Written by: Tom Rieland
Date: February 15, 2011
Across the country, there has been a chain reaction to the calls to totally eliminate federal funding for public broadcast stations. Here are some samples:
An LA Times piece on the value of Public Broadcasting
“These are political, not practical, proposals: The money such cuts would save is not meaningful in terms of balancing the budget, and what it would spare any individual taxpayer is literally small change. If your cable or cellphone provider were to raise your rates by the amount you now pay to help fund public broadcasting — an average, by the estimate of the public-broadcasting advocacy group www.170millionamericans.org, of $1.35 a year — you’d never even notice. Certainly, you wouldn’t cancel your subscription over it.”
The Seattle Times editorial says Congress should keep its hands off Public Broadcasting.
“Dialing back public funding for public radio and TV would be a shortsighted move. Congress should leave the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the unique programs it funds alone.”
From the Huffington Post — a young writer says “Public Media Changes Lives.”
“CPB supports hundreds of public TV and radio stations across the country, and independent producers including Youth Radio…This funding is not only the force behind great programming such as Sesame Street and This American Life, but from my experience, it’s changed lives.”
The Huff Post also posits through an editorial the major impact PBS has had on children’s TV in “Why Commercial Media and its fans should support Public Media.”
“Many of the hallmarks of quality for which they aim were set first by the Public Broadcasting Service, and that’s why I am advising my colleagues — even if they’ve never created for PBS — to lend their support to the “170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting” campaign and to contact their Congressional representatives to express support for public service media. I’d advise the same to every parent, even if their children watch more commercial than public TV, play more “Angry Birds” than “Super Why” apps, or visit nick.com more often than pbskids.org.”
A Washington Post editorial asks Congress not to desert public media:“CPB funding to the nation’s 1,300 locally owned public radio and TV stations is also indispensable to cultural and educational programs, whether it is Acadian country fiddling shared by communities in Maine and Louisiana; the independent music scenes in Seattle, Minneapolis and Philadelphia; or classical stations that would have long ago disappeared from the airwaves were it not for public radio.”