The New York Times seems highly upset that anyone would question the existence or objectivity of what they call the Public Broadcasting "Service." Last week, the paper put PBS's internal worries on Page One, concerned that pressure from conservatives threatens to send PBS lurching -- horrors! -- to the right.Actually, most of us wish this boondoggle would lurch right off a cliff.
Liberal lobbyists inside and outside PBS, including the Times editorial page, are once again trying to convince the Congress to allow them to create a massive $5 billion endowment so they may achieve "financial independence." When PBS stations go digital, requiring less space on the broadcast spectrum, they want to sell their surplus spectrum and keep the profits. Fiscal conservatives should insist that PBS stations should return any proceeds from spectrum sales directly to the U.S. taxpayers, who massively subsidized the network in the first place.I won't get into a long discussion of Digital TV, but suffice it to say that no broadcaster owns their spectrum space and that commercial TV broadcasters are returning theirs to the FCC who will auction it off for other services. The idea behind this latest leftoid scam is to allow PBS to keep the bucks from the sale of their unused spectrum as an "endowment" - the equivalent of Ted Kennedy's trust fund. Hmm, why don't they give it to me? I could use a substantial endowment too.
The Times news report on PBS claimed even "conservatives" support an endowment, and then cited Norman Ornstein, whose latest "conservative" claim is that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is an autocrat, "the Vladimir Putin of American Politics."Gosh, maybe we can hear the details on PBS!
More by following the link, mostly about whether PBS is really biased and all the usual leftoid denials of the obvious. I liked:
Any reasonable look at the daily or weekly public-affairs content of public broadcasting is still going to find a liberal tilt. Even Mitchell, the PBS president, told the Los Angeles Times she was upset at all the content criticism she's taken from left-wing groups, since "They are our natural allies and friends ... I'd expect them to be more understanding. The sad thing is, the people who want to see public television get better resources are hardly helping by participating in this kind of debate."Sheesh, pull the plug on these losers. No more taxpayer money and absolutely no "endowment."
