Now they’re going after Big Bird as what’s seemingly shaping up as a multi-fronted war against Public Broadcasting goes on:
A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government’s financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children’s educational programs as “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Arthur” and “Postcards From Buster.”
In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which passes federal funds to public broadcasters — starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB’s budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.
In all, the cuts would represent the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967. The CPB funds are particularly important for small TV and radio stations and account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry’s total revenue.
Expressing alarm, public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming. That effort was initiated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s own chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.
“Americans overwhelmingly see public broadcasting as an unbiased information source,” Rep. David Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement. “Perhaps that’s what the GOP finds so offensive about it. Republican leaders are trying to bring every facet of the federal government under their control. . . . Now they are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting.”
But the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education asserted that the panel was simply making choices among various worthy government programs, and that no political message was intended.
Of course. It’s just a coincidence that this is happening as a key Bush appointee makes it known that Public Broadcasting needs more balance — which seems to be defined in this case as adding a conservative slant — and as the administration is poised to recommend a former Republican party co-chairman for a post that controls Public Broadcasting’s funding. Is there a political agenda behind all of this?
PBS, in particular, drew harsh criticism in December from the Bush administration for a “Postcards From Buster” episode in which Buster, an animated rabbit, “visited” two families in Vermont headed by lesbians. And programming on both PBS and NPR has come under fire in recent months from Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the CPB, who has pushed for greater “balance” on the public airwaves.
To be fair, conservatives look at the “Postcards” episode and argue that it was pushing a political/social agenda of its own — one that should not be in children’s programming, or at least in kids programs funded by taxpayer money.
But Tomlinson’s role and what some see as his political agenda are a separate issue:
A spokeswoman for NPR, Andi Sporkin, directly blamed Tomlinson for yesterday’s action, saying, “We’ve never been sure of Mr. Tomlinson’s intent but, with this news, we might be seeing his effect.”
Tomlinson did not return calls seeking comment. In a statement, he said, “Obviously, we are concerned [by the cuts], and we will be joining with our colleagues in the public broadcasting community to make the case for a higher level of funding as the appropriations measure makes its way through Congress.”
So we will all have our answer about Tomlinson — if in the end the money comes through and if he seems to be making a real push to get it. If not, and if he simply lets this happen, we will have answer about not only him but whether the alleged political agenda is alleged or real.
And how would this funding cut impact our country’s kids — who need all of the positive programming adults can fix their little eyes on?
But the loss of $23.4 million in federal funds for children’s educational shows — which PBS calls its “Ready to Learn” programs — could mean the elimination of these programs, said an official at Alexandria-based PBS who asked not to be named because the network still hopes to regain the funding. PBS’s revenue totaled $333 million in fiscal year 2004.
The Ready to Learn group includes “Sesame Street,” “Dragontales,” “Clifford” and “Arthur,” among others.
The House measure also cuts support for a variety of smaller projects, such as a $39.6 million public TV satellite distribution network and a $39.4 million program that helps public stations update their analog TV signals to digital format.
Small public radio stations, particularly those in rural areas and those serving minority audiences, may be the most vulnerable to federal cuts because they currently operate on shoestring budgets.
“This could literally put us out of business,” said Paul Stankavich, president and general manager of the Alaska Public Radio Network, an alliance of 26 stations in the state that create and share news programming. “Almost all of us are down to the bone right now. If we lost 5 or 10 percent of our budgets in one fell swoop, we could end up being just a repeater service” for national news, with no funds to produce local content.
That would really upset the people who are criticizing Public Broadcasting, wouldn’t it? Just a concidence, of course…..
UPDATE: Professor Steve Bainbridge notes that no one should shed tears for Big Bird’s poverty.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.