Save NPR, Maybe Save The News

America today is a terribly fractured society.  Right now as you read this Americans are watching FOX News and MSNBC under the impression they're getting caught up on the news.  Readers are combing through the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post skimming articles and gleaning facts about the state of the world today.  Sure, all of these outlets provide information and much of that information is factual and corroborated by multiple sources, but isn't necessarily news.  It's opinion or ethos or ideology packaged as journalism.  These media companies are nothing more than a thinly veiled version of your local paper's Op-Ed page supported by a selected set of facts.  You're getting the story, sure - but it's a version of the truth told more with a message of what should be important to support your world view as opposed to what it is that is actually happening and why that something is important.  It is for these reasons and so many more that it would be a travesty to discontinue funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System may very well be the last bastion of accurate and impartial information in the radio and television news landscape.  The major networks do not have the time or sufficient resources to create well-rounded and in-depth news coverage in their daily programing schedule and the work suffers because of it.  Because the work suffers, the level of information and analysis the average viewer gets from it is lacking.  Because of the advent of the internet, viewership of the nightly news on the major networks is much lower than it was during the years prior to the ubiquity of the internet and smartphones.  People get their news in seconds now, not in minutes or hours even - let alone at 6:30 pm while they eat their dinner and listen to their friends Brian Williams and Katie Couric.  As such, news divisions at CBS, NBC and ABC are forced to tailor their news in such a way as to drive viewership.  While it's not a nightly news program, NBC's Today Show is a classic example of this dilemma.

The Today Show as it ran from the 1950's until well into the 21st century was a two hour news program airing from 7:00 am to 9:00 am.  The show featured in-depth interviews, regular news and weather updates and focused hot button issues of the day.  It also featured some fluff like Willard Scott celebrating Myrtle's 106th birthday and celebrity reports, but mostly the show was about news issues.  Within the last few years, Today has extended its program length to four hours each day and with the exception of its first 20 minutes of actual news coverage, the remaining 200 plus minutes are filled with sensationalized celebrity reports, scintillating stories of murder and intrigue that seem to rotate unendingly on a carnival loop and of course lately are overwhelmed with extended daily coverage of the impending royal wedding.  NBC and its news bureau are not covering these things because it is what's important to know.  Today sets its programming up this way because it helps to maintain a constant viewer base and that leads to better ratings and higher ad revenues.

This is a simple marketplace equation for the folks at NBC.  They will cover what makes money and what drives viewers.  So, it begs the question of what will happen to our news when it all becomes privatized.  The sum of our journalistic integrity will be driven by what the masses desire, not what is accurate or noteworthy or culturally relevant.  It will simply be a money grab for readers, listeners and viewers.  The reduction of funding for NPR and PBS will also mean that they will no longer have the inherent contract with America they are currently engaged in.  As they hold a hand out to listeners and viewers for donations they'll become more beholden to their listener base.  Therefore, if their viewer/listener base, as has been suggested, is leaning to the left, then won't this promote an environment to continue to push their programing in that direction so as to not bite the hand that feeds them?

Don't fool yourself into believing that this issue is strictly about the money for those who would like to see federal spending stopped for public broadcasting.  This is about making a political statement with federal funding.  The $2 million that NPR receives in federal funding wouldn't pay for a single hour of operations in Afghanistan.  If the endgame was to remove wasteful spending from the budget it could be located in a matter of seconds and the list of things less useful than NPR would be mighty long indeed.  To wit, if congress wants to look at ridiculous spending, they should focus on their own bloated pension plans - but that is a topic for a separate blog post.

Taken at face value this is nothing more than a political hack job and a move that further encourages private industry to hold sway over what information you have access to.  The newspaper industry is in a horrendous state of flux and much of it may not survive.  As the number of media outlets is reduced and information online grows more and more dubious by the day, it seems the real waste of money here would be to ruin a public connection to a vitally important and fair news outlet that belongs in part to the people.  Maybe if we support public media and pay attention to it we'll remember what fair and balanced really looks like.