As part of budget cuts, the federal government should stop paying for unneeded or partisan media outlets. The funding for CPB, PBS, NPR, and the NEA should be stopped immediately to help the federal government bottom line.
The taxpayers pay for public televisions and radio. Why? Public media is liberal, progressive, democrat, and left wing biased. Why do right wing taxpayers have to pay for something that is not fair and balanced. These media outlets should be supporting themselves, like all other media outlets in the country.These media outlets have management with excessive salaries, excessive arrogance, excessive greed, and snobbish elitism.
Did you know the NPR CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $298,884 in reportable compensation and another $70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. For what?
Did you know president emeritus of NPR Kevin Klose received more than $1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009. For what?
Today's media landscape is a thriving one with few barriers to entry and many competitors, unlike when CPB was created in 1967 to provide a universal public system for a limited choice environment. Since then the CPB has become a media arm of the Democratic party. It is partisan to the extreme. In 2011, Americans have thousands of news, entertainment and educational programs to choose from that are available on countless television, radio and Web outlets.
Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $340 million for CPB. Last year it got $420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $14 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $451 million in his latest budget.
Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.
