City Beat (Cincinnati), 31 Jan 2011,
Ben L. Kaufman: "NPR and our local public news station, WVXU (91.7 FM),
get a small but important part of their annual budgets from Congress.
Rightwingers want to cut or end federal funding because politically
neutral NPR isn’t the GOP’s Fox News. It’s another reason to support
WVXU and other public radio stations with cash and supportive messages
to House members, senators and the White House. Meanwhile, Brits offer a
timely lesson of what happens when a conservative government pleads
poverty and decides to slash its most famous and reliable modern export,
the BBC World Service (heard here at night on WVXU). Unlike its
domestic services, BBC’s World Service is funded by the Foreign Office.
Despite taking the Queen’s shilling, it rarely danced the Queen’s tune;
BBC has a sterling reputation for neutrality and accuracy, especially
where uncensored news media do not exist. So far, cuts haven’t targeted
English-language broadcasts to North America. Rather, BBC’s decision to
close some foreign language broadcasts and fire of hundreds of linguists
will impoverish the information available to listeners everywhere."
Mr. Kaufman mentioned both NPR and BBC World Service,
but did not completely make the connection between the two. (BBCWS is
actually distributed by Public Radio International, but to stations that
are mostly NPR affiliates.) If the Republicans who want to "zero out"
the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting succeed, public
radio stations in non-urban areas will lose a large part of their
funding. Not only will they no longer be able to purchase the rights to
relay BBC World Service, they might have to go off the air. Because
their frequencies are between 88 and 92 MHz, their licenses must be sold
or transferred to other non-commercial entities. They would likely
become religious radio stations, which almost certainly will not carry
BBC. In addition to their theology, or as part of it, these stations
would advocate for socially conservative causes. This gives
Congressional Republicans another incentive to eliminate funding for
public broadcasting.