I'm VERY LIBERAL... I listen to NPR!!

[MADem]

69. Were you asleep for the first decade and a half of the 21st Century?

Ill, perhaps? In a coma? *Not intended as a factual statement, either... but hey, a thread that starts out with deserves a little mild in return, no?

So glad you recovered fully--but here are a few items you missed during that period:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html?

Mr. Tomlinson has been waging a campaign to correct what he and other conservatives see as a liberal bias in public television programming. That effort has been criticized by leaders of public television who say it poses a threat to their editorial independence. At the request of two senior Democratic members of Congress, the inspector general at the corporation is examining whether Mr. Tomlinson's decision to monitor only one television program, "Now," with Bill Moyers, and his decision to retain a White House official who helped create guidelines for the two ombudsmen may have violated a law that is supposed to insulate public broadcasting from politics.

But the law also assigns the corporation the responsibility of ensuring balance and objectivity in programming, a function that Mr. Tomlinson says is of paramount importance for the sustained viability and political support of public broadcasting.

About a quarter of the corporation's $400 million budget goes to radio, with most of the rest to television. NPR recently received a huge bequest from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, the widow of the founder of McDonald's, and it gets only about 1 percent of its overall funds directly from the corporation. But its member stations are far more reliant on the corporation's money, and they use a significant part of that to buy programs produced by NPR and others.

Last month, the corporation's board, which is dominated by Republicans named by President Bush, told the staff at a meeting that it should prepare to redirect the relatively modest number of grants available for radio programs away from national news, officials at the corporation and NPR said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8067-2005Apr21.html

Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations. Buster the animated rabbit is under a cloud of suspicion. And right-wing yakkers from the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been handed their own public-television chat show.

Some observers, including people inside the Public Broadcasting Service, see these recent developments as troubling. PBS, they say, is being forced to toe a more conservative line in its programming by the Republican-dominated agency that provides about $30 million in federal funds to the Alexandria-based service.

NPR was lost a good decade ago. Most people noticed this as it was happening, and mourned the loss. Why, even here at DU, people noticed!!!! These threads, from "OLD DU" are really worth a read:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1678974


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x100761

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2312806