Public Broadcasting Targeted By House

Letter sent to Congressman Ralph Regula, June 15, 2005

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Dear Congressman,

In reference to your remarks from the following article in the Washington Post:

"Public Broadcasting Targeted By House"
Panel Seeks to End CPB's Funding Within 2 Years
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 10, 2005; Page A01

…[”Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), the subcommittee's chairman, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public radio or TV programs. "It's pretty simple," he said in an interview. "The thinking was, there's not enough money for everything. There are 'must-do,' 'need-to-do' and 'nice-to-do' programs that we have to pay for. [Public broadcasting] is somewhere between a 'need-to-do' and a 'nice-to-do.' "]…

Mr. Regula, please forward me a list of how you categorize our government's ‘programs’ under each of your column headings “Must Do”, “Need to Do”, and “Nice to Do”. I’ve included the following diagram as a guide when creating your list:

In the age of a hyper-commercialized media system, one of the few places to turn for news and programming that is outside the ‘For-Profit’ corporate realm is public media such as NPR. Congress must save NPR, PBS and local public stations. We the people trust them for in-depth news and educational children's programming. These stations are paid for “by the people for the people.” It’s crucial to a social democracy to have programming that is paid for by the public! It's money well spent!

To cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) would leave our media in the hands of Five conglomerates that dominate television news: AOL Time Warner, Disney (ABC), GE (NBC), News Corp. (Fox), and Viacom (CBS and UPN).

These conglomerates own television, radio, and cable stations; networks; program production companies; and affiliated websites. Together, the conglomerates control an estimated two-thirds or more of the programming that appears on prime-time television, including most major news channels and programs. Further, there are only two cable systems, Comcast and Time Warner. Some 95 percent of households have access to only one cable company.

Ideally, people are best served when media companies are independently owned. Diversity among media owners promotes competition and helps ensure that people can find a variety of information and viewpoints. With the lack of diversity in ownership with today’s media conglomerates it makes more apparent the need for public media.

I urge you to reconsider your position on cutting funding to the CBP.

Sincerely,

Jason Lord