A nonprofit advocacy group supposedly dedicated to promoting “independent media ownership” has posted a letter attacking Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., for their efforts to end federal taxpayer funding of public broadcasting. According to Josh Stearns of the group Free Press, the $445 million that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets each year is a “tiny federal investment” that “is vital to helping support programming that commercial media won’t showcase and provides an important foundation for stations around the country to build on.”
But a new Cato Institute report, due for release Monday, makes clear that Stearns is talking through his hat. Many Americans will be surprised to learn that public broadcasting thrived long before the federal government started subsidizing it. In fact, President Johnson only created the CPB in 1967 in order to exert more government control over this previously independent medium. The reason: Too much of the programming in his day was feared to be “radical.”
