There’s a reason that Clark Kent and Peter Parker are reporters. Yes, that’s right: reporters are superheroes.
I’m serious. By maintaining the free flow of information, journalists do an invaluable public service for the American republic. We the people need an accurate, up-to-date portrait of the country to make informed decisions on Election Day.
As Thomas Jefferson once put it, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
The news is not simply another industry, and the invisible hand of capitalism cannot fully capture the true value of high-quality journalism. Neither does the profit of a university indicate its ability to educate its students, nor does the profit of a newspaper signify its ability to cover important news stories.
The news industry, for that reason, should be looked at as a public good, just like education and research.
It is in that light that last week’s House vote to defund National Public Radio should be seen. It would be crazy to imagine an elected official proposing the end of federal education funding. Voting to defund NPR is just as crazy.
The one danger that comes with public subsidies for journalism is that government-sponsored journalists might not be critical of the politicians who sign their paychecks. The public wouldn’t agree: PBS is more trusted than any other news network, and NPR is well trusted too.
In fact, it seems most Americans hold less trust in CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and other news networks precisely because they are for-profit. The race to the bottom in pursuit of audiences for ads discredits news networks even more than association with Washington does.
If an informed American public is something you believe in, NPR deserves more funding – not less.
![Seniors Garrett Batt, Tom White, Emmanuel Nzaramba and Jack Calverley work together in preparation for the Spring Fling. “We decided to host this because March is kind of a slow month [in which] there’s not really that much happening, so I just thought it would be fun to put pep back into everyone so people could look forward to something this month,” senior Delcie Peter said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-20-at-10.28.14-PM-1200x832.png)
George • Apr 2, 2011 at 11:55 AM
Free Speach includes the rights to criticize your government, not the right to be funded by the government. It's an unnecessary expenditure of a government that needs to reduce spending. Should we fail to reduce the outrageous deficit, we may fail to save our democracy from bankruptcy. Each day we continue to mortgage the future for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. It's time to cut out ALL non-essential spending. Public funding of NPR is a very small portion of their annual budget (reportedly less than 3%), they should have no problems finding and cutting wasteful spending to offset this revenue loss.