NPR will be laying off 7% of its employees because of a budget shortfall.
While commend them for not just going back to mommy and asking for more funds, do we really NEED NPR for anything?
We’ve got over a half a dozen other alphabet stations singing the Democratic talking points on the hour every hour, why do we need one more brand infatuated with He Who Shall Not Be Middle Named (unless it is He at His inauguration)?
Here is the story as published at the HuffPo, which is where we get our QotD.
In our city, the NPR local news “partner” is our corporate owned newspaper! So much for independent media.
janeinmia – 12/10/08 @ 1155PM
Since when is something that is government financed “independent”?
Isn’t that like calling the USMC “independent”?
I guess they assume if you’re getting ‘coporate’ funding, you have to toe the ‘corporate’ line. It probably never occurs to these people that the same dynamic, if true, would hold true for government funding as well…
I have to confess we listen to some NPR, just to get the local news/weather and traffic, and we also like the local PBS station. They do a lot of nature and cooking/travel shows on the HD channel. Anyway, I’ve noticed that there is as much, or more, commerical time as on the regular networks – and they are from the same advertisers (ex Ford, Microsoft). I don’t recall that from watching PBS when I was younger. I’d be interested to see the funding split among taxpayers, donors, and commercial sponsorship.