The gap we need NPR to fill
By Leonard Downie Jr. and and Robert G. Kaiser,
WashPost
Thursday, March 17
House Republicans appear determined to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting — especially for National Public Radio. Opponents of government assistance argue that tax dollars should not be used to help support news gathering — or the rest of what is broadcast on public television and radio — and that NPR in particular is too tendentious and liberal. Recent management mistakes at NPR, including offensive partisan remarks by its now-former chief fundraiser, have fueled the debate. The House has voted to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from spending bills it sent to the Senate, and it voted Thursday to prohibit public radio stations from using federal money to pay dues to NPR for its news and other programs. The fate of those actions in the Democratic-controlled Senate is uncertain.
We are two former newspaper editors who aren’t comfortable advising Congress on how to vote on this or any other subject. But we are concerned that, in the heat of the debate, members of Congress may not realize the changing role that public radio stations, working with NPR, play in informing citizens in their communities.
We are not referring primarily to NPR’s increasingly extensive news coverage of the nation and the world at a time when most commercial news media, including television networks and major metropolitan newspapers, have cut back dramatically on their staffs and coverage. NPR has built an ever-larger audience of more than 30 million listeners each week on public radio stations throughout the country for its outstanding national and international reporting.
But equally important to us is local news coverage, which has been even more severely weakened by shrunken reporting staffs and ambitions at newspapers and commercial stations in too many cities and towns. We have long believed that Americans benefit when powerful institutions and important issues in their lives are scrutinized by good reporters on their behalf. Yet this kind of ambitious local news coverage by commercial media has diminished in community after community in recent years.
(More here.)
WashPost
Thursday, March 17
House Republicans appear determined to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting — especially for National Public Radio. Opponents of government assistance argue that tax dollars should not be used to help support news gathering — or the rest of what is broadcast on public television and radio — and that NPR in particular is too tendentious and liberal. Recent management mistakes at NPR, including offensive partisan remarks by its now-former chief fundraiser, have fueled the debate. The House has voted to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from spending bills it sent to the Senate, and it voted Thursday to prohibit public radio stations from using federal money to pay dues to NPR for its news and other programs. The fate of those actions in the Democratic-controlled Senate is uncertain.
We are two former newspaper editors who aren’t comfortable advising Congress on how to vote on this or any other subject. But we are concerned that, in the heat of the debate, members of Congress may not realize the changing role that public radio stations, working with NPR, play in informing citizens in their communities.
We are not referring primarily to NPR’s increasingly extensive news coverage of the nation and the world at a time when most commercial news media, including television networks and major metropolitan newspapers, have cut back dramatically on their staffs and coverage. NPR has built an ever-larger audience of more than 30 million listeners each week on public radio stations throughout the country for its outstanding national and international reporting.
But equally important to us is local news coverage, which has been even more severely weakened by shrunken reporting staffs and ambitions at newspapers and commercial stations in too many cities and towns. We have long believed that Americans benefit when powerful institutions and important issues in their lives are scrutinized by good reporters on their behalf. Yet this kind of ambitious local news coverage by commercial media has diminished in community after community in recent years.
(More here.)
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