The Republican Watch (Num. 4, Vol. 1)
The Republican Assault on Public Broadcasting
A Republican-controlled House subcommittee voted on Thursday to drastically cut funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both non-profit, unbiased organizations. This may seem a strange topic for me to be so ready to fight over (after all, who actually watches PBS?), but NPR and PBS are the last remaining unbiased traditional-broadcasting-medium news groups in this country. You have your Limbaughs, your Air Americas, your CNNs and Fox News Channels, but no one else who offers truly neutral coverage. Despite Republicans arguments to the contrary, this is obviously an attempt to bring the public stations in under the right-wing news umbrella, since both, NPR in particular, have been very critical of the Bush administration. We have spent $300 billion fighting a crusade in Iraq, but we can't spend $400 million to provide a diplomatic forum for voices in this country to be heard. The failure of most news organizations to carry the "Downing Street Memo", which implicates the Bush administration in a pre-meditated invasion of Iraq, is further evidence of the need for a non-sensationalist news organization that focuses on things other than the Jackson trials.
A petition is available to sign at Moveon.org, which I have already done, and would hope you do too. After all, we elect our representatives, we should be able to force them to listen.
A Republican-controlled House subcommittee voted on Thursday to drastically cut funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both non-profit, unbiased organizations. This may seem a strange topic for me to be so ready to fight over (after all, who actually watches PBS?), but NPR and PBS are the last remaining unbiased traditional-broadcasting-medium news groups in this country. You have your Limbaughs, your Air Americas, your CNNs and Fox News Channels, but no one else who offers truly neutral coverage. Despite Republicans arguments to the contrary, this is obviously an attempt to bring the public stations in under the right-wing news umbrella, since both, NPR in particular, have been very critical of the Bush administration. We have spent $300 billion fighting a crusade in Iraq, but we can't spend $400 million to provide a diplomatic forum for voices in this country to be heard. The failure of most news organizations to carry the "Downing Street Memo", which implicates the Bush administration in a pre-meditated invasion of Iraq, is further evidence of the need for a non-sensationalist news organization that focuses on things other than the Jackson trials.
A petition is available to sign at Moveon.org, which I have already done, and would hope you do too. After all, we elect our representatives, we should be able to force them to listen.
posted by Jimmy at 12:30 AM
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