There’s an article in the Boston Globe today pointing out the difficult financial times WGBH, the flagship of the PBS network, is encountering. Now, remind me again why the taxpayers are on the hook funding a media outlet for the government? I get that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports big government because big government supports CPB. I just don’t understand why the federal government does that. For the good press public broadcasting gives to big government? CPB and all it’s affiliated alphabet soup of organizations it funds from NPR to PBS had (maybe) an argument to exist in 1969 when there were three alternatives, but now CPB is just a sad anachronism.
How much does the federal government spend of your tax dollars to support its mouthpiece? The federal government subsidizes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which pay the money to affiliates in the Public Broadcasting Systems such as WGBH) $430 million per year . Plus another $67 millions for infrastructure upgrades. So lets call it an even $500 million. For one year. Now, in today’s era of money-grows-on-trees free-spending thinking, where trillions are added to the deficit almost daily, this would appear chump change. But to put that number in perspective, it is about five times what the new
It’s your tax dollars funding a broadcast network. How ludicrous is that? We need to start a campaign to lobby our representatives to pull the plug on the subsidies, and get the government out of the broadcast business.
We can call it the “Please Ban Subsidies” campaign: Just Say Yes to PBS!
Author: Mark
I have long thought that if people would just reflect on how free speech and press are analogous to free practice of religion -- they are all in the very same constitutional amendment after all -- then everyone would immediately get how inappropriate it is to subsidize PBS and NPR.
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