{"id":827,"date":"2011-01-21T13:04:17","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T18:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=827"},"modified":"2011-01-21T13:08:43","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T18:08:43","slug":"who-shoud-pay-for-public-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2011\/01\/21\/who-shoud-pay-for-public-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Who shoud pay for Public Radio?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard on NCPR about something called 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting<\/strong>. It is a network\/station collaboration that came about shortly after the last election, when it became clear that the new Congress would make a concerted effort to de-fund public broadcasting. You can see details of three bills already in the pipeline that would do some or all of that on the home page at NCPR, and you can get more information than anyone could possibly need at the 170 Million\u2026 website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I’d like to talk about why federal funding is important to this<\/em> station–North Country Public Radio. The term “public broadcasting” covers a whole ecology of organizations: PBS stations, NPR affiliates, community broadcasters, native and Hispanic stations, independent producers and more. And of course the online media properties associated with them, like ncpr.org. Many receive public tax money via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and many do not. NCPR does: 16% of our budget in the last fiscal year came in the form of federal support. You can see NCPR’s latest financial disclosures here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a steadily shrinking piece of our funding, and an argument could be made–is being made–that we could survive without it. And NCPR could, with difficulty–though many other public broadcasters could not. But as long as NCPR is a publicly-funded entity, we have a mandate to serve the public<\/em> interest. Organizations that are solely member-funded have a different mandate\u2013to serve their member’s<\/em> interest. There is a world of difference between the two, or so we reckon. It’s the difference between the public square and the common room of a private club.<\/p>\n

At NCPR we choose to function within the public square. And we will try to serve the public interest regardless of how we are funded. In part because we believe that our private funders give to us in an effort to serve a broader interest than their own. And in part because it’s a job that just plain needs doing–in these times when the needs of civil society are taking a back seat to the interests of the personal, the partisan and the parochial.<\/p>\n

Should the public continue to support NCPR and other public broadcasters with federal tax dollars?<\/strong> Let me know what you think in a comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have heard on NCPR about something called 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[19,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}