Posted on 11/07/2003 3:50:10 AM PST by RJCogburn
JOAN KROC, widow of McDonald’s tycoon Ray Kroc, has just given National Public Radio the power to set the American taxpayer free.
Kroc, who died on Oct. 13, left $200 million to NPR, the organization announced yesterday. That’s nearly twice NPR’s annual budget.
National Public Radio has been telling us for years that just under 1 percent of its budget comes from the federal government. NPR’s last fiscal year budget was $103 million, which puts its federal subsidy at around $1 million.
All of the controversy surrounding NPR’s public funding would immediately end if the company used Kroc’s donation to create an endowment to replace its government funding. Investing the whole $200 million would generate many times the amount of the federal subsidy and instantly halt all political bickering over public funding for NPR.
Federal law requires tax-exempt charitable endowments to spend at least 5 percent of the market value of their investments each year. Five percent of $200 million is $10 million. That’s ten times the amount NPR receives from the federal government. The additional revenue could be used to offset the federal subsidies that go directly to local public radio stations, which account for roughly 15 percent of NPR member station budgets, according to The Washington Post.
Using Kroc’s money to set the taxpayers free would be the most honorable use of NPR’s new windfall. NPR probably will blow it all on additional leftist programming while continuing to insist that it can’t survive without a federal subsidy.
Which ultimately does more harm? An anti-Semitic underground newspaper or NPR? I argue for the latter. With the former, you know you're hearing a biased story. Those who read it will not likely have their positions changed by reading it -- it's aboveboard propaganda. With the latter you hear selective coverage presented as balanced journalism. Its propaganda is subtle, almost subliminal.
I am attempting, admittedly part-time, to set up a fuoundation that will pursue, initially on the margin, the unconstitutional spending by Congress...it is the only way we can stop the power addicted spendthrifts known as Congressmen.
I think it's the same one that spends similar dollars on Medicare, farm subsidies and education.
A few drivers listen to NPR while crossing state lines. It is clearly a legit use of the Interstate Commerce Clause. < /sarcasm>
Yet they don't have one full time, on-air conservative talent to provide the balance. Not one. All the "regular" talent are liberals and the conservates are "guests".
The liberal media treats conservative thought as though it were a marginal, somewhat bizarre pursuit, like naked hiking. Something to chuckle at, report with amused tolerance, and follow up with an editorial dig that's the rough equivalent of shaking one's head in amazement.
I can't understand why JC Watts has agreed to provide commentary on the show. Liberals will use him as an example of how fair and balanced they are. I can't understand why JC would agree to ride in the back of the NPR bus.
Congress has the same right to fund it as they do any cultural instution such as the Smithsonian, or for that matter school lunches.
The reality is that story selection is the message.If the story is always the 2000-year-old Bible, the message tends to be conservative; if the story is always "what went wrong yesterday," the message tends to be anticonservative. It follows that wherever there is story selection there will be a political perspective, strong or weak.
The genius of the First Amendment is to take the issue of story selection out of the hands of the government--we-the-people select the genre of entertainment/edification we`choose to pay attention to. Of course, the extent to which we-the-people are aware of the perspective embedded in has a significant political effect, and you can be affected by my decision to follow a different story than you do, and to elect someone for whom you yourself would not vote. But only your powers of persuasion legitimately stand between me and that decision.
You are allowed under the First Amendment not only to speak but to print your opinions in your effort to persuade me. But you are not supposed to get the government to pay your printing costs or pay the salary of your preacher--no matter how "objective" you claim to be. Remember, you are at most in possession of a fraction of the truth, and other people's opinions have equal standing before the law with your own.
All unexceptionable, seemingly--but in fact what I have just said is highly controversial. It implies, first, that no newspaper can be officially credited by the government as any sort of arbiter of what is "objective"--the high ground in any argument. --when in constitutional principle you have the right to be a journalist, arguably in fact are a journalist if you post regularly to this (national, even international) web site.
The least of the problems this creates is the fact that "press conferences" and other special accomodations reporters from a finite sampling of the journalists in the country are discriminatory towards we-the-people who do not have the "title of nobility" of journalist. Worse is the "protection of sources" principle which says that you can and should resist the proper application of the law to a criminal investigation if you have that title of nobility, "objective journalist."
Worse yet, nearly all of we-the-people are censored from transmitting in the government-defined, specially formatted communication channels known as "broadcasting." Only those with the "title of nobility" of broadcast licensee have the right to transmit and, in that venue, the rest of us have the right to shut up and listen.
Worst of all, the judges of the country--even the Supreme Court justices, save one only, by historical accident--are under the sway of the flattery and derision of the "objective journalist."
The fundamental corruption lies in official respect for the conceit that someone who is self-critical enough to accept that his/her viewpoint has a name--"conservative," for example--has less rather than more intellectual integrity than the person who "rejects all labels" for himself. And, thereby, presumes to be above criticism.
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