Editor’s Note: Defunding NPR will cripple public journalism

By Leo Shaw
Editor-in-Chief

Three weeks ago, the Republican majority in the House passed a bill to stop federal funding for National Public Radio. Although the decision followed inappropriate comments by an NPR executive and was advertised as a budget-cutting measure, the Republican Party has essentially aligned itself against the value of information and public support for journalism, an especially troubling position.

While NPR itself only derives seven percent of its revenue from federal grants, its member stations across America depend much more heavily on federal and state grants, as well as contributions from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Such stations, especially those situated in rural and lower-income areas, may face the prospect of going under entirely.

And what good reason does the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have for crippling our nation’s public broadcasting by defunding NPR, CPB and PBS? Two NPR officials in the past year have been caught on tape making liberally biased statements about the Tea Party and Muslims, respectively.

In each instance, Republicans have jumped at the chance to slash the organization’s budget, and in each case they have done so purely as an act of symbolic political theater.

Such behavior is intolerable and unconscionable. The support of journalism for the public’s benefit is especially crucial in an era where political misinformation is so pervasive.

Such misinformation is not absent from the mainstream media, but its presence there is a result of media companies like News Corporation remaining beholden to special interests. If members of Congress truly want to eradicate bias in the media, they will get the most objective information from a public media company receiving federal funding.

I’d like to make clear at this point that this is not a partisan rant. The underlying issue at stake is not about Democrats and Republicans; it is about maintaining respect for the importance of information and the civic virtue on which the Founders of this republic wagered its success.