Home > GOP Takes Aim at PBS Funding
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House panel backs budget reductions
by Rick Klein
WASHINGTON - House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.
On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation’s budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending.
The reduction, which would come in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, must be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, and then the full House and Senate, before it could take effect. Democrats and public broadcasting advocates began planning efforts to reverse the cut.
A similar move last year by Republican leaders was turned back in a fierce lobbying campaign launched by Public Broadcasting Service stations and Democratic members of Congress, in a debate that was colored by some Republicans’ frustration with what they see as a liberal slant in public programming.
Still, Republicans say they remain adamant that public broadcasting cannot receive funding at the expense of healthcare and education programs.
Republicans are looking for ways to save taxpayers’ dollars, amid fiscal conservatives’ concerns over the budget deficit.
We've got to keep our priorities straight," said Representative Ralph Regula , an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the appropriations panel that approved the cut. You’re going to choose between giving a little more money to handicapped children versus providing appropriations for public broadcasting."
Democrats accused Republicans of trying to gut a bastion of children-oriented television to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy that have been backed by the Bush White House.
Dick Cheney and the Republicans have decided to go hunting for `Big Bird' and `Clifford the Big Red Dog' once again," said Representative Edward J. Markey , a Malden Democrat who led the successful effort to reverse the cuts last year.PBS is right at the top of their hit list — always has been and always will be, until they can destroy it."
Most of the savings would come by eliminating subsidies for educational programs and grants for a number of technological upgrades.
Jan McNamara , a PBS spokeswoman, said the digital upgrade would have to be funded with money that is now being used for other programs, forcing almost all areas of public broadcasting to feel a pinch.
Paula Kerger , PBS’s president and chief executive, said in a statement that the cuts would force the network to drastically reduce the programming and services public television and public radio can provide to local communities."
The literacy television programReady to Learn" would be eliminated, she said, as would the online teachers’ resource Ready to Teach."
The cuts could force smaller public-radio stations in rural areas -- which rely almost exclusively on federal money for operations -- to close altogether, said Kevin Klose , NPR's president.The impact of today’s decision could resonate in every community in America," Klose said.
John Lawson , president of the Association of Public Television Stations, said Republican leaders are contradicting their own goal statements by seeking to cut funding for public broadcasting on the day the House voted to increase fines for indecent television content. These cuts are targeted to inflict maximum damage," Lawson said.I guess we’ll have to start ringing phones on [Capitol] Hill again."
The cuts are included in a $142 billion spending bill covering domestic social programs in health, education, and labor. Even with the cuts to public broadcasting, the bill would spend $1 billion more in total than is being spent this year on those programs, and $4 billion more than President Bush had requested for those areas of spending. Student loans and research grants to local hospitals are among the areas that would see funding boosts.
The same appropriations subcommittee called last year for an even more drastic cut of $223 million from public broadcasting programs. At the time, Republicans attacked the PBS for programming they said represented out-of-the-mainstream viewpoints, highlighting in particular a Postcards From Buster" episode that featured lesbian couples and their children in Vermont.
But, in a defeat for House leaders, 87 Republicans joined unanimous Democrats in bucking an attempt to cut funding from the stations.
Markey expressed confidence that supporters of public broadcasting would have more than enough votes to stop a cut again this year. Their arguments will carry particular force in an election year in which moderate Republicans fear being portrayed as callous to the demands of their constituents, he said.
Regula also seemed resigned to seeing that sequence of events repeat itself, though he maintained that he was righton principle."
They've got a bigger megaphone than I do," he said.They’ll trot out Elmo and Mickey Mouse and Lord knows who else, and I’ll be out there kind of by myself."
Forum posts
11 June 2006, 06:20
PBS is not a free operating station.
14 June 2006, 19:34
PBS has been completely useless since Moyers quit. The Newshour is a joke. NPR is a disgrace, too.
If people think it’s a valuable news source they’re sound asleep. If you’re still a devoted listener try this:
June 12, 2006 www.counterpunch.org/pace06122006.html
An Open Letter to NPR
Warped Coverage of the Middle East
By FELICE PACE
Dear Scott Simon and all Weekend Edition Sat folks:
Weekend Edition Saturday in general and Scott Simon’s hosting and essays in particular have been among my favorite news experiences for many, many years. But in recent years, and as I have learned more from non-US sources about events in the Middle East and elsewhere, my enthusiasm has come to be tempered with frustration and deep concern.
Saturday’s show was a case in point. Scott’s interview with Beirut editor Rami Khouri was supposed to be focused on reactions across the Middle East to Zarqawi’s death. Mr. Simon began asking Mr. Khouri to gauge the effect (of the killing) elsewhere in the region. Mr. Khouri responded that Zarqawi’s death is seen as changing little because he was only a symptom and symbol of the dissatisfaction with US policy in the Middle East. He then went on to cite Jordanian Security officials to the effect that Israeli policies and actions toward the Palestinians and US support for those policies and actions, as well as the invasion and destabilization of Iraq, are the underlying realities which are the basis of anti-American feelings. Because these realities had not changed, Mr. Khouri suggested, Zarqawi’s death would change little. Mr. Simon said Hmm—then quickly changed the subject to recent Iraqi cabinet appointments.
I have come to expect reactions like Mr. Simon’s whenever an interviewee suggests to a US reporter that the terrible situation in the Middle East and the hatred of the US by Muslims generally is directly related to US policy and actions toward Israel and Palestine. Such suggestions are almost universally treated by American reporters as hot potatoes; there is the moment of silence, then they are hurried into obscurity as quickly as possible.
A seasoned reporter would have been expected to seize on Mr. Khouri’s tantalizing suggestion and dig deeper in order to decipher and report just what specific policies and actions Mr. Khouri and the Jordanian security officials believe are the bedrock cause of the symptom and symbol phenomenon like Zarqawi. But not on THIS issue.
The question is why. Why is it that otherwise savvy reporters run like frightened chickens whenever it is suggested that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in general and US policy in relationship to that conflict in particular is central to US problems in the Arab-Muslim world?
I would like you, Mr. Simon, and you, the WE Sat editors and producers, to answer that question. I challenge you to face the issue and to respond.
I have reached my own conclusions. I’ve taken note of what happens when an NPR or any other US reporter or academic suggests such a connection. I have noted, for example, how quickly and pointedly NPR issues a correction when a reporter (inadvertently or not) describes an incident or condition in a way not acceptable to the American Zionists and their allies. Any reporter statement on any aspect of Israeli-Palestinian relations that does not fall comfortably within the confines of the Zionist-defined narrative immediately triggers massive and relentless reaction, attack and pressure both direct and subtle, inside and outside, designed to force the reporter and the organization back on the reservation. Like virtually all other mainstream US news organizations, NPR scurries back into line.
The problem with this sort of reporting, of course, is that it helps create a US citizenry that is out of touch with realities which folks most other places in the world understand as matters of fact. Combine the myopia of the US citizenry with the global reach and force of US power and you have a situation which is prone to manipulation, abuse and disaster. Ergo Iraq!
Blind adherence to and even promotion of the Zionist narrative on the Middle East by the US Media has been going on for so long and has been so effective that it is emulated and reproduced by others who seek to control the American People through the media. American journalists have become so conditioned to accept such narratives that they unconsciously censor out connections and facts which contradict them. Thus the view of world events that Americans receive from the media is fundamentally different than the view citizens in the rest of the world receive.
So it was that Scott Simons otherwise excellent essay Saturday on US atrocities in Iraq failed to connect the dots linking those atrocities and the refusal of U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada earlier in the week to deploy to Iraq. For the first time since the start of the war, a commissioned officer is refusing deployment. Lieutenant Watada’s courageous stand was announced on Wednesday; a search today of NPR for the past week returned no hits.
I am not surprised. A reminder that the occupation of Iraq is illegal is not within the mainstream narrative and therefore does not garner NPR coverage. Mr. Simon was probably not even aware that a US officer had done that very week what he was suggesting: refusing to obey illegal orders. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Simon: ethical integrity is what we should expect of our troops. But Mr. Simon extended the logic only to the atrocities, thereby ignoring the most illegal of orders — the order to deploy and serve in an illegal war.
To some extent all our thinking is influenced by the defining narratives, the defining myths, perpetrated by those who control messaging and by the accumulation of messaging we call culture. At its most effective such control produces the sort of group mind that lead the American People to ignore key discrepancies and accept the myth that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to our security and therefore must be taken out. But it is precisely the likelihood that the rich and powerful would seek to control what information and which narratives reached the People that prompted the Founding Fathers to elevate the Fourth Estate as an essential check on control of defining narratives by the rich and powerful. And it is why Thomas Jefferson as president defended and protected the press even when it attacked him ruthlessly and without just cause.
Today the Fourth Estate has lost sight of its essential function in this Republic. In losing its way the media has also lost its stature with and importance to the People. Increasingly journalists are seen as entertainers, not as central defenders of the People and promoters of the Republic. Sadly, NPR News must be included in this generalization. What a long, slow fall it has been!
Felice Pace served for fifteen years as Conservation Director of the Klamath Forest Alliance (KFA) where he now volunteers as a senior counselor. While working for KFA from 1989 through 2003, Pace spearheaded numerous administrative appeals and several lawsuits to protect forests from logging and road building. He was a presenter at President Clinton’s Forest Conference in Portland and an early champion of efforts to put timber folks to work restoring forests and streams. He can be reached at: felice@jeffnet.org .
Also look up former Congressman Paul Findley and read his book They Dare to Speak Out