The case against public broadcasting
Yesterday the heads of the nation’s top public broadcasters faced intense grilling from the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee over funding and leftwing bias. Republicans on the Committee accused NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS President Paula Kerger of presiding over news organizations that are biased and out of touch with the majority of Americans. For those who may not know, Katherine Maher once called Donald Trump a "fascist" and "deranged racist sociopath." Yesterday she said she regretted it. Does anyone believe her?
The hearing also dug into past decisions from NPR’s editorial staff, such as: the decision not to pursue an investigation into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, the decision not to pursue the possibility that the covid pandemic may have originated from the very lab that was located were the first victims were infected or giving non-stop coverage to a bogus hoax involving Donald Trump and Russia. A few Republican members referenced a bombshell essay published by former NPR editor Uri Berliner last year outlining what he described as widespread liberal groupthink inside the outlet. Berliner was suspended from NPR over the essay and later resigned. Democrats on the Committee chose to talk about other non-relevant things such as the signal group chat controversy.
The bottom line is obvious. Why should taxpayer money go to fund yet another leftwing news outlet or a place like PBS, which features a lot of educational programing, but from a progressive perspective. Hopefully, both will eventually only exist through donations.
In other news:
Palestinians in Gaza protested against the war for a second straight day. The demonstrations were rare shows of dissent from Hamas.
The Israeli Parliament approved a new budget that cements Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s power and includes significant military spending.
The Department of Health and Human Services canceled over $12 billion in federal grants to states.
The Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration’s restrictions on “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that can be easily assembled from kits.
Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and auto parts shipped into the U.S.
U.S. authorities have captured the MS-13 top leader for the U.S. East Coast, the FBI announced on Thursday. Officials captured the 24-year-old suspect in Woodbridge, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C.
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Good morning and welcome to the news.
Yesterday Homeland Secretary Noem visited El Salvador where deported Venezuelan gang members are now being held.
Her warning: “If you commit crimes against the American people, this facility is one of the tools we will use.”
Isn't that more globalism? Besides the fascist bs of rounding them and deporting them without any due process?
If they were actually criminals, which could be proven by more than a tattoo, I would recommend a much shorter flight
with an unscheduled departure over the sea like Bin Laden got.
That you can make that statement and still bitch about due process is a complete joke.
Venezuela isn't questioning whether or not these are gang members.
Only the TDS driven and leftists are sorry to see these assholes go.
I consider the source of that comment to be a joke.
I could care less what a complete communist failure like Venezuela believes or doesn't believe
You are a gang member. That doesn't mean you are necessarily a criminal, just someone who needs to belong to a cult.
Why is it ok for you but not people you don't like?
Well your are wrong again. Most republicans and most Americans are shocked by the abandonment of our often difficult to uphold values.
To take the easy way out smacks of Russia or Chinese authoritarianism. You know, Kristallnacht.
Like it or not, all human beings on American soils are entitled to due process
which is an undeniable part of the Constitution.
We cannot have it both ways and expect to be a respected democratic republic.
Not one leftist has trump devotion syndrome.
Cuba just endured a nationwide blackout of the electric grid, lasting for days — the third such disaster in six months. The population has succumbed to despair.
“There are no words to describe this,” a young Cuban YouTuber exclaimed. “This is hell.”
Yet the blackout scarcely made the news. Journalists and intellectuals have fallen out of love with Cuba, so nobody is asking the obvious question: How can any government allow such a humanitarian horror to continue?
Tragic Cuba a dark lesson of the failure of Communism: 'This is hell'
Curious; Is it indicative that a 60 year embargo by their most prosperous neighbor had no effect on the electrical infrastructure of Cuba?
Maybe not. Since the same ancient electrical infrastructure exists in neighboring Puerto Rico and our 2024 Congress has
decided that it's not worth fixing any more and instead authorized $861Million for the first two solar farms designed to replace existing generators.
US Closes $861 Million Loan Guarantee for Solar, Energy Storage in Puerto Rico
Must be a slow news day?
A glamorous propagandist for Vladimir Putin has been killed after she was blown up by a landmine while reporting close to the Russia-Ukraine border.
Anna Prokofieva, 35, a war correspondent for Russia’s state-run TV network Channel One, was killed after the vehicle she and her cameraman were traveling in ran over a landmine in Russia’s Belgorod region, state television announced on Wednesday.
The landmine was planted by Ukraine’s military, Channel One insisted, adding that Prokofieva “died while performing her professional duty,” in a statement on its website.
Putin's glam propagandist killed by landmine on Ukraine border
She made her choices now she gets to live with them. OOOOPS!
That's the way it works.
They have been losing multiple journalists and drivers recently, always on Russian soil or in Donetsk or Luhansk where the Russians have placed thousands of defensive mines.
Unfortunately mines don't discriminate and journalists know the risk.
Good riddance.
It's hard to deny the bias of NPR when you look at who was suspended and for what and how the Democrats attempted to deflect from the actual subject of the hearing.
Can someone on the left explain how THIS clown is an "asylum seeker" and should be permitted to stay in the US?
Because he said so?
Seems to be the reason the left agrees with the most.
and they don't even know who "he" is.
We are talking about a fascist communist country that everyone hates for various reasons and you want to know why people join gangs to protect themselves from the government, conscription and starvation and want to come here for asylum??
Do your own research.
Of course PBS and NPR are biased. Don't these Republicans understand why? These whining Republicans require PBS and NPR to subsist on donations. And the Republican whiners certainly won't contribute. These whining Republicans are expecting a free ride by demanding PBS and NPR bite the hand that feeds them. And what grand reward will these whiners get from killing public broadcasting? Nickels and dimes, folks. These whining Republicans can't run a reelection campaign on the Federal appropriations for public broadcasting. These geniuses are spending billions to save millions. And Newt Gingrich will urge them on.
The greatest risk posed by MAGA has always been the return of whining Republicans expecting a free ride. These are the Republicans who still whine about Barack Obama saving GM jobs rather than stock portfolios. Newt Gingrich set the standard by equating a free ride with Libertarian ideology. Gingrich Republicans want free access to public lands so they can steal anything of value from the public. Gingrich Republicans think JIT with a 10,000 mile supply chain is a brilliant idea because they scraped one-time savings off the productive economy and killed off a few jobs. Gingrich Republicans follow a business model of deferring maintenance and then cashing out. It's the Gingrich libertarian attitude that motivates Elon Musk to sacrifice revenue generating payload to save fuel tanks; spending billions to save millions. The neo-libertarian is not part of the productive economy; they expect a free ride at public expense.
These Republicans whining about PBS and NPR are actually throwing a tantrum over being denied a free ride. And like toddlers, they'll throw a tantrum in the toy aisle to get what they want. They certainly won't pay for the toys themselves. If they can't get their toys for free then no one else can have toys, either.
Interesting take. I will have to give it some thought after I finish my coffee.
The Federal appropriation for Public Broadcasting is $535 million. That's a 'm', not a 'b'. Killing off Public Broadcasting won't move the needle for eliminating a $1.7 trillion Federal deficit. And the public actually gets more direct benefit from PBS than from NASA. PBS is a free public babysitter if nothing else.
I will admit I like some of the shows and concerts they have on and have never noticed a bias. I guess I don't watch the kind of shows that some folks claim there is bias. I have also made a contribution during the Joe Bonamassa concert. I hope that doesn't make me a democrat.
Well, it also depends upon the station. PBS programming is not uniform (like the major networks) because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting charges stations for programming. Stations in less populated areas can't afford to buy in because they don't get enough of the Federal pie. One of the local stations here aired Democracy Now!, which can't get any farther left on bias, primarily because the program was cheap. Now the station has even dropped that program and replaced it with Old Time Gospel. The station has sacrificed prime time programming to maintain its daytime programming targeting a much younger audience.
Sesame Street, Donkey Hodie, and Nature Cat are serving an audience that won't care about Republican whiners for another decade or more. Taking away their programming won't accomplish a damned thing. And Farm Connections, Funtime Polka, Sit and Be Fit, and Antiques Roadshow aren't hotbeds of subversive ideology.
The Republican whines are obviously directed toward more affluent PBS stations located in urban areas. Those stations probably won't lose their bias by withholding Federal funds because they have a bigger donor base. And these do-nothing Republicans know that.
If these Republicans want to whine like Democrats then they should switch parties. Then they could be full-time whiners. And they'd accomplish just as much as they are now.
Oh that's not true at all. It will greatly piss off my youngest granddaughter who will make sure to take me to task for it. She already has desires to be a MMA cage fighter as witnessed by the bruises on my arms. And she's only three!!!
Not to whine, but do you think it's a good thing that Denver has had two PBS stations since 1980, often offering the same programming and frequent pledge drives?
Why not let the market decide? If both stations can obtain sufficient donor support to maintain operations, then what's the beef?
People are putting their money where their mouths are. Surely these libertarian Republicans can respect that. But that doesn't really have anything to do with the decades-long whining by these same Republicans. Who is stopping these Republicans from cutting the funding? Do Republicans need some sort of legislative blue pill to get it up?
So you believe Republicans should subsidize pravda? Explain why its a good idea for any organization to subsidize an entity trying to destroy it? As her testimony made clear, NPR's exclusively democratic editorial staff literally pushes partisan propaganda . How is it good for the country, let alone Republican, for taxpayers to subsidize partisan propaganda to its own citizens ?
Unless Republicans are granted hiring/firing power, nothing will change because Republicans donate money.
I firmly believe that Republican grandstanding over nickels and dimes is a waste of my time. The rather public Republican tantrum over PBS is annoying. I'm not going to be impressed by whining Republicans taking lollipops from babies. If these whiners want to defund PBS then pull the plug. The only reason it's so hard and taking so much effort is because these are do-nothing Republicans.
In case no one has noticed, the era of all talk, no walk Republicans is over. These tantrums in the toy aisle won't accomplish a damned thing. All the phony outrage only proves to the public that Gingrich's libertarian revolution was just another Republican scam.
Don't like PBS, then pull the plug. Get on with it. These Republicans should stop checking their own prostate. Otherwise move on to more important stuff..
Katherine Maher made a great case to defund NPR.
There's an old saying which I think rings true, "reality has a liberal bias". PBS and NPR have some of the highest standards in the industry and those who are throwing stones claiming bias all while glued to Fox News are the most ignorant dumb fucking bigoted pieces of shit liars and hypocrites the universe has ever brought into being.
It's become abundantly clear that what many of these dumb fuck conservatives are bitter and angry about when it comes to public television is that a tiny amount of their tax dollars are being used to fund education for kids that teaches to be kind, generous and loving even to those who may look different or have different customs or faiths. What the rightwing want are immigrants and those of other cultures and races who come to our country to assimilate completely, which means abandoning their old religion, telling the white rightwing conservatives that their beliefs are the best and their God is the mightiest.
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They start leaving their mark on every tesla they see.
“…a tiny amount of their tax dollars are being used to fund education for kids that teaches to be kind, generous and loving even to those who may look different or have different customs or faiths.”
God forbid. And the amount of money dedicated to that education is minimal compared to other subsidies and is a great value for the dollars allocated.
If only you listened to NPR, you'd think the Hunter Biden laptop was russian disinformation, Adam Schiff had secret proof Trump colluded with Russia, that the dossier was confirmed but was never used as a basis to spy on American citizens and that that anyone claiming otherwise is lying, that Covid escaped from a wet market and the idea it's escaped a lab is a conspiracy theory etc..etc.
That the most partisan, brainwashed progressives believe NPR is unbiased tells you all you need to know.
Your comment is wrong. They have covered the Hunter Biden laptop. You might want to give them a listen. They have the most actionable news I have found.
Clearly you do not, so please don't bother trying to tell me what supposed "disinformation" they've broadcast. All the bullshit you list was never given on NPR as any sort of "This is incontrovertible fact and you should believe it and everyone else is lying to you!" as the excessively partisan media outlets like Fox News and MSNBC do. They report and occasionally interview guests that express opinions, both on the right and the left. You can bitch and whine all you want about your opinion on which side they hold more to account, but they are clearly miles above the pissant partisans on either side and this bullshit nonsense about them being super liberal is just that, bullshit. It only looks that way when a person's head is shoved way to the right, and up that stinky black hole that is the Mango Mussolini's colon.
The fact that Trump and his brain-dead sycophants and their collective room temp IQ believe NPR is somehow super biased just proves how monumentally deluded the MAGAverse has become.
Shouldn't they at least learn English?
Why? Is it required?
I wager the vast majority of conservatives who complain about NPR, spend little or no time actually listening to it.
An organization like NPR is almost inherently liberal or progressive because it programs the widest variety of topics that I can think of on any media outlet. They cover international news and arts that you just will not find anywhere else.
By treating cultures and news events from all over the world as equally newsworthy, it kind of spits in the face of conservative white nationalist American exceptionalism that promotes the idea that everyone not like them is inferior. It’s really not surprising that those people would hate NPR - which ultimately speaks well of it.
Let them do it with donations from those who are so enlightened.
They mostly do. NPR reportedly gets about 1% of its funding from the federal government. The rest is from private donations, sponsors, and fees paid by local stations on the network. So, I doubt NPR would just disappear if it lost federal funding, but I think it’s worth supporting as a nation. For a lot of people in this country, NPR is how they can best get over-the-air news and information on local, national, and international issues.
In my case, for example, I don’t exactly live in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t live in the big city anymore. My location is so surrounded by hills and mountains, that I can’t get clear signals for over-the-air radio or television. However, we have a small university, and on the campus of that university, we have a radio station that is part of the NPR network. So every day, I can get in my truck and listen to local and national news on that radio station. There are millions of people around the country similarly situated. I’d say that places support of NPR in the national interest.
Why do you need to stop public support of PBS or NPR?
Apparently its all about symbolism.
it's that radical commie socialist leftist program frontline that's got their boxers in a bunch ...
They tell too much truth
I think that - for a long time now - conservatives have been very frustrated with any news media that doesn’t agree with them 100% of the time. So reporting, like what you get from NPR, which is really pretty neutral, is seen by conservatives as “far left extremist propaganda.”
I find it hard to believe such a simplistic take is possible in this day and age. It's laughable, particularly after the media criticism of the last ten years. JFC government officials colluded with the media to censor a story that would make a candidate look bad and spent four years reporting, without scepticism, that Joe Biden was as sharp as ever and outworking thirty year old staff members. Anyone who equates that with "Republicans just want stories that agree with them 100% of the time" is living in a different universe.
I think it's mainly a generational thing where older people grew up in a culture that objectified journalists as non partisan truth seekers and they've never seriously questioned that, mainly because the media's biases line up and reinforce their own. It's a positive feedback loop. For all the issues the younger generation has, blindly accepting stories without skepticism is something they are better at than their elders.
Tell me the last thing Trump, Musk, or anyone in the Republican Party said that you didn’t accept without skepticism.
You really are making my point for me as you demonstrate how divorced from reality your argument is. I disagree with trump all time. He's wrong on tariffs for instance. Same with Musk. I looked at his timeline and he claimed today that the ballot initiative for voter id in Wisconsin is more important than the Supreme Court election. That's wrong.
So is today recent enough for you?
It’s better than nothing.
However, like so many on the right you level conspiracy accusations at the great bulk of news media without proof, and choose to ignore the many opposing opinions. You are wed to the liberal media conspiracy theory.
Agreed, same with trump's pathetic wall, let the people who want it pay for it. I mean, since Mexico clearly won't LOL
Lol. 87 Democrats on NPR's DC editorial staff. Zero Republicans. Imagine believing your reporting won't skew left with the sort of ideological conformity Pravada would envy.
Again, I find it hard to believe such a simplistic take is possible in this day and age. It's laughable, particularly after the media criticism of the last ten years. JFC government officials colluded with the media to censor a story that would make the Democratic candidate look bad and spent four years reporting, without scepticism, that Joe Biden was as sharp as ever and outworking thirty year old staff members. Anyone who equates that with "Republicans just want stories that agree with them 100% of the time" is living in a different universe.
It's just impossible to take anyone seriously who can't admit the legacy media favors democrats. It's flat earther denial of reality.
So what you are saying is that republicans do not favor education honesty?
Have you ever listened to NPR?
I did not think so
Welcome to the 20th century.
So PBS the Public Broadcasting System and NPR National Public Radio who do not get a great deal of any taxpayer funding and are funding through endowments, wealthy donors, and the public are a "problem"?
FOX " news" and the massive power they hold over pushing right wing talking points is no problem at all?
Fox has had to pay out incredible amounts of money for their false information on voting to Smartmatic, nearly a billion dollar pay out.
Big Bird and Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theater, and local stories in their neighborhood series, Austin City Limits and many music concerts air on PBS. How is PBS a problem.
Just because FOX had to pay up for voter disinformation and slander now Republican right wing zealots want to attack any station that isn't following right wing talking points or handing a "conservative" preferential" treatment.
Fox news "the most powerful name in news" isn't enough? Add Joe Rogan and a huge number of right wing talkers on podcasts, demands that all other major networks copy Fox and hand preferential treatment to conservative talking heads isn't enough?
Freedom is allowing the public to choose. Freedom is allowing liberal and progressive points of view. Right wing media is MASSIVE and shows how fragile they are in spite of it. Working to tear down all public opinion on public venues.
Then there shouldn't be any problem with ending taxpayer funding.
Can't speak to NPR but every Wed I watch the PBS station from Seattle to catch the shows Nature, NOVA and Secrets of the Dead and quite enjoy it. They provide interesting, eductional and to my view politically unbiased stories. Any federal funding provided towards this is money well spent
But the Libs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Totally agree. PBS does a great job with science programming. All the more important now that providers like Discovery and The History Channel have dropped the ball, opting to mostly air unwatchable crap like Naked and Afraid, Swamp People, and Ancient Aliens.
And let's not forget Antiques Roadshow, all the Masterpiece stuff, and shows like Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Doc Martin, etc.
PBS is fantastic!
And "Creatures great and small", One of my all-time favorite shows.
Btw,
Without Sesame Street and The Electric Company, I probably wouldn't read.
i was once electrocuted by a downed wire on Sesame Street while planting a Sesame Seed, near a rabid bunny’s burro, and that jackass was stubborn asz a mule.
Was that near Pippo's on Rising Sun Ave?
Wait, that probably changed hands a few times ,lol.
Agreed those channels turned to crap years ago, even the Nat Geo channel isn't much better
Forgot about that one and also This Old House
near the Blvd, that Pippos ? Down by bthe Old Sears building >?
100% Agree
Such a valuable resource. By the way, for the record, we donate to PBS.
As do I, since my kids were little
PBS Space Time is fantastic.
Comer telling anyone that they are misinformed is hilarious. This is the dimwit that always had the ‘’hard evidence’’ in his investigations but failed to produce.
The irony is staggering.
What does it matter? There will never again be a Walter Cronkite. Now it's sensationalism, misinformation, disinformation, outright lies, twisted opinions - all anyone can believe is what they see with their own eyes, snd even then it has to be live and not a set-up.
People who listen to NPR are not totally misinformed. Their reporting is among the most factual out there. I just now asked Chat GPT:
It responded
Comer is misinformed bucket of loosely coagulated fecal material... (I will pause here to let that image sink in).
To get the news of America that I consider reliable I read npr, ABC and CBS, and the news about the USA that I consider totally unbiased I get Canada's Global News sent to my regular email every morning. Contrary to what some NT members think that I am unable to source valid news about America, I believe that I can.
Lol. Left wing pundits think its factual, therefore it is. That's all this is. Opinion.
Chat GPT is a left wing pundit?
Do you know how LLM's work?
Yes, they synthesize the corpus of data they have consumed (read). In the case of ChatGPT, its corpus is the web and associated documents. It thus reflects the most common, reinforced meaning included within the corpus.
How do you think it works?
So you can connect the dots and realize how silly it is to believe its opinion on this is worth considering.
ChatGPT does not render opinion. What it does is present synthesized knowledge from its corpus. Which means that the collective position per the web and associated documents is that NPR is indeed widely regarded as factual and reliable.
That does not mean that NPR is reliable and factual, but it does indeed mean it is regarded as such based on this incredibly large corpus.
It would be more silly to label Chat GPT as a “left wing pundit.”
t would be more silly to label Chat GPT as a “left wing pundit.”
Good thing I didn't than. Try again.
I'm glad you get it.
Don’t gaslight me. We haven’t been discussing this for no reason.
Thomas posted:
To which you replied,
Apparently you do not if you continue to dismiss LLMs.
n’t gaslight me. We haven’t been discussing this for no reason.
Pay attention. I didn't call ChatGPT a left wing pundit. ChatGPT scrapes its information from left wing pundits. That's how LLM's work. I
I'm not "dismissing" them, they certainly have their value. They also have weaknesses. MSM claims the MSM is unbiased. ChatGPT gets its opinions from MSM sources. See the issue?
Yes, everything has weaknesses. The best research firms in the nation have weaknesses. Every human being has weaknesses.
No, you clearly do not understand the corpus underlying the LLM of ChatGPT. MSM is but one of an unfathomable number of sources. For you to imply that ChatGPT has MSM's bias shows you do not understand this technology. What I stated upfront is a very good way to view the ChatGPT LLM — it is a synthesis of the web and associated documents (even more than that, really). Its responses reflect what is most commonly and most reliably stated in its corpus. It is an unbiased reporter on the synthesis of what it has read.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Well, if you have a better source than
Media Bias & Fact-Checking (MBFC)
let us see it.
It is your contention that MBFC is left wing biased, according to your commentary, because that was the citation that ChatGPT gave. Right here:
I am so sorry to upset your applecart.
I would suggest you stick to real world news instead of the slanted BS that your commentary leads me to believe you are consuming.
“People who listen to NPR are totally misinformed,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.)
Not nearly to the degree that people listening to Fox News Talk Shows (masquerading as news commentaries) are misinformed.
The people are much smarter than they were given credit for.
The people are much smarter than they were given credit for.
I agree NPR listeners are for the most part a well-educated and well-informed group of people.
I considered American public radio to be superior ever since I was involved in running the Mariposa Folk Festival in the late 60s and early 70s when they came to do a story on our festival.
No, they were spoon fed many hoaxes.
Those who want it should pay for it. Tax money shouldn't be paying for it.
Yes, Fox News listeners were spoon fed many hoaxes.
Fox ‘News’ Admits Lying, Settles With Dominion For Nearly $800 Million
Fox ‘News’ Admits Lying, Settles With Dominion For Nearly $800 Million - TheStreet
Fox settles Dominion lawsuit for $787.5 million over US election lies
Fox settles Dominion lawsuit for $787.5 million over US election lies | Reuters
Rupert Murdoch says Fox stars 'endorsed' lies about 2020. He chose not to stop them
Under oath, Murdoch concedes Fox stars 'endorsed' lies about 2020 election : NPR
Oh No! One of those stories is from NPR! It must be fake! /s
Fox News, rightwing media and religious conservatives live in their own fucked up warped reality which is the only way to explain why to them a lie is the truth, and the truth is a lie. Anyone with more than half a brain that hasn't already been given the rightwing religious conservative lobotomy can see it. But those who have clearly had their brains tampered with will continue to regurgitate the MAGAverse talking points as if they were reality when nothing could be further from the truth.
Not sure they say they are promoted as news shows anymore. They are opinion shows that trend right. At least fox has Bret Baier which is one news show more than CNN or MSNBC have.
They are opinion shows that trend right.
Hilarious - they are so far right that that the center is totally out of sight and unreachable (the same is true for MSNBC from the left)
The CNN morning news is usually on at the gym in the morning when I am on the treadmill and I find them to be somewhat balanced but definitely left of the center line.