Free Republic

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

I've repeatedly asked politicians, policymakers, and mainstream media journalists to explain to me why we need greenhouse gas regulation when skeptic scientists' climate assessments indicate that it's a pointless action to stop a natural phenomenon. You'd think at least the journalists would directly answer my questions about their articles' claims of a scientific consensus, acid oceans, and who corroborated a singular accusation that fossil fuel industries conspire with skeptic scientists to fool the public. Each time, I got evasive replies instead. Rush Limbaugh will probably howl at me for expecting the MSM to accurately report both sides of the issue,...

PBS Hosts Blast Obama on Poverty TourBy Stephanie Samuel | Christian Post Reporter Fri, Aug. 12 2011 10:23 AM EDT PBS hosts Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, once strong supporters of Barack Obama, are traveling the country criticizing the president for failing to protect the poor during the debt talks. Noted African-American evangelical Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. agrees that the president has done little to help the poor, but says systemic changes, not more wasteful spending, are necessary to lift Americans out of poverty. Radio and television hosts Smiley and his PBS Princeton University co-host West, have taken to the...

They've lived together for 42 years and share a bedroom, but the people who produce "Sesame Street" made it clear on Thursday: Bert and Ernie are not gay. Nor are they heterosexual. They just are. "Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. "Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation," Sesame Workshop said in a statement posted on Facebook. ...

This idea isn't going to make a big splash with Rubber Duckie. An online campaign to pressure the producers of "Sesame Street" into having lovable roommates Bert and Ernie get married is gathering steam. Getting hitched would change things for Ernie, who has long sang about how his bath toy, Rubber Duckie, "was the one." More than 700 people have signed on to the petition, posted at change.org. "We are not asking that Sesame Street do anything crude or disrespectful," reads the petition for the muppet merger. "It can be done in a tasteful way. Let us teach tolerance of...

The National Memorial Day Concert on PBS is in progress right now...

RICHMOND – Gov. Bob McDonnell is clipping Big Bird's wings. McDonnell has used his line-item veto authority to cut state funding for public broadcasting, calling it “a smart, practical budgeting decision to make Virginia government smaller and more efficient and save taxpayer dollars.” McDonnell’s veto will reduce the funding that lawmakers had approved for educational programming and radio reading services by $424,000, or about 16 percent, in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

For those of you obssesed with all things British this week, you may enjoy the new Upstairs Downstairs. I just finished episode 3 & thought the series was very good. All three episodes will be available till May 25th.

"I said over a year ago that this was going to be, this presidential race, Lawrence, was going to be the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive, and the most racist in the history of this Republic," PBS host Tavis Smiley said on MSNBC.

The local public radio station, WCVE, is in the midst of its spring fundraiser. As someone who tunes in most mornings, I kicked in some bucks for the good of the cause last week. And if you pay taxes in Virginia, you did, too. Gov. Bob McDonnell tried to have it otherwise. He sought repeatedly to slash state funding for public broadcasting, but was gainsaid by the General Assembly—which trimmed appropriations for public radio and TV by only 10 percent. During debate on the governor's budget amendments last Wednesday, Del. Jennifer McClellan, a Richmond Democrat, displayed an Elmo doll on...

In a new effort to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, USAID - the development arm of the US government - is donating $20m (£12m) to the country to create a local Urdu version of the show. The project aims to boost education in Pakistan, where many children have no access to regular schooling. The show is to be filmed in Lahore and aired later in the year. "The programme is part of a series of ventures that is aimed at developing the educational infrastructure in the country," Virginia Morgan, a spokesperson for USAID, told the BBC. "Education is one...

Darren Gersh asks how much money Trumpka's union will give to Obama. Trumpka says union does not give money to Obama. Money is only used to mobilize and educate members.

Al jiz conf Today I was the keynote speaker at a conference at the National Press Club to expose the covert expansion of Al Jazeera into the United States. Pamela Hall was there, and she'll have video and pics posted this weekend. Your taxpayer dollars at work. Al Jazeera is being broadcast on MHz Networks, a division of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting, which receives over three million in taxpayer dollars. Would we have subsidized Tokyo Rose or the Mufti Al Husseini's radio broadcasts during World War II? Well, that's exactly what we are doing now. Commonwealth Public Broadcasting is a "public...

Former PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers is at it again, agitating against Republicans for daring to oppose National Public Radio subsidies. In the latest installment (with Michael Winship) on The Huffington Post, Moyers concluded with a quote illustrating "the importance of a public media whose obligation is not to a political or corporate paymaster, but to the integrity of the work and the trust of the listener." NPR, he claimed, was like Kennedy's tribute to the poet Robert Frost: "The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an...

For the past couple days members of my circle on facebook who are known to be not-so-conservatives have been whining and nashing their new crowns on the House of Representatives “de-funding” NPR and PBS. Any viable enterprise should be able to survive without government support. In the case of NPR spinning out on their own would not be a far stretch. NPR has its own programming and news bureau which is followed by a core of listeners. That’s the traditional business model for radio and if the powers that be at NPR can make it work as a non-profit, more...

As the House of Representatives votes today on whether to cut National Public Radio funding, consider a thought experiment: Imagine that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly had IRS agents force you and every American to contribute money to the companies that produce their shows. Imagine further that they also had Congress and the Federal Communications Commission force NPR to fire “All Things Considered” host Michele Norris and replace her with a Limbaugh protégé. Even if you like Rush and O’Reilly, the thought of these coercive actions surely sticks in your craw. Yet that is just what Free Press, a leading...

This is a typical 'scare' tactic by the militant left, "If you ban me, you will lose such and such." Some of PBS programming are positive... as long as they don't enter into politics and religion, the method is to basically tell the American public that funding for the NPR is tied with having any Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on. What a bunch of lowlifes, you are to be defunded because you are divisive, anti Judea-Christian and pro-Islamic racist, got it? Yet? NPR [NationalPalestinianRadio]? Do not make it into "GOP" VS others. The argument for defunding NPR WBEZ - ‎44 minutes...

If the resignations at National Public Radio continue at last week's pace, there may be no need for Congress to defund the aging dinosaur, because there will be no one left there to turn the lights on. The latest is Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving. Conservative activist James O'Keefe secretly recorded phone conversations between Liley and a man masquerading as a potential donor from a fictitious group called the Muslim Education Action Center, which the man said had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The fake donor said his group was worried about a government audit. Liley told him...

Forget about defunding NPR. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS aren’t going anywhere. Just like 1994, the GOP will lose its nerve in the face of the Democrats’ Muppet Parade. They may cut some around the edges, but life partners Burt & Ernie will still be able to afford their rent-controlled apartment, and Garrison Keillor will still enthrall Upper West Side residents with pseudo-folksy tales from the prairie. We’ll always have NPR, because we’ll always have liberals.

Politicians and pundits are again debating the wisdom and necessity of American taxpayer support for public radio and television. Both Juan Williams's firing and alleged comments by National Public Radio's executive Ron Schiller have raised real questions about political bias.It seems that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has a similar problem. Someone at its Frontline website has been substituting fake biographies of conservatives written by an organization called Right Web for legitimate institutional biographies. Right Web is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a think tank whose scholars' positions range from left wing to Marxist. When challenged...