20 June 2005

Save NPR & PBS!

Given my indebtedness to public programming for my educational foundation and ongoing intellectual development, I feel it is my duty to chip in the effort to save NPR and PBS. Without Sesame Street, I may never have figured out which one of these things is not like the other! The short of it is that the House voted to drastically cut federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which "is the US-tax payer funded agency that passes funds to public broadcasting stations in this country," such as National Public Radio and PBS (article from democracynow.org that's cited is here). Here an article in the New York Times about the issue:
Steep Cut Proposed for Public Broadcasting

And since I love cross-referencing so much, here's my friend Elaine's more articulate blog-post about the matter http://elaine5.blogspot.com/2005/06/save-big-bird.html

Now, you may remember an email petition going around a while ago that claimed the same thing when funding was threatened around 1995. Public outcry saved the cause then, but the emails kept going, relegating it to urban legend/hoax status. But now it's true again! Here's another NYTimes article talking about this ironic turn of events: A Web Hoax, Transformed

Public television and radio is one of the last pure forms of education in the media. Please sign the petition to show your support. Here's the link to the petition on MoveOn.org's website:
http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/index.html

Big Bird, Terry Gross, and company thank you!

1 comment:

Elaine said...

Hey Steph,
Thanks for the plug. I'm worried about how this guy Ken Tomlinson is trying to bring Republicans into influence the direction of the CPB as well...uggghh.