If Conservatives Don’t Like NPR…

In case you haven’t heard, there has been a huge hullabaloo over some remarks made by (and subsequent firing from NPR) of Juan Williams. In case you have been living under a rock, Williams said on Fox News that he “worries when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.”

NPR, which receives a relatively small (but significant) portion of its revenue from federal taxes, is now under attack by Republicans. While I agree in principle that taxpayers should not fund media outlets (whether those be newspapers or radio stations) I wonder where these conservatives were during the Bush Administration when they had total control of the government and failed to eliminate NPR funding?

According to Wikipedia, the best source I could find, “In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from local funding and 10% of their revenue from the federal funding in the form of CPB grants.”

It would seem that eliminating the small amount of funding it receives from the federal government would benefit NPR rather than harming it by insulating it from criticisms that it is a mouthpiece for big-government, left-wing causes. Freed of its federal sponsors, perhaps NPR could become the left’s version of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh?