First off, I apologize if this has been diaried more than enough times. I searched through the diaries and found only one diary with just one comment in it, so I felt that this needed repeating.
A House Appropriation subcommitee on Thursday drastically cut the budget allocated to public broadcasting, and has also set down the groundwork to completely eliminate funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (15% of Public Broadcasting revenue) within 2 years.
Public Broadcasting Targeted By House
(more below the fold)
Now, I, as many avid Media Matters readers might, don't have too much love for the CPB thanks to Chairman Tomlinson and his panderings to the right (especially with suspicions that this is a result of his own actions, as Andi Sporkin, a spokeswoman for NPR said, ""We've never been sure of Mr. Tomlinson's intent but, with this news, we might be seeing his effect."), nor Public Broadcasting's slow creep rightward thanks to Tucker Carlson, NPR's enabling of creeps like Juan Williams, and such.
But still, this is a damn disturbing development. They're not content with simply injecting their ideology into Public Broadcasting and shoving unbiased or liberal thinking on it. They're going for the jugular like they always wanted and are trying to starve it. What's worse, they claim it was a necessity between choosing it and choosing college grants, special education, and what not. Considering how much we've funneling through in the war, subsidies and kickbacks to rich donors, this is just absolute bunk. And what's worse, they probably know it too. As a result, several smaller stations might be completely shut down at this point, especially rural areas and those serving mostly minority communities.
There is some hope though, as the Senate still needs to have their say, and both Houses need to collaborate on the final budget lesgislation. Which means one thing: We need to act. Tell our Senators to preserve Pubilc Broadcasting, not starve it. Call people, call your Senators, your Representatives, even local politicians and tell them of the importance of not letting Public Broadcasting shrivel up due to the ideology of those who hate the idea of Public TV or Radio.
I'd put up some numbers and such for this kind of thing...but this was a diary on a whim, and I don't have those kinds of resources at a snap, so if people are interested in doing this, maybe you could help out by plugging a few numbers and addys to contact for this?