The message from the political right to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the umbrella organization that partially funds the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) and the U.S. Public Broadcasting [TV] Service (PBS), was clear: “Go woke, go broke,” where “woke” indicated liberal or progressive social and political positions, and “broke” meant the loss of U.S. government funds to the tune of $535 million a year — which represents its whole budget. As a consequence, CPB has begun to wind down after the federal government yanked two years of advance funding.
But a recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Andy Kessler, an American businessman, investor, and author who writes “The Inside View” for the Journal, has made the political right’s case against CPB a bit wrong by writing (in an article headlined “We Won’t Miss Government Media”) that “Freedom of the press should mean freedom from government control that comes via funding.”
In an e-mail, VideoAge‘s Water Cooler told Kessler it was confused by his statement since the government is cutting funding because CPB doesn’t want to be under the government’s control.
VideoAge is still waiting for a reply from Kessler, which could ultimately demonstrate the political right’s wrongful consideration for CPB and its public stations.
In his Journal Op-Ed piece Kessler, author of several books, some about technology and markets, acknowledged that he used NPR to promote his books and that his family enjoyed PBS’s Sesame Street, but noted that he believes YouTube and streaming services are better than public media.
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