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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 3, 2005 / 27 Tammuz, 5765

GOPers should stop dithering about reducing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's subsidies — and eliminate them altogether

By John Stossel


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | My cable company made me a remarkable offer: They want to add a new channel to my cable subscription — and you will pay for it. The channel will have liberal news, highbrow entertainment and a variety of educational programming.

Sounds insane, and yet the channel isn't new. It's called PBS.

Public broadcasting is a classic example of welfare for the well-off. We PBS viewers are 44 percent more likely than other Americans to make more than $150,000 a year.

I enjoy PBS, but it hardly seems fair that the government demands you buy it for me. If I want to see opera, I should pay for it myself. Why should you be taxed to pump "La Boheme" into my living room? It barely made sense in 1967, when most Americans only had the Big Three broadcast networks, but now there are hundreds of channels. If there's a demand for opera or BBC drama, the market will provide it.

Not everything on PBS is for elites only, of course. The network is justly famous for programs like "Sesame Street." But popular programs are just that — popular. That means they have other ways to get money. People already give so much money to PBS that today, it only gets 15 percent of its funds from the federal government. As David Boaz, author of "Libertarianism: A Primer," points out, businesses and nonprofits deal with 15 percent revenue losses all the time. If NPR and PBS lost all their federal money, they wouldn't disappear."


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Republicans should stop dithering about reducing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's subsidies and eliminate them altogether. Of course, when anyone suggests cutting the PBS budget, people say, "they're trying to kill 'Sesame Street'!" But "Sesame Street" is big business and would survive in any environment. "Children's programming that has an audience does not need taxpayer subsidies," says Jacob Sullum of Reason. "Noggin, which is more 'commercial-free' than PBS stations, carries 12 hours of kids' shows (including two different versions of 'Sesame Street') every day. Parent-acceptable children's programming can also be seen on Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and ABC Family."

Some people, who apparently have never watched "20/20" or "60 Minutes," claim we won't have tough journalism on TV unless the public pays for it. Only PBS will do "honest" documentaries, they say, because PBS isn't dependent on corporate support. Twenty-five years ago, Ralph Nader proclaimed that consumer reporting would never appear on commercial TV. It would only thrive on public TV, he said, because commercial stations would defer to advertisers.

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Today, it's clear that Nader was totally wrong (as he is so often). PBS carries almost no consumer reporting, probably because the bureaucrats who run it are too nervous about offending anyone . By contrast, there is plenty of consumer reporting on commercial TV. I criticized my employers' most valued customers for years. For heaping abuse on the people who paid us, I was given promotions.

Why? Because viewers want tough news — even news hostile to big advertisers. Commercial television provides it because even if sponsors boycott, the money other sponsors are willing to spend to reach the viewers the reports attract makes up the loss. The free market serves its customers, and in the TV business, the customers are viewers.

PBS, on the other hand, is broadcasting by bureaucracy. This is not a good thing. We should have separation of news and state. "We wouldn't want the federal government to publish a national newspaper, writes Boaz, "why should we have a government television network and a government radio network? If anything should be kept separate from government and politics, it's the news and public affairs programming that Americans watch. When government brings us the news — with all the inevitable bias and spin — the government is putting its thumb on the scales of democracy. It's time for that to stop."

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JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.


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