NPR stations campaign against House Bill

[TheBigA]

NPR stations have begun an email campaign to their members regarding Tuesday's House vote to defund CPB.  The vote seems superfluous, since CPB was one of the programs defunded in the House budget plan last month.  But this bill would go much further than simple defunding, and gets into specifics of how stations can spend their money and how they can raise it.  A lot of people have expressed their view that the federal government shouldn't subsidize broadcasting.  From what I'm reading, this bill goes way beyond that.  It's one thing to take away the money.  It's another to tell them how they can spend it:

Early on Tuesday, Rep. Doug Lamborn presented a new piece of legislation that would debilitate National Public Radio, American Public Media and other producers of nationally distributed programming. The bill, H.R. 1076, targets public radio specifically, choking its funding and impeding local stations' ability to get national programming. The bill would cripple local public radio stations upon which 34 million Americans from all political perspectives rely on weekly for their trusted news and entertainment.

Here are some points you should know about H.R. 1076:

· 9,000 jobs are in danger if the bill passes

· Its passage would destroy local stations' ability to raise local revenue and produce local programs like the news

· The legislation bans stations from using federal funds to get listeners' favorite NPR programs, such as Morning Edition, Market Place, Beale Street Carvan, World Cafe, All Things Considered and many more.

· Most stations rely on federal funding to access almost a third of their programming

· Without these beloved programs, stations would lose their listener base, and thus their ability to fund raise through memberships and underwriting

· Restricting public radio stations from using federal funds to acquire programming marks an incredible upset to their economic models


Please act now to ensure that public broadcasting in remains strong.  The list below provides the telephone number and email address for you to contact your Senators and Congressman/woman directly.


You can read a synopsis of the bill from GOP.gov here: http://www.gop.gov/bill/112/1/hr1076

[TheBigA]

The House bill passed on a strict party line vote.  Not likley to get beyond this point.

One point made by the Democrats during the 1-hour debate is that the government buys advertising on commercial networks, including Fox News Channel.  This is true.  The Republicans said buying advertising is not the same thing.  But if the issue is the use of taxpayer money, why isn't it the same thing?

The whole debate was interesting, as Democrats pointed out that the video on which this bill was based was clearly edited and biased.  No one seemed to be questioning the authenticity of the video.  Yet when Osama Bin Laden puts out a video, US policy is to doubt and question its authenticity.  It was also pointed out that this bill was not aimed at saving the government money, but was strictly based on ideological grounds.