The war on NPR

This column by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship is a must-read. As Republicans in Congress push to eliminate public funding for NPR and PBS, they look at (as the title says) what the right means when it calls NPR "liberal."

So what do conservatives really mean when they accuse NPR of being "liberal"? They mean it's not accountable to their worldview as conservatives and partisans. They mean it reflects too great a regard for evidence and is too open to reporting different points of views of the same event or idea or issue. Reporting that by its very fact-driven nature often fails to confirm their ideological underpinnings, their way of seeing things (which is why some liberals and Democrats also become irate with NPR).

That's the truth - about Democrats, I mean. I remember hearing a professor at the college where I work practically foam at the mouth over NPR's use of the nickname "Chemical Ali" when referring to late unlamented Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti. Going on the theory that, if both sides are unhappy with you, then you must be doing something right... NPR isn't partisan.

Moyers and Winship write that this is the problem, as conservatives see it. If you watch the news and don't agree with what you hear, then the news must be wrong. The problem with that thinking is that none of us is totally objective - I know I'm not. But the news is supposed to be. Maybe if we talked with one another instead of retreating to acquaintances and media that never challenge our points of view, we'd be more fair.

While we're on the subject, let me say that I understand the argument that NPR and PBS should be self-supporting. I just don't agree with it. For starters, it takes a ridiculous amount of money to operate a news organization, which is why all of them besides NPR and PBS are owned by giant corporations. As a society, we need news outlets that don't have to answer to shareholders and that don't have corporate conflicts of interest. NPR actually does get most of its funding from private donors, and indirectly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

How much does Congress give the CBP each year? About $90 million. In a federal budget of over $3 trillion. To put that in perspective, last year's federal budget gave the Social Security Administration a 10 percent increase - about $100 million - just to process its claims faster.

So de-funding the CBP isn't really about savings. It's about censorship. And when the people in power - in any political party - so detest a news organization that they actively try to drive it out of existence, you have to figure that the news organization is doing something right.

Also, I want to be an agnotologist when I grow up.