Scandal in Public Broadcasting
The big scandal in public (or actually government) broadcasting is that the taxpayers are forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the propagation of unremittingly liberal views on politics and policy. As I said in my testimony to the Senate last year, I agree with some of the liberal attitudes of NPR and PBS, but I don't think taxpayers should be forced to subsidize my views or those of anyone else.
The second biggest scandal is that when Republicans get control of the federal government, they don't relieve the taxpayers of that burden. Maybe it's because they know the old advice, "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel." Or who have their own nationwide broadcast networks. But it's unbelievable to me that Republicans appropriate money every year for two networks that could be called ARN, the Anti-Republican Network.
The third biggest scandal is that instead of just privatizing PBS and NPR, Republicans appoint public broadcasting officials who go in like a bull in a china shop and try to force a bunch of liberal journalists to include conservative shows and perspectives. The government shouldn't be telling journalists how and what to report. Instead, it should just free them to report as they choose, with money from investors and customers rather than taxpayers.
And I guess the fourth biggest scandal is the one making headlines today: that the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which oversees the federal government's international broadcasting), who used to be chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is alleged to have improperly used his office. In a State Department report made public by three Democratic members of Congress, Tomlinson is accused of putting a friend on the BBG payroll -- something that never happens elsewhere in the federal government -- and using office resources to support his personal horse-racing operation, which I suppose goes beyond the March Madness pools conducted in every federal office.
Maybe when conservatives get tired of being hit over the head by tax-funded broadcast networks, and liberals get tired of conservatives trying to meddle in the networks' reporting, they could both agree to privatize PBS and NPR, freeing them from political intervention and freeing the taxpayers from being coerced to support what Thomas Jefferson called "the propagation of opinions which [they] disbelieve."
