo.

Not that there aren’t some difficulties of a not-so-easy-to-understand nature in the story. For one, the degree to which the report was off is said to lie within “the margin of error.”

So, how big was the error, exactly? What’s the number? Well, of the 240 supposed “shootings,” NPR claimed to be “able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.”

Yet the Education Department bureaucrats will only affix an erratum note to their ridiculous report. 

Nor will it be withdrawn or replaced, as it should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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free trade & free markets too much government

National Public Railroadeo

The controversy about all the elitist condescension galloping through the halls and programming policies of National Public Radio are both on point and beside the point. Even if NPR’s appeal were universal, it is not the proper function of government to be funding and controlling media.

Just the same, NPR’s appeal is far from universal. It serves not “the public,” but a slice of it — about 11 percent, according to Sue Schardt, member of an NPR distribution committee. She concedes that those who built NPR “unwittingly cultivated a core audience that is predominantly white, liberal, highly educated, elite” but stipulates that it was “never anyone’s intention to exclude anyone.”

True, but not meaningful. Coca Cola would love to get all the Pepsi people, Mother Jones would love to get all the National Review people, plus Esquire and New Yorker people, plus CBS and NBC and ABC people. But every successful enterprise must target its product.

Schardt believes that the way to answer political challenges to NPR’s funding is to expand the base with a broader appeal. The 30-year incubation period is over, now let’s be all we can be! Prove the nay-sayers wrong!

Fine with me if NPR tries this — or any other audience-building strategy. Just not on my dime. NPR would probably do best preaching to the liberal choir as they’ve always done. But, again, in the marketplace. Don’t make the rest of us pay for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Feeding the Narrative

Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!

Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.

Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”

There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them.

Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”

Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?

No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.