NPR and PBS have jilted taxpayers for too long

Well, that's a bit of irony. A YouTuber is telling me that people watch screens too much.

With the explosion of streaming services, social media, and endless entertainment options, kids are more addicted to screens than ever. But screens aren’t good for kids. I covered this in a previous podcast, and it’s backed by plenty of research.

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Michie said:

As a child, I was a big fan of the Cookie Monster.

As a new dad in my 30s, my love has turned more to the cookies themselves, and my waistline has kept me from hiding this fact. Now, lawmakers are on the verge of cutting federal funding to “Sesame Street” and all of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) along with it.

As a former member of the Cookie Monster fan club, I understand the nostalgia for certain programming, but it’s time to cut the cord, especially since PBS and NPR will almost certainly keep operating their standard programming, just without the taxpayer subsidies. How could I be so heartless to my furry childhood friend?

First, let’s consider that PBS, once the source of some of America’s favorite “Sesame Street” characters, is now a cringeworthy collection of irrelevant kids shows buoyed by the nostalgia of aging lawmakers. With the explosion of streaming services, social media, and endless entertainment options, kids are more addicted to screens than ever. But screens aren’t good for kids. I covered this in a previous podcast, and it’s backed by plenty of research. In our time of overabundance in digital content, do we really need to subsidize entertainment more?

Continued below.

NPR and PBS have jilted taxpayers for too long

If NPR and PBS want to try to indoctrinate the nation, we can t stop them But I m done paying for it

www.christianpost.com

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I was big on PBS years ago. I would tune into 'All Things Considered"' every afternoon. But then it became all LGBTQWERTY considered and I noticed I was often turning it off in disgust. Finally I just never turned it on. It was just propaganda I realized and I didn't want to be propagandized any more. OK, I don't get as much news any more. But there is an advantage to that.

Now I'm sorry that a few rare PBS programs might get cut. Classical music might get cut. Gardening shows might get cut. I imagine they will try very hard not to cut the wokest or the gayest stuff. And that now includes Sesame Street sadly. A show that has transmogrified into something alien to what it was.

I'm so old, I remember when PBS was called Educational Broadcasting. In one class, we filed into a room at the same time each day for some educational program I can't recall. This was before Sesame Street, by the way.

Since educational TV was only the second station we could pick up reliably and without snow, watched a good bit of it. If there was news, it wasn't aired then. If there was weather, it wasn't either. Today's the anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, and we watched on at TV tuned to a network station, not educational TV. Commercial radio had state news at the bottom of the hour, headlines at the top of the hour, and national news in the morning, at noon, and in the afternoon. One station played Moscow Nights as filler before the noon broadcast. Since Moscow Nights was the interval signal of Radio Moscow, thought that was a sly bit of local commentary on what we were about to hear.

There was no weather, either. After it had become public broadcasting and I was an adult, I found aviation weather on early in the morning, which was informative. PBS cut it.

It's a curious thing to watch. For organizations that insist they receive only a small percentage of public funding, they sure are screaming about the cuts. Be that as it may, the problem has long been bias. If they were commercial, fine. But this was tax money spent to promote a particular viewpoint. Where tax money is concerned, it has to be neutral, and that neutrality wasn't there.

I had started listening to public radio for classical music. Back then they actually played some during the day. I'd listen to the radio news, and noticed that one segment addressing a nuclear power plant I happened to know something about was biased against it. There was one anchor or journalist or whatever they call them who boasted he had a father caught up in the Red Scare. By that time my reaction was "No fooling." My breaking point came the night of the 2000 election, when I tuned in for election returns and found an Al Gore cheerleading section. At the start one of their anchors or whatever crowed about Al Gore's early return lead, and then said, as though as an after thought, "And George Bush has some votes, too." Switched to a Christian station for returns and alternated between that and network television. Then, during the first Gulf War, tried the news again one Saturday after it began only to find them acting like they were channeling Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw. As the Captain in the Katzenjammer Kids would say," Enough is too much!" Took them off my saved stations.

Since then would try listening from time to time. Think five minutes was about my limit though it was often shorter. It was always a news program and it was always slanted.

Your tax dollars at work.

I don't expect PBS on TV or radio or streaming to go away. Yes you can stream the stuff if you're willing to jump through the hoops. That's not the point. The point is that bias will no longer be funded by taxpayers. I expect it to remain biased to the point that Bagdad Bob would go "Dude." I expect them to either bemoan the cut in they funding they once said they didn't need, or crow because they remain on the air. Whatever. If that's what their listeners what to hear, let them pay for it. Just don't do it on my dime.

When I worked 2nd shift back in the 80s and 90s, I would listen to "All Things Considered" from 4:30 to 6:00 every day. Their left-leaning bias was painfully evident. If you were a white Christian, male, you were the most evil creature ever created. Really bugged me. Does not bother me one bit that they pulled funding. Why should I pay for a service that constantly portrays me a the devil incarnate?