By Tim Graham ~
When a crisis hits and a massive legislative package is organized to meet it, it’s never surprising when Democrats go to supporting their own media assets. So there on page 746 of the 854-page “stimulus” bill is a provision granting $75 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, including for fiscal stabilization grants to public telecommunications entities.”
This isn’t about keeping the public informed, since every other news network is offering coronavirus information nearly 24/7. This is about maintaining the PBS and NPR stations. The bill directs the CPB to take out “no administrative costs” to pass the money along, “to maintain programming and services and preserve small and rural stations threatened by declines in non-Federal revenues.”
The pubcasting website Current reported on these “fiscal stabilization grants” on Thursday:
Patrick Butler, CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, said that corporate, foundation and individual giving to public television stations has “rapidly decreased in the wake of the economic downturn accompanying the contagion.”
….Earlier this week, the advocacy group Protect My Public Media emailed its activists about a proposal to provide $300 million in emergency funding for stations.
“While even $75 million only begins to address these unprecedented needs while private revenues are plummeting, we are grateful for the broad support for this emergency funding for public media among both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate,” Butler said. “We will do our best with the resources we have to serve our country and our fellow citizens in this time of shared crisis.”
This is on top of the $465 million already granted to the CPB (itself an increase of $20 million in annual funding). This just underlines the nonsense that stations barely take any federal funding. Republicans have long sought to defund CPB as an unnecessary expense, while Democrats always seek to fatten their sacred cow.
What we’re really getting during the pandemic panic is PBS trashing the NRA for an hour and diagnosing President Trump as a “sociopath.” Then there’s NPR finding Democratic disease experts to suggest we’ll all die under Trump...when it’s not fondly recalling how Obama talked his way out of the Reverend Wright mess.
Whenever Democrats prepare to “stimulate” the economy through legislation, it’s always important to check the fine print to see how their keeping their propaganda organs in fighting shape.
Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.
Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/
Grumpy Old Man
Wed 04/01/2020
Socialists Pelosi, Schumer, etc., and their zombie mindless minions only care about themselves, about staying in power.
They DO NOT Care about the people they are supposed to serve.
The deaths and hardships mean nothing to them! The homeless that they created only get a shrug from them.
That’s the cost that their voters have to pay. But they don’t because they live in Luxury that their voters created by voting them into office and their “Gravy Train”.
They are like the tyrannical Communists Chinese leaders in this respect.
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PA Pundits - International
Mon 03/30/2020
The CPB and PBS and NPR stations are Sick evils foisted upon an unsuspecting and/or naive public. Of course there are those with the intent to destroy our Free Enterprise, God given Christianity, our Constitution, etc., for evil 😈 Socialism.
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nickreality65
Mon 03/30/2020
I expected by now to see satellite images of Chinese CoVid apocalypse bodies stacked by the tens of thousands in city squares, bulldozers pushing them into mass graves then covered with lime.
According to ECDC and WHO the CoVid death toll for China is about 3,300. A mortality rate once in double digits has fallen to 4.0%.
The US at 2,500 will surpass that shortly.
Where is the footage of CoVid apocalypse zombies staggering across hospital parking lots, storming ERS and hallways? Just isolated tear jerkers.
Not there – so far.
This lying, fact free, fake news MSM’s fake pandemic is as fake as fake dying polar bears, fake rising sea levels, fake melting ice caps.
President Trump should bring the full weight of the Federal Government to bear, sue the fake news MSM for crying “Wolf,” for yelling “Fire!” in our crowded theater, make them pick up that 2.2 trillion dollar tab.
Rights have responsibilities. Yeah, weird notion.
Trump should burn the fake news media to the ground and when/if it rises from the ashes maybe it will understand what honest, balanced, objective, responsible journalism means.
BTW looks like US cases and deaths just fell over a cliff. An uptick this large makes headline news. We’ll see if it stays that way.
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willingwheeling
Mon 03/30/2020
Reblogged this on Willing Wheeling.
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