Unconstitutional Subsidies For Public Broadcasting Must GO!

Unconstitutional support oIn spite of the constant denials, Conservatives know that public broadcasting has a consistent left wing bias.The recently disclosed under cover dinner interview with NPR Senior VP Ron Shiller and Director of Giving, Betsy Lily, exposes the fraud of publicly supported media in America. There is an obvious reason why this is inherently true.

Any entity that gets its funding from public largess will invariably oppose any idea or group that believes that government largess should be limited. Thus we see Acorn for example, an allegedly non partisan tax exempt non profit, dedicated to increasing the voter roles, in reality was dedicated exclusively to signing up left wing voters, fraudulently if necessary, to perpetuate itself and big government programs in general. If the entity getting the public funding is a media organization then it will certainly use it’s megaphone to belittle those who believe government needs to be limited. It’s no coincidence that big government liberals, invariably love public media. Thus, PBS and PBR are by definition big government propaganda machines.

Regardless of whether the tape was edited, it can not be denied that Shiller, in the interview, criticizes Tea Partiers, who are Americans simply exercising their constitutional right to protest government expansion and excessive spending. In the interview Shiller goes farther than simply disagreeing by calling them “weird evangelicals” and “gun toting white people” who are “scary” and “racist”. Note to Shiller, PBS and NPR: the First Amendment guarantees free exercise of religion and the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. Although there is no proof that tea partiers are more “racist” than any other political group, the point is made that the government is disseminating through public broadcasting, disparaging opinions of those it sees as political opponents of its power. This is inherently unconstitutional.

It is not necessary to prove that public broadcasting has a bias. It is enough that some taxpayers do not agree with the information and opinions being expressed. Liberals argue that if the use of the word “God” offends one person at a high school, then it is unconstitutional. Then if one taxpayer feels his political beliefs are being belittled by his own governments publicly funded broadcasting “news” outlet and he is thus offended and even intimidated from expressing his own views, then this violates the first amendment as well.

Ironically, the most often advanced argument to support the funding of public broadcasting defeats its own point. The argument is that the private media is supported by big business so it is inherently biased in favor of big business, so public media is needed to present the unbiased view. However, if this is true then, then the opposite must also be true, that the government influences the public media message?

The problem is the former, private media, is constitutional, the latter, public media, is not. The government has no constitutional right to use the taxes of the people to chill anti government free speech. In fact this is prohibited by the very concept of a right of free speech in the citizens. The founders wanted the public discourse to be free from government influence. A public broadcasting system, disguised as fair minded reporting and opinion, that criticizes various groups and ideas has an inherently chilling influence on free speech and free press. When the government tries to control the message, it is, by definition, violating freedom of speech and of the press.

The argument that private media controls the message and therefore its monopoly must be broken, does not stand up to scrutiny. Michael Moore, an open communist, capitalist hating, big government liberal, for example, has no problem getting his movies shown in private theaters, nor is he having any difficulty getting interview time on the private media news shows. The fact that he charges the going movie ticket rate to his viewers instead of donating his movies to the good of the people, proving he’s a hypocritical phony,is beside the point. Moore still gets his message out all he wants and his dopey fans get to watch all they want, through the private, not public, media. The overarching point is that liberal views get plenty of air time through for profit outlets and there is no need for a public outlet.

Democrats who perennially fund public broadcasting know that their argument that it provides better programming than private enterprise is a ruse to cover the unconstitutional intent to provide pro government propaganda and chill freedom of speech and religion of political opponents. They try to hide behind Big Bird and Kermit the frog and masterpiece theater, when this is pointed out; but, have you ever watched “Democracy Now!”? The Shiller remarks support the existence of what has been obvious all along: the anti Christian, anti conservative agenda of public broadcasting.

And this is just the beginning if we do not get this stopped here and now. Our current big government administration is actually gearing up to do much more to control free speed and freedom of the press. Various of the Obama’s czars are considering public subsidies for dying left wing big city newspapers, prohibiting by law dissemination of any political ideas classified as “conspiracy theories”, reinstating the fairness doctrine and imposing net neutrality. The latter two ideas require the publication of contrary ideas to every expressed political opinion in the traditional broadcast media and links to contrary opinion sites in all opinions expressed on the net. Guess who decides what "contrary opinions" must be published or what links must be provided?

Liberals claim that the government needs to support this or that because it’s a good idea. So please fund it if you want it and leave my first amendment alone. The amount of money that goes to public broadcasting is not the issue. The constitution can not be a little violated. If it is violated at all, it is too much.