As was the case a half-dozen years ago, PBS and NPR are again the subject of a contentious debate about their taxpayer funding, this time courtesy of President Trump. The problem with that debate, then and now, is that like so many policy disputes, the arguments employed oversimplify the facts and ignore the obvious. I wrote about this matter in 2011 in a piece published in the now-defunct app called The Daily. What follows is an update of that piece.
For years, Republicans and conservatives have accused NPR and PBS of ideological and political bias. Things came to a head in 2010 when NPR fired Juan Williams as a commentator for allegedly making anti-Muslim remarks, and NPR successfully solicited funding for local reporting from a foundation controlled by the uber liberal George Soros.
This perception of bias would be noteworthy enough even if these broadcasters were not financially supported by taxpayers, conditioned on explicit statutory language requiring objectivity and balance. Since, however, they are, the ubiquity and durability of this perception becomes very nearly miraculous. Surely it’s not easy to so thoroughly offend one of the two major parties that, in the House vote in 2011, virtually every Republican member voted to defund NPR » Read More
Maines is president of The Media Institute. The opinions expressed are his alone and not those of The Media Institute, its board, advisory councils, or contributors. The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on March 21, 2017.