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Who should pay for public radio?
How do you think public media should be funded? Commentator Tucker Carlson says cut federal funding and let the listeners pitch in.
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One of the on-again off-again debates in Washington is who ought to pay for public broadcasting: The government, which helps support hundreds of public radio stations across the country, or us, listeners, who give millions of dollars every year that help shows like this one get on the air.
Commentator Tucker Carlson says listeners could -- and should -- pay more.
Tucker Carlson: I love public radio. I listen to it every day. But sometimes, as I drive to my white-collar job in my expensive foreign car, surrounded by fellow public radio listeners driving to their white-collar jobs in their expensive foreign cars, I feel a little guilty. All of us are pretty affluent, I think to myself. Do we really need a federal subsidy?
I live in Washington, D.C., but the scene would be familiar to anyone who lives in Winnetka, Ill., the North Shore of Boston or the westside of L.A.: In general, the richer the zip code, the more people tune into public radio. Public radio listeners tend to have a household income more than $30,000 above the national average. They're also whiter, better educated and more than twice as likely as ordinary Americans to work in top management. Not the profile of your average welfare recipient.
Yet that's in effect what we are. Public radio receives more than $100 million a year in tax dollars. Teenaged shift workers at McDonald's, every harried single moms emptying wastebaskets at a law firm, lettuce pickers in California are laboring so that you and I -- you in your Prius, me in my Saab -- can listen to a certain sort of educated news and opinion as we cruise in air conditioned comfort to the office each day. Has there ever been a more unfair tax?
Every few years somebody in Congress tries to kill it. Public radio executives never quite defend their subsidy -- that would be impossible to do with a straight face -- but instead they respond by pointing out that lots of people really, really like public radio. That's true. Of course you could say the same thing about the Rush Limbaugh Show. And that's the point: When people like something, they'll pay for it. Public radio listeners could certainly pay the whole tab for public radio. They just don't want to. Maybe, just to be decent, we should start.
Tucker Carlson is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller and a member of Maine Public Broadcasting.
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Good point, listener123, but I doubt that they make up the bulk of the listeners. That should not matter, however. One difference between a democracy is that good information is available to all, even to those who cannot afford to pay for it. Do we really want a democracy? Sometimes I wonder.
I grew up in a strict religious household in Brooklyn. My Mom loves Fox and my Dad is a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh. If I had to pay for public radio, I would have been alone in the restrictive religious bubble that I was brought up in. Public Radio (WNYC) and the Brooklyn public library have opened my world. Most of my all girls high school class did not go to college and many of them were married with babies before 21 years of age. The broadening of my horizon through Public Radio and Public Library allowed me to shake off the shackles of my ultra religious roots and go to college. More than that, it made it possible for me to experience love and compassion for people I would not have otherwise encountered. Public radio needs to stay free.
Wow! Tuckjer carlson wants to end public subsidies for NPR...what a shocker. This right wind shill would love for news outlets like NPR to only be supported by listeners. In a rather short time I am sure the major donors would be Exxon, Monsanto, Aetna, Cigna and Blackwater , etc with all the influence the once sterling name NPR had...gone. Carlson is a joke to go after NPR when ther are literally billions of $$$ going to ol companies, corn subsidies and Wall Street. The agenda is to destroy trusted sources of information and services like NPR, The National Endowment for the Arts, Planned Parenthood etc. I know NPR is afraid of the big bad right but sheesh...Tucker Carlson. Lets scrape back some dignoty Marketplace!
Hate to break this news to you, but those companies and many other big ones have always been sponsors. Instead of commercials as you know them, the commercial comes as, "This program presented through the generous underwriting of Monsanto." It's a genteel corporate. But we never avoid those guys. So more than a Big Bad Right, we have the old faithful, Big Bad Buck to which we are all beholden.
The right wing needs to get its story straight. Routinely they tell us the poor (and lower-middle class) don't pay any income taxes! They don't pull their weight! They need to get skin in the game!
Now we're told NPR shouldn't get federal funding because it's such a misuse of the taxes the poor are paying. And what does NPR get? A penny out of every $100 of federal spending???
The funny thing is, both of their inconsistent arguments are wrong. Lower-income folks pay plenty for government: not federal income taxes, but payroll taxes, state income and sales taxes, fees, fines, etc. -- most of which are not progressive with income.
Unbelievable! Teen workers at McDonald's and laborers in the field barely scraping out a living are paying for public radio so that Fat Cats can listen to it while driving their Lexuses?!
Teen workers at McDonalds rarely pay any tax at all as they probably don't make the threshold required to pay income tax. Migrant workers, among all lower income people, will be among the beneficiaries of a society whose information comes from a non-profit driven source. Whatever few pennies of their income might be designated towards an informed society (as opposed to one who listens to Rush Limbaugh, who the commentator suggests is just as valid a news source), will be well invested.
I can't believe Marketplace aired this extremely stupid and offensive commentary.
Another example of someone in the 1% having no understanding of the 99%
I listen to NPR, and being part of the working poor, I am thankful that it still exists.
If it became a pay service, I wouldn't be able to listen anymore.
Tucker Carlson's opinion made my skin crawl. I suppose if Tucker Carlson lost his job and became poor, he'd lose his taste for anything educational or humanistic.
If we positively must cut something at NPR, I suggest we start with Tucker Carlson.
Another example of someone in the 1% having no understanding of the 99%
I listen to NPR, and being part of the working poor, I am thankful that it still exists.
If it became a pay service, I wouldn't be able to listen anymore.
Tucker Carlson's opinion made my skin crawl. I suppose if Tucker Carlson lost his job and became poor, he'd lose his taste for anything educational or humanistic.
If we positively must cut something at NPR, I suggest we start with Tucker Carlson.
Another example of someone in the 1% having no understanding of the 99%
I listen to NPR, and being part of the working poor, I am thankful that it still exists.
If it became a pay service, I wouldn't be able to listen anymore.
Tucker Carlson's opinion made my skin crawl. I suppose if Tucker Carlson lost his job and became poor, he'd lose his taste for anything educational or humanistic.
If we positively must cut something at NPR, I suggest we start with Tucker Carlson.
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