Cuts would seriously hurt public broadcasting

In response to Sunday’s column by Steve Chapman concerning the proposal in the House to eliminate all funding for public broadcasting:

Mr. Chapman says he’s a big fan of public radio, listens to it every day, even provides some financial support. However, he’s also all for cutting off its federal funds. That’s sort of like saying I really love my children, but I just don’t want to feed them.

A little history. Before 1967, public radio — then educational radio — was a scattered and weak group of local stations with no interconnection and no national network. The Johnson-era creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided funding to interconnect the stations into a true network and helped create NPR and PBS. In fact, federal funding is still used to provide the infrastructure for network interconnection.

Another fact: All federal funds flow, not to NPR or PBS, but to their affiliated stations. No one listens to NPR in Las Vegas, for instance, without hearing it on KNPR. This is an important distinction, because local stations make the programming decisions, and their largest single programming expense is paying programming fees to NPR. Many rural and marginal stations in small markets may elect, due to budget constraints, to drop NPR and therefore weaken its national reach. That would please those in Congress long opposed to a strong national news network that is dedicated to the old-fashioned notion of objective journalism. Not left news or right news, but the news.

Public radio and TV stations are also regulated by the FCC. They are classified as noncommercial stations and largely relegated to the lower side of the FM dial. Therefore, the lifeblood of commercial media, advertising, is not allowed. So if the federal money goes away, public stations cannot turn to commercial advertising as an alternative, which is also the source of funding for most of the babble of new media.

Funding for public media was always envisioned as a three-legged stool, with individual donations, business support and government funding as the three legs. The federal leg has shrunk to about 10 percent, but is one of the few sources of funding that stations can rely on. Ten percent may not sound like much, but in the case of Nevada Public Radio, that translates into $400,000

With a recession still raging, where would Mr. Chapman advise we turn? The other two sources are tapped out. Mr. Chapman mentions 27 million people listen to NPR each week. He doesn’t mention that less than 10 percent of those listeners are donors. Federal funding at $1.35 per capita provides the support that many listeners cannot afford to make.

Mr. Chapman concedes that public broadcasting is a national treasure, something verified by poll after poll of Americans who consider public radio and television among the most trusted sources of unbiased news. Public broadcasters are aware of the budgetary constraints facing the federal government and will take its cuts, but zero funding smacks more of political retaliation that budget cutting.

The Senate is next to consider the defunding of public broadcasting. I urge everyone to let our senators know your opinion on this very significant question of public policy.

Lamar Marchese

Las Vegas

The writer is former general manager of Nevada Public Radio.

HIspanic contributions

To the editor:

In his Sunday commentary, “Hispanic clout,” Thomas Rodriguez claims that without future Social Security contributions from millions of young Hispanic workers, there may not be adequate funds for the system or for health care.

Is Mr. Rodriguez ignorant of the present state of affairs at the hospitals in Nevada and the financial drain upon the state’s social services?

The argument that Mr. Rodriguez makes is laughable as to the contributions that Hispanics will make to the economy of this country. This country needs people with skills, not people with an expectation that they can have a free ride.

Robert Gant

Las Vegas