Pensions for public employees do need to be re-examined however. People are living too long these days after they stop working for large pensions to be viable any longer, especially with such low taxes in this country. The money simply does not exist.

I am all for retirement benefits, but pensions are a serious part of the budget troubles of many locales.

That being said, anyone who was promised a pension in a contract should get it in full, as per the contract. Anything less is stealing.

At least a part of the right-wing frothing about public broadcasting is designed to mask increasing corporate influence on both content and staffing. A major side effect of "defunding theatre" in Congress is to keep low-intelligence, low-information voters riled up about it. In my area a few years ago someone shot up the exact microwave receiver, on a very remote tower with multiple antennas, that fed our local 15-watt public-radio translator. It took about six weeks and several thousand dollars to get it fixed.

To me the scandal is how corrupted by corporate money public media has become. This includes NPR. I realize local affiliates do the best they can with what little they have, but the national outlets are to me way too deferential to the corporate agenda. This means few stories on malfeasance by corporate executives or of the general corruption of public policy by monied interests. Instead we get news that adopts the Wall Street/Washington Beltway bias (i.e. the serious people), corporate/right wing friendly discussion of complex issues (like the public pension issue) or cute human interest stories, like what to name the newest panda bear cub at the national zoo. I remember when the Occupy Movement was in full flower how hesitant NPR and PBS were to cover the story. They willfully ignored the story for weeks. NPR even fired the host (Lisa Simeone) for the show World of Opera because she was involved in an Occupy group in the DC area.

Add to this the bias our public media shows toward our aggressive foreign policy. I particularly lost faith in NPR during the run up to the Iraq War, when they ran story after story about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction with little or no opposing views. Or how brave our soldiers were at preparing for war. Or all the gee whiz, isn't this great stories on the new weapon systems that were going to be used in the war. I started calling NPR National Propaganda Radio, or National Pentagon Radio. And people consider NPR and PBS liberal. What a joke.

@3 Ssssssssnap!

the koch bros sponsor shows on pbs. mara lyacinth of foxnews is a regular on npr. it's all good.

Oh please.

NPR, prior to the Bush presidency, used to be left but journalistically sound. They covered stories in sufficient detail you could ignore their pronounced leftwing bias.

Since then they're no more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic party.

Anyone who thinks those leftists are conservative is insane. Or a lefty extremist. Well, same thing really.

ProPublica and Al Jazeera America are still solid sources of long form, investigative journalism.

@3 +1

Some progressives also call NPR Nice Polite Republicans.

I've read that people who work at NPR say that if they didn't put out their conservative party line, the big corporation foundations would stop giving. The Lewis Powell memo is the gift that keeps on giving.

@6, Corporate center right dems get their party line out there too.

@7

You're right. Separate out their hatred of America and Al Jazeera does decent journalism. It's just more work than it's worth to filter their biases.

@1 - Ugh. There's nothing worse than so-called progressives looking at the race to the bottom with workers in this country and nodding in approval.

The Repubs mounted an extended -and rather successful- campaign against PBS/NPR on the day Reagan said "If the public want Public Television, the public can pay for it"... as if US tax dollars weren't somehow "public money". With the legislation that followed he reduced funding to PBS et. al., essentially throwing them to the wolves, knowing full well that receipt of corporate money to keep operating would eventually squelch their opinion and make it more corporate-friendly.

Since the early 80s', Govt funded "Public Broadcast" has declined both in quality and style.

In a flanking move, they have been repeatedly vilified as "liberal", despite their clear Corporate/Beltway promotional bias. This propaganda campaign has taken in the likes of even such typically robust thinkers as Seattleblues here, who has been thoroughly convinced, and now clearly believes that black is in fact, white.

I would like to take this moment to compare PBS/NPR with another gov't funded broadcast agency, the venerable BBC.

The BBC, despite some obvious biases, has been the yardstick by which to compare serious news and programming. Their website never deletes a news article, you can always find anything they published online, unlike CNN or FOX. They do actual reporting, sending their stringers into hotspots abroad as well as at home. They produce quality fare such as the amazing stream of Attenborough nature documentaries. And they don't have compromising advertisements.

We, the USA, the world's RICHEST nation, could have had that. But no, we prefer to keep our citizens dumb and reactionary, as Seattleblues clearly, yet sadly, demonstrates.

There's lots to discuss here and I don't have enough time today. But a couple of points:

Most of the discussions about public-broadcasting bias, even fairly recent ones, have roots in data and studies going back ten years or more. Google "study of npr bias" and look around. Political polarization and the ever-increasing money being poured into political races from all sources has raised the stakes.

NPR still does a lot of solid reporting and I listen for hours every day. If you can't go to the daily rundowns and find at least a half-dozen stories that pique your interest, whatever your politics, I'm more worried about your lack of intellectual curiosity. Poynter reported that NPR viewers were best informed (able to answer questions) and Fox viewers the least, but there are interesting details—RTWT.

A bigger issue for me is NPR's regional bias (emphasis on the coasts, the East in particular). They are getting better with some shows now being run out of NPR West in Culver City. But some local content is outstanding—on a long road trip last summer I was blown away by the hours of content from NET (Nebraska Educational Telecommunications), which feeds public-radio stations that reach across Nebraska and into neighboring states. Terrific reporting and talk shows.

^It was during that trip that the last "Talk of the Nation" aired from NPR, so I was grateful to have something else to listen to. So far "Here & Now," its replacement during midday, has not won a place in my heart.

@7 I think Rolling Stone magazine does some solid investigative reporting as well.

@13, NPR viewers may be informed, and being more informed than a Fox viewer is an extremely low bar to jump over, however, if their answers are those that are spoonfed to them by the powers that be/corporate power structure/MIC, etc, aren't they really informed by interests that want more compliance than education? They need open their minds to sources that are not funded by the interests that want to keep a boot on their neck.

@9: Al Jazeera doesn't hate America. You're thinking of Al Qaeda.

@16, NPR/PBS listeners/viewers already have the knowledge and ability to pull their information from a variety of sources and integrate it in their own minds.

But this works against them because they tend to spurn and abandon NPR/PBS the instant those organizations fail one of their particular litmus tests on one of their particular issues. This weakens NPR/PBS and leaves a void that right-wing media are only too happy to fill. Liberals/progressives pride themselves on being intellectual fortresses unto themselves, and are just as happy bitching about and criticizing each other as conservatives. (Cf./q.v./viz./e.g. any typical Slog comment thread.)

@10: Yes, we should never seek to reform programs that are not working. If we just keep squeezing the stone harder, maybe some blood will come out.