In Washington, a slimy Republican representative named Doug Lamborn from Colorado is using legislation to push his own partisan agenda. United States House of Representatives bill H.R.68 “To amend the communications Act of 1934 to Prohibit Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013” is a dishonest attempt to cripple one of the country’s most sane news organizations, National Public Radio. To understand the severity of this, it is important to note that NPR is partially funded from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as from the U.S. Government indirectly. Yet another piece of legislation— as if H.R.68. were not bad enough—is being proposed by the same Doug Lamborn. A complimentary bill, H.R. 69 aims to “prohibit Federal funding to certain public radio programming…” In other words, this second bill targets NPR directly.
Perhaps the worst element of all of this is the hidden agenda behind these two crippling pieces of legislation. Let me explain: A few months back, Juan Williams, a long time NPR news analyst, was abruptly fired from NPR after saying some rather insensitive comments about Muslims. One could debate ad nauseam whether NPR’s chief executive Ellen Weiss should have given Williams the boot (the author of this piece thinks termination was a bad choice), but that is a moot point. I must make it clear that the linking of this controversial firing and Representative Lamborn’s anti-NPR legislation is a conjecture, but very likely. My chief bone of contention with these two pieces of legislation is that they are justified with the tired and somewhat disingenuous Republican claim to reduce the deficit. This is clear through a report in 5280, a Denver-based magazine:
Lamborn claims the proposal is not political, but rather about reining in the nation’s $14 trillion debt: “We simply cannot afford to subsidize NPR, or any other organization that is not doing an essential government service. The government must learn to live within its means”
(http://www.5280.com/blogs/2011/01/07/doug-lamborns-effort-de-fund-public-radio-and-tv-resurfaces)
To further support my argument that Lamborn’s legislation is nothing more than a vehicle to promote his own personal agenda—to kill the last remaining bastion of sane news analysis and commentary—I will present extracts from a transcript of a U.S. House of Representatives session that took place on November 18, 2010, which was broadcast on C-SPAN. The two pieces of legislation, in a House with a Republican majority, fall under an idiotic program called “YouCut”. Representative Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia took the House floor and launched into speech about how Americans have spoken “decisively and sent an undeniable message to Washington to end wasteful spending.” To truly appreciate the stupidity of this dunce, one needs to look at the screen shot below. In the House session, Representative Cantor insisted on carrying around a terribly idiotic poster, as if he was presenting at a 6th grade science fair. The poster is decorated in a highly patriotic style with Uncle Sam’s iconic face serving as the logo. This alone should be enough to make any intelligent viewer realize how silly this Republican YouCut program has become.
Unlike Lamborn, who claims that that the two pieces of legislation (H.R. 68 & 69) are not being proposed to promote any personal agenda or in spite of NPR’s firing of Juan Williams, Cantor seems to be much more direct. As the transcript below shows, he does in fact link this legislation directly to NPR’s supposed bias, apparently revealed after the termination of Williams from the organization:
This week’s winning item, Madam Speaker, is a proposal developed by the gentleman from Colorado, Representative Doug Lamborn. This proposal would eliminate taxpayer funding for National Public Radio. When executives at NPR decided to unfairly terminate Juan Williams for expressing his opinion and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of the organization was exposed.
(Rep. Eric Cantor, Nov. 18, 2010)
So it seems that Cantor has now changed the argument. * Initially, he claimed that citizens had “mandated” Washington to end the reckless spending, but it seems he is more concerned with the firing of Williams than anything else. Maybe it would help to examine the YouCut website, which is where you can find Cantor’s mug in a very satisfying video explaining the program. The program is described in a VERY exciting manner: “YouCut – a first-of-its-kind project - is designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress. It allows you to vote, both online and on your cell phone, on spending cuts that you want to see the House enact.” That all sounds fantastic, but let us now examine YouCut’s logic (or lack thereof) for the anti-NPR legislation. In a very poor effort to show that NPR is highly biased, YouCut says the following:
NPR receives a significant amount of funding from private individuals and organizations through donations and sponsorships. For example in 2008, NPR listed over 32 separate private donors and sponsors who provided financial support in excess of half-a-million dollars that year. NPR officials have indicated that taxpayer funding makes up only a small portion of their overall budget. Therefore eliminating taxpayer support should not materially affect NPR’s ability to operate while at the same time saving taxpayers millions of dollars annually.
The supposed claim that these private donors are somehow controlling NPR in some grand William Randolph Hearst-esque scheme is shaky. But I will use YouCut’s logic in order to disprove its own assertion. If the issue is NPR relying on private funding and organizations that may or may not be threatening the overall objectivity of the content, then wouldn’t it make sense to increase the amount of funding NPR receives from the Federal Government? With the loss of this government money, NPR will need to reach out to even more private corporations that may not be the most politically neutral. An increase in funding, perhaps in a more BBC-like style, would ultimately allow NPR to be almost completely free of any possible bias. Another important fact to realize is that the organization is very dependent on its listeners who donate. In other words, if NPR were biased to the extent that Representative Cantor claims, wouldn’t the listeners who donate to hear objective content be up in arms? A good portion of NPR’s budget, upwards of 30 percent, comes from donations, albeit many of them from very wealthy individuals; however, one cannot discount the power of the everyday NPR listener, who may only donate a few dollars a year. The listeners of the public radio station are the true bosses. Listeners are very vocal, and will speak up if NPR was heading in a biased direction.
I suppose the bottom line is that this NPR debacle is just one example of politicians in Washington using our country’s legislative facilities to push their own personal agenda. It is not hard to imagine that there are many more instances of this kind of trickery that many of us will probably never hear about. As Roger Ebert so aptly characterized NPR on his blog, it is truly a “clear-thinking oasis”. I’ll leave you with a short extract from his post on NPR, which I encourage you to read:
NPR brings fresh air into my mind, and not just with Terry Gross’s show. The hosts seem calm and civilized. Their questions are good ones. You never catch them being clever for the sake of being clever. It’s not happy talk. It’s in good taste. NPR obviously makes a lot of effort to bring in guests that are appropriate to the subject; a lot of pre-production goes on. There’s no catering to prejudice. No agenda.
(Roger Ebert, “Midnight at the oasis”, Roger Ebert’s Journal, Nov. 19,2010)
* Since the resignation of former chief executive Ellen Weiss, NPR has publicly acknowledged that their decision to fire Juan Williams was wrong. The organization has since responded with a major overview of their ethics policies.
