Let's be clear about non-profit media

Non-profit media such as NPR are the best media available. They get the story right and are not motivated by profit. Not being constrained by a corporation that owns them, they are much more likely to ask tough questions, critically analyze claims by our leaders, and give us the information we need to function fully in a democracy.

Here is an important example.

A study by the Program on International Policy at the University of Maryland reported that a majority of Americans had significant misperceptions about Sadaam Hussein and Iraq prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The study found that 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found (they did not exist), 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq (there were none), and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq (it did not). More than half (60%) had at least one of these three misperceptions.

The misperceptions were also found to be related to support for the war on Iraq. For example:

Among those with none of the misperceptions, only 23% reported supporting the war;

Among those with one of the misperceptions, 53% reported supporting the war;

Among those with two of the misperceptions, 78% reported supporting the war;

Among those with all three misperceptions, 86% reported supporting the war.

So being uninformed was related to higher support for the war and being informed was related to lower support for the war.

How does relate to the media and NPR?

Well, where you get your information impacts how informed or uninformed you are about the world and ultimately whether you support proposed policies like when leaders start talking about going to war.

The study found that the number of misconceptions people held varied depending on their primary source of news. Viewers of TV News were most likely to have at least one misperception, led by Fox News (80%), followed by CBS (71%), ABC (61%), and NBC and CNN (55%). Only about half (47%) of people who reported relying on print sources had at least one misperception, followed by only 23% of listeners of National Public Radio (NPR) and viewers of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

Got that? Listeners of NPR were the most informed and thus the least likely to support the war, a war that turned out to be a major, costly disaster.

So when a Senator from Florida (who is on the short list of candidates for Vice President) starts questioning spending public money on public broadcasting, someone needs to call him out on it. Stated simply, if more people listened to NPR and less watched Fox News, we'd be a whole lot smarter and a whole lot less likely to be duped into stupid and unnecessary wars.

http://news.yahoo.com/while-npr-sen-rubio-questions-usefulness-npr-154934066--abc-news-politics.html

Goodbye to public media???

We've talked and you've read about the threats of corporate media and the importance of public media.

Yet, after only a few weeks into the 112th Congress, and Republicans are already attempting to pull the plug on public media.

In a budget proposal made public on Wednesday, House Republicans announced plans to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more.

If the Republicans are successful, it would be a tremendous blow to the entire public interest media sector.

We cannot allow Republicans to destroy public media.
Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!

Republicans are disingenuously claiming that they need to cut funding for public media because of budgetary constraints. But what they fail to highlight is that national public broadcasting is remarkably cost effective, providing local news and information, free of charge, for millions of viewers while only receiving about .0001% of the federal budget.¹

More to the point, it's nearly impossible to put a price tag on the actual value of public broadcasting.
Public media is one of the last bulwarks against the corporate media where the combination of consolidation and profit-motive has long since shifted the focused to infotainment rather than substantive news. In many rural and less affluent communities, broadcasters rely on federal funding to provide the only available high-quality news and public affairs programming.

Without public media, corporate media monopolies would increase their already large control of what we see on television, hear on the radio or read in the newspaper.

This outcome should deeply worry all of us. The increased accumulation and consolidation of corporate power is a threat to our democracy. And nowhere is this more evident than in our media.
At a time when media consolidation is shrinking the number of perspectives we have access to over the airwaves and when newsrooms are shrinking, we need more diversity in our media not less. And we simply cannot afford to lose what public media brings to the table.

Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!

Conservatives have longed for any opportunity to defund NPR, PBS and other public media. And with Speaker Boehner wielding the gavel, it looks like they may finally get their wish.

Don't let Congress pull the plug on NPR and PBS! Tell them reject cuts to public broadcasting.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/save_npr_pbs/?rc=fb_share2