House Subcommittee Proposes Zeroing Out Public Media Funding
In the bill, which the committee released Tuesday, CPB would lose its advance appropriations for 2015 —budgeting is always two years ahead to try and insulate it from politics — and would have its already-appropriated 2013 budget cut by $111.3 and its 2014 budget cut by essentially double that ($222.5 million) in the interests of “encouraging [the] CPB to operate exclusively on private funds.” That would be a neat trick, since CPB’s sole mission is to distribute the federal funding that makes up an average 15% of noncom stations budgets — less for some stations, considerably more for others. Noncoms handle the private funding end via pledges, grants and sponsorships.
“This proposal flies in the face of the will of the American people, who routinely rank public broadcasting as one of the best investments the federal government makes and who overwhelmingly support our work and our public service mission, across the ideological spectrum,” said APTS president Patrick Butler in a statement.
(Image via SaveTheNews.org | Stop the War on Public Media)