It officially began in the 1970’s but was born of a Congressional act in 1967 under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
That act signed into law passed the Public Broadcasting Act, thereby establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), for television; the Act also replaced the National Educational Radio Network with National Public Radio for the audio side, as its name suggests.
National Public Radio (NPR) has been around for decades – more than five – and has become the sweetheart of Leftists country-wide; in Right wing circles it is known as National Panhandler Radio, and this is why.
Not unlike the United States Postal Service (USPS), ever running a financial deficit, NPR found itself facing a serious cash shortage in 1983 requiring about $7,000,000 to settle its arrears.
Ever expanding its tentacles, NPR
decided to better target its audience by opening a second location for
broadcasting. Retaining their
Spending money has always come easily for NPR with a $235,000,000 endowment from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald’s, in the early 2000’s.
All this may sound pretty
reasonable, but one key detail is missing.
NPR was primarily funded by the federal guvment, very much like the
USPS. President Ronald Reagan thought this
Left-leaning broadcasting service should be self-sufficient if it was to
continue bashing
Weaning support from the guvment forced NPR to make drastic changes. In the 2000’s, roughly 10% of its funding continued to come from the guvment, but altering payment from its satellite stations, and adding pledge drives to their PBS line-up helped make up the difference.
But some corporate lawyer figured out that since this was a non-profit broadcasting venture, it could not accept commercials. All this would prove to be moot inasmuch as it was determined corporations could, indeed, fund programs and the network, if they used only slogans and description of products.
Not being a lawyer myself, that seems like a pretty good narrative of a commercial ad. But I digress.
It seems that such statements are called “underwriting
spots.” Unlike commercials, underwriting
spots are governed by specific FCC restrictions; they cannot advocate a product
or “promote the goods and services” of for-profit entities, according to Wikipedia.
That still sounds like an advertisement to me.
To make things even ickier, “Hosts of the NPR program Planet Money stated the audience is
indeed a product being sold to advertisers in the same way as commercial
stations, saying: “they are not advertisers exactly but, they have a lot of the
same characteristics; let’s just say that,” Wikipedia further states.
All this creative funding and legal shenanigans wind up being
brilliant efforts of the Left to pollute the minds of unsuspecting radio
listeners.
NPR hasn’t heard of a death row-sentenced prisoner that doesn’t
deserve a medal and exoneration rather than a just punishment. It also takes great pains to explain how
climate aberrations need immediate attention and funding to counteract
capitalists.
Not to be left out, their Pentagon
Report has received criticism due to simply reading military press releases
rather than editorializing them to better suit NPR’s targeted liberal audience,
as well as duped listeners who believe this misinformation to be unbiased.
Going so far as to chastise news readers using certain words
– “torture” being one of them – NPR has definitely demonstrated the slanted
“news” items it airs, daily.
Ever taking the side of
And the killing of innocent children through “choice,” seems
to be another spoke in the wheel of propaganda disguised as reporting rather
than agenda-driven tripe.
President Reagan was right in his ardent attempt to rid
But if you donate, maybe you’ll may get a tote bag.
