Sauce for the goose

Steven Taylor has the cure for what is ailing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:

Of course, my solution to the problem is, as I have written many times before, is to forget policing ideological content, a process I find creepy and anti-democratic, and instead take awayb any tax dollars and let the market decide.

And rather than focus my ire at “liberal” programming I will note a conservative example: The Journal Editorial Report. Now, I recall the exact same show being on CNBC (or maybe it was MSNBC or perhaps both) several years back. Clearly, it didn’t have the ratings, so now it is on PBS. This hardly seems like the market at work. Rather, because PBS doesn’t have to function within the market, and because some decisions are clearly being made for ideological reasons rather than for business reasons, programs are aired that otherwise would never make it on TV.

Why do we need to be subsidizing that?

Really, the only reason purpose for government subsidies in general that I can see are for those things that serve a clear public good, but that the market will not provide. By that definition, we don’t need the CPB. And there is no doubt that the worthy programming on PBS would flourish without taxpayers subsidy. Does anyone really think that most of the children’s programming on PBS couldn’t survive on its own?

What he said. And I also have to agree that Frank Rich is being hypocritical for only now being concerned about ideology at CPB. But so are the Republicans who want to keep the CPB around so long as they get to determine the ideological slant.

I remember when Republicans used to make the same arguments as Steven Taylor. But that was before they found out having a propaganda machine might be, well, kinda nifty.

Posted by Chip on June 27, 2005 at 05:51 AM
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