There’s a lot of chatter about the federal funding of NPR on certain news channels and it’s clear NPR officials are worried. You can get a sense of the sentiment among many by reading or watching Fox News. One sad indictment of our times is the argument made by many ‘news’ commentators that there is no need for further federal funding since the plethora of radio stations available to contemporary listeners means the original motive of these funds, to create a truly national network of stations, has been achieved. As one analyst on Fox News put it recently, you can hear your point of view expressed on any number of stations, therefore why should the feds fund one viewpoint? Ah….people (and governments) like NPR because of it’s point of view? I actually cling to the naive idea that news is about the facts of the world with some intelligent commentary, hopefully balanced, to allow us to digest the nuances. Is NPR perfect? No but it offers more than a point of view. As Daniel Moynihan (among others) is known to have commented, we are all entitled to our own points of view, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
0 Comments.