NPR gets so little tax money that it will die if it loses the money (07-17-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Early this morning, the Senate approved the recision as it's called that included a billion dollars over like two years of cuts to NPR and PBS, finally making good on promises that Republicans have been making to their voters for darn near three decades. Okay, and I'm happy about it. That's not to say that I want an PR or PBS to fail. It's not to say that you know, the cuts aren't going to hurt them in some way. They will, but they will have to adapt to that because that's the right thing to do. It is ethically wrong to take money from me to pay for my competitor. That's wrong. And their are arguments in defense of their taxpayer subsidies. Don't hold water. They are unpersuasive to me. Now you are free to disagree. You are free to disagree that their programming is biased. I disagree with that. I believe their programming is biased. I listen to their programming. I've heard it. I used to work for an NPR affiliate. As I said last hour and have said repeatedly throughout my career, I will quote their work, particularly the local affiliate WFA. I quote their work. Steve Harrison does good work on transit related issues. And when I worked there, I liked everybody that I worked with, very nice people. They liked me, they gave me a full time job. I mailed coffee mugs and stuff to people. So I don't have any ill will towards NPR or their affiliates or any of the people that work there. I do take umbridge at the subsidies the taxpayers use or have taken from them, the subsidies the taxpayers are forced to pay to support these outlets when I don't believe it to be necessary or ethical. That's my position. I got a bunch of emails here we were talking about at last hour, so we'll keep going here because I've got a lot of people weighing in on this. This is from Ron. It's a peat meal, and he says, in the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, I traveled for work nearly every week, and I religiously listened to Radio Reader in the morning and All Things Considered in the afternoon. Though NPR has always leaned left, they did not inject a political component into every single segment back then. I agree with that. I grew up listening to NPR. Literally, Dad listened to it on his commute from Long Island into the city, fifty miles each way, so he was listening to NPR morning and afternoons. We would listen on weekends with the car guys and stuff Lake Woebegone Days and all of that. Yeah, I grew up listening to this station, or to the NPR station in New York. It has shifted. A lot of people that work over there have had their brains broken by particularly Trump most recently. And that's what Uri Berliner said, longtime business editor at NPR who wrote the piece about how like everybody that works there is of the left, there's nobody on the right over at NPR. None of the editors out of like eighty seven editors. They're all liberals. So again, don't tell me that that doesn't affect their coverage. I've worked in this industry long enough to know it absolutely does affect your coverage because you have blind spots for certain stories that don't break through your bubble. You aren't even aware of the stories. And then if you do become aware of a story that maybe started in conservative media, you tell it a different way. You interview different people about what the crux. Of the story is. And don't even get me started on the COVID stuff or the Hunter Biden laptop stuff. They refuse to cover it, saying it's not news. They said, this is not news, it's not true. They just they shut down everybody. They said, oh, the lablique theory was debunked, It wasn't. They flat out made coverage decisions based on political philosophy. And again, you are free to do that, but you are not free to take my taxpayer money to do it. That's all. Back to this email from Ronnie says, now nearly every single or set, now nearly every single segment or darn near every one of them, goes almost immediately off on some woke political tangent. In their defense, they don't consider it to be biased because they assume that their positions are just statements of fact. Yes they do. Oh my gosh, everything. Is j six the democracy right, everything is filtered through these prisms and the intersectionality, the gender queer stuff. It's you know, it's all through that prism, Tim says, regarding NPR, PBS, USAID and all the other cuts. Oh the humanity. Let's protest mostly by old white farts and awfuls awfls are affluent white female liberals. I told my wife that I'm tempted to stage a counter protest by putting on an adult diaper and baby bonnet, then handing out pacifiers at one of their protests. Uh, if you do, I want pictures, Tim, Let me see here. This is from Eric Pete. If you have never seen the show Parks and rec Representing Public Radio, you have to check it out. Look for a clip called Leslie sends out a bat signal on YouTube. Okay, I will have to look. It's one of those shows I do want to watch, I just have never gotten around to. Doing so. I don't know who this is, but it's an eight oh three number I'm so glad you have a text line. Now I can participate without having to wait on the phone line. Yes, well you're welcome, and thank you to Liberty Buke, Liberty Buick GMC as well. So, Nick, who do we have on line one? On hold? Okay, see our phone lines. This is what happens when you don't get the taxpayer subsidies. Our callscreen program is blanking on the names we have. Harry who wants to discuss the Epstein witch hunt? Harry, we're not talking about Epstein. I mean right now. I talked about it the day. I'm busy dragging NPR. Here, come on, let me see here. This is from This is from the text line from Rich. NPR is using the same argument as Planned Parenthood. If you cut our funding, people will suffer. Yeah, it's always the same arguments, right. The last great NPR program was car Talk co Talk. Yeah, it was excellent, pure crap since then. That's from Nikki. The money component of this is interesting, and I'm going to go into some of this because a lot of people don't realize how the funding actually works, which is why you hear these confusing messages coming out of the NPR. People and the PBS people, mainly the NPR folks, And that's really where most of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting where that funding goes, Like seventy percent of the CBP money goes to or CPB money goes to NPR. So I will go through that mechanism. This is from David Strawm at hot air dot com. He says, NPR is where you go to see why making kids transgender is the only way to prevent a suicide epidemic, And NPR is where you go when you need to be told that you are a very good person because you hate Republicans. If you are under the illusion that there's no partisan bent to NPR and PBS's coverage, feel free to turn yourself into a pretzel explaining why Democrats are so eager to save it and Republicans have been trying to defund it for years. As I mentioned, you're a berliner. He worked there twenty five years and he wrote a piece explaining that NPR is biased, and they forced him out after he said so. Unfortunately, there is actually a cohort of over educated liberals who honestly believe that NPR and PBS are the gold standard of reporting and that making cartoons about the wonders of drag and top surgery, that this is a great leap forward in edge hating our kids. They are welcome to believe that, but not to our tax dollars to push that crap onto the airwaves. These quote unquote nonprofits claim that they get almost no money from the government, but then they tell us they cannot function without government subsidies. And I mentioned this in the last hour. I'm going to pick this back up also because I've got a couple of sound bites they've now that they started taking to the airwaves to make these arguments that rural America depends on their weather forecasts, that rural Americans rely on NPR for their emergency alerts, which is an unconscious admission that they don't have a clue about rural America. Right. I don't think I've ever heard rural Americans dialing into NPR. Okay, like they're not dialing up Morning Edition to get the like the latest soybean prices. Come on the fact that you think that rural Americans are listening to NPR in any sort of large numbers, and that they don't have any coverage for any other radio stations that provide them alternative content or to give them the eas alerts proves you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know this population that you claim to be servicing, all right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription I use the vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right, so, as I understand it, Harry is now called back on topic. Well we shall see. Hello Harry, Welcome to the show. Hello, pleite, Harry? Do I'm doing all right? What's up? I don't think they should cut the phone, NPR and and PBS because PBS, I mean I think they should because PBS is kind of like Beestme Street. The used to me Sesme Street was really education. That's kind of It's kind of for funny people. It's what for for for the funny people, like. For the for the funny people. Madam Got Sugar and the Tight Got Sugar? Are you trying to say that it appeals to gay people? Is that what you're trying to do? You watch a lot of Wait, do you watch a lot of Sesame Street nowadays? Yes? Wa Ait? Wait what's the last episode of Sesame Street that you watched? When the garbage? I don't believe, Harry, I don't believe you actually watch a lot of Sesame Street. I think you wanted to call about Epstein and then you just try to backfill this so you could get on to make some other point or about whatever. I'm not really sure, but I just did. I don't feel comfortable where that was going. I don't like I got the sense my radar was tripped that you may not be completely on the up and up. I may be wrong, but feel free to text seven four five, seven eleven ten. Like this person did very upset when I said, I'm not talking about Epstein, I'm talking about NPR. I think I actually said that I'm I'm dragging in PR and this person, are you not talking about Epstein because you got your orders from Trump? Oh and that's from the fella or gal who is the avid NPR listener. Yes, I'm on a group chat with Donald Trump, and so he texts me directly because he knows that I've been such a huge supporter of his from the very moment he wrote down the escalator. Yeah, that's it, you got me. I guess he'd be a little upset that I did a whole hour on the Epstein thing on like Monday, I think it was Monday, third Hour, did a whole hour on it. So, yeah, that's me. Studiously avoiding the Epstein story. Goodness anyway, No, I try to talk about things that are topical, and we try to mix up the topics as well. And so this is me mixing up the topics, and I'm following along with the developments in the Epstein stuff. And when there's some new development, I will I will talk about it. I've talked about the schism and the fighting between the Magalan people over it, but that's neither here nor there today. Today, today we celebrate a victory, a victory in defunding NPR and PBS because our tax dollars should not be used to pay for programming that is widely available on all sorts of platforms. This is from an op ed at The Hill dot com and this was written in twenty twenty three. Okay, so this is two years old, two plus years old. It's written by Howard Huesock. He's a senior fellow and domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as a member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors for five years, and he was appointed to that post by that right winger Barack Obama. Okay, here's what he wrote in twenty twenty three. It is misleading for NPR to assert that it receives just one percent of its funding from the federal government. The reality is more complex and should raise questions for those who care about the future of quote unquote public media. NPR may receive little direct federal funding, but a good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly based on federal law. So here's how it works. Under the terms of the nineteen sixty seven Public Broadcasting Act, funds are allocated annually to a non governmental agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, overseen by a board of presidential appointees. That corporation CPB, in turn, can choose to support original programming that's produced by public TV or public radio, but by law, it has to direct much of its annual funding, which is more than half a billion at this point, They have to direct most of their funds to local public TV and public radio stations across the country. They do this via community service grants, right, So this is grant money from the CPB that goes to the local station. Those local stations then if they want to broadcast things like all things considered fresh air this American life, whatever it is. If they want to air those shows, any programming that is produced by NPR or its competitor, the American Public Radio Network APR, those local stations then have to pay NPR for those shows. The local stations are actually required by law to have a certain amount of national programming. The nineteen sixty seven Acts specifies that of the funds they receive from the CPB, twenty three percent of the funds shall be available for distribution among the licensees and permittees of public radio stations, solely to be used for acquiring or producing programming that is to be distributed nationally and is designed to serve the needs of a national audience. So if you are a local station and you want to air morning edition, you have to pay for it with the money that the FEDS just gave you from the taxpayers, which then flows to NPR. Or you can make your own programming that's of a national appeal has to be distributed nationally, And if you don't make national programming, then you don't get the money get you don't get those funds, So it's a pass through. It's it's almost like a money laundering kind of a deal. For NPR because the grants come down to the local stations. Local stations then have to kick it up to NPR. That's the funding model. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions, with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables in your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Ashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Barry texts in So I just learned something, Pete. If somebody runs a nonprofit and accepts federal money, the federal government controls the nonprofit. Yep, Yeah, that that's basically how that works. You have to keep following their rules. You know, there are rules for NPR and how they can advertise things. Unless this has changed, But when I was working at an affiliate, there were specific rules like you couldn't do prices. You couldn't talk about the price of your thing, couldn't compare it to another product, you couldn't say, oh, we're better than them, and you couldn't do calls to action. Come on down and take advantage of this. You can't do those things. I don't know why, I'm just saying there are restrictions, and if you take the government money. You got to play by their rules. It controls you, and then that obviously puts you in a different kind of a position. Barry says, thanks so much for what you're doing. Keep it coming. Okay, here's the last bit from again. This is Howard Huesock, who was formerly on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting put there by Barack Obama. Back in twenty twenty three, he wrote an op ed at The Hill talking about NPR's funding. And he's writing this from a position of trying to find a way to preserve the funding. But he's quibbling, if you will, with the argument that NPR just gets a tiny little bit of federal money. It's so little actually that if you cut it, they will die. Anyway, he says, it has become possible. Indeed, it is commonplace to access NPR programming directly from NPR itself on a smartphone. This sort of access, known as over the top, means listeners can bypass local stations altogether. See he's complaining about the law that requires the funding to go to the local stations first and then them having to pay NPR to get. The national programming. He says, the question then arises as to the future of local NPR affiliates. There can be an important role for them, notably in establishing or expanding local newsrooms, partnering with struggling local newspapers, or otherwise filling the voices of so called news deserts. Yeah, that's another line that's become in vogue. Remember food deserts. Remember when we started hearing that term about ten years ago or so. Now they're talking about news deserts. And look, the local NPR affiliate here has a partnership with I believe the Charlotte Observer. I know they have one with the Charlotte Ledger. So yeah, you can do partnerships like this to increase your reach beyond just your your radio station. Also, I mentioned this last hour. They get grants from various foundations that pay for a reporter position to focus on the types of you know, liberal causes that the foundation wants to amplify. There are positions funded at and this is not just at the NPR affiliate, but also at the Charlotte Observer. And they disclose it as they should, but they put it in the at the bottom of the article. There was there was also this ridiculous argument that everybody in rural America is relying on NPR affiliates for emergency weather alerts, right yeah, and that if they don't get this funding, then people are going to lose access to these weather alerts. As if everybody doesn't have a smartphone, like there are more people of smartphones then listen to NPR stations. Okay, that's just a fact. There's greater coverage with smartphones than there is with the radio sticks operated by NPR affiliates. So here's Senator Eric Schmidt speaking on the floor of the Senate yesterday and about the you know, the calls to keep the funding in place to preserve the emergency alert system. He calls this, this whole narrative a lie. Basis saying that the funding CPB will somehow prevent Americans from receiving emergency alerts is demonstrably not only fear monitoring, but not true emergency alerts the kind you see on your cell phone and that air on TV and radio stations are sent out via system funded and operated by FEMA called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or IPAUSE. If we were send cbb's annual funding, IPAUSE will continue to operate as usual sending emergency alerts to cell phones, public broadcasters and commercial broadcasters alike. Simply put, we don't need to subsidize left wing propaganda in order to keep Americans safe. Now, you can disagree with his characterization of NPR as left wing propaganda if you wish. That's not the point. The point is these concerns are simply fear mongering. But that's what we have been treated to. And again, like I've been in this industry a long time, I've complained about taxpayer funding going to my competitors, and I look at it strictly from that perspective. They may be. Filling a niche for for liberal listeners, but I don't care about that. Fill the niche, go for it, you know, like Air America did, and you know, we know how that turned out for them. Like they are still on the air someplace, I think, aren't. They are free to run whatever programming they want, construct whatever model they wish, just you can't use taxpayer money for it. That's it. And this argument that it's going to jeopardize rural americans lives because they won't be able to get the eas on an NPR station is ridiculous improves you don't know the audience that you're serving. Well, here's the thing, I have no doubt they do know the audience they are serving. I know that firsthand. I know they know. Okay, So that tells me they're just saying it in order to get rural Americans to feel afraid. Why would they do that. Well, I've talked about this before. Democrats are trying to lose less badly in rural areas, and so if they can turn this argument into a Republicans hate the rural Americans they claim to represent. If they can turn it into that kind of an argument, maybe they will lose fewer votes in the rural areas. That's what I suspect is going on, because the argument that you're going to lose emergency alert systems is ridiculous. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and art. Stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service. Converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talent and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come. Who you are, visit creative video dot com. This is from Steve. It's a Pete tweet. Pete, I, personally I'm glad NPR and PBS are losing tax dollar funding. I don't want our money going to any broadcast network, no matter what their political leanings are. Exactly, that's exactly. That's my only point here. This is a post from Adrian Vermule at Harvard Law. What I find puzzling and interesting about NPR is the same thing in miniature that I find puzzling about liberalism in many contexts. And it's this. This should sound familiar. To you, by the way, if you listen to this program, the utter inability to impose limits on itself liberalism or leftism, I would say, but this guy says, liberalism like NPR has this inability to impose limits on itself, even when the failure to do so is obviously self destructive. If NPR had even pursued its ideological agenda merely to the eighty percent level rather than essentially one hundred percent level, it would not be in the position that it is in now. But they just couldn't help themselves. It's like a dictator who rigs the election at one hundred to zero rather than the far more plausible seventy five, twenty five or some such number. Yeah, there's because this's what I keep saying. You can never go too far. The left can never go too far. It's it's baked into the ideology. It's baked into the philosophy or religion. If you will, let's go to the phone lines. Here is this Brian, Welcome. To the show. Hello, Brian, can you hear me, Yes, sir, I can hear you. Yeah, yeah, I was know you weren't listening to the gentleman that we that he was calling. Uh he was talking about the emergency signals that go out through MPR, and they were emergency signals that go out through m PR. That does happen. Yeah, it also happens on every other radio station and TV stations. Listen. I'm not I'm not I'm not arguing about that. I'm just saying that they do go out on NPR. I'm not saying that they don't go out on any other stations. But I know that he said something about famous and so that gives those alerts? Now did give to those uh Texas plus those Texas plus? Did FEMA alert those people down there? Yeah? There were there were warnings that went out beforehand. How did they go out through the IPAUS system? Through who the I? As Senator Schmidt said in that in that quote that you obviously listened to very closely, it was he talked about the IPAUS system. Okay, so so they went out and so that system didn't work. What's that that system didn't work because that was the other failure? Well? Yeah, because well but do you right, do you know why? Do you know why that the camp particularly why the the all the kids at the camp, why they didn't get those alerts? Oh wow, okay, but but but but you're saying that they went out. Okay, okay, they did go out, all right, Well you don't have that. Look, you don't have to believe me. But you called and asked me, and I'm telling and what I. Just told you. They do. You know, absolutely everything that you say is planet towards the ideology of a quote unquote conservatism. And I don't even know why you guys say that you're a conservative, because you're liberal as well. So I'm liberal on what you know, I'm liberal on your phone dropped out? You said we're liberal on what? Yeah, you're not conservative on everything in your life? Aren't your liberal about something? Yeah? That's why I am conservative about everything. No, that's why I have called myself a lower case L libertarian. It's why I also refer I make a distinction between liberal and leftist. You said you're a libertarian. I said, I'm a lower case L libertarian. I lean more towards libertarianism, but I am not a capital L registered libertarian because I disagree with them on a whole bunch of stuff. You don't know what you are? Then obviously you know. I know, I know what I am. But here's the thing. You want to apply this label to me in order to play some game of gotcha, and I know I make it difficult because I'm a free thinker. That's that's a better term you can use that. I mean, you're still young, You're still young. How young do you think I am? I think, I bet I'm older than you. No, I don't think. You How old are you? You have to oh, Brian, how old are you? Brian? Brian? How old are you? I'm not going to dispose that. Why not believe me? I'm definitely older than you. You don't know that? No? All right, Well how old do you think I am? Because you're too cowardly to tell me your age? How old do you think I am? I will give you you probably late forty early fifty year old young man. And so you are seventy. And I'm not quite seventy, but I'm closer to that than you are. Okay, so I am younger than you. No, regardless, listen, regardless of that, regardless of that. It's just that you know, like I said, I. Think it's not But here's the thing, Brian, it's not regardless of that, because you made a point to bring my age into it, indicating that that somehow negates my arguments. And it does. No, it doesn't. Just because you're older doesn't make you smarter or wiser, Brian. Right, right, right, And because you're a libertarian doesn't make you right. I didn't. No. Look, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong on any number of things. But here's the thing. Just like you, I don't believe that I hold opinions if they are incorrect. If I held an opinion that I thought was wrong, I would change that to one that I think is right, much like you do. Right. You don't hold opinions that you think are wrong, do you. I try not to write me neither. So you and I when we disagree, most people virtually everybody does. In fact, I don't think I've ever encountered a single human being that knowingly holds an opinion that is incorrect. Right. They believe the things that they believe for reasons. He's your president too, he's your president too. So look, everybody believes. Everybody believes that the opinions that Brian, Brian Brian, Brian, Brian, everybody believes that the opinion as they hold are true. So you and I may disagree on a particular issue, but we just came to different conclusions based on evidence. That's why I try to present evidence to support my opinion and you're free to disagree. But like you were the one that said, somehow, age is relevant to this discussion, and it wasn't. You asked for information about the warning systems, didn't term you brought it into the debate. You brought it into the argument and said that somehow or another, if I got older, I would agree with you. That's you making my age relevant to the argument. You have been, Brian. You did. I was saying this that you had time to evrol. Yeah, so in other words, I'm wrong because I'm younger. See that's what you exactly. You did not disprove my point. Okay, you actually reinforced my point. You made it for me. Once again. Thank you for the call, Brian. I think. But it took Texas Public Radio nineteen hours to post anything about the flooding on its social media. National Weather Service posted its alert July third, uh and it was half a day later when the flood hit and the NPR affiliate actually did not carry any alerts whatsoever. So those are the facts, buddy, I don't know what to tell you. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.