The battle for NPR's public funding

[Commentary] "Dignified" is not a word often associated with the wretches populating today's spluttering, hollering media. But it's a word that came to mind this week watching National Public Radio cope with the first in what will be a series of attacks on its government funding. Newly energized conservatives moved Thursday in the House of Representatives to limit payments to the public radio network, which they insist is a hotbed of left-wing political orthodoxy. They failed but will without question try again, as a Republican majority takes power next year.

To what end? Apparently to satisfy an itch to lash out at menacing Eastern elites, to vanquish Big Government and to vindicate the righteousness of Juan Williams, sent packing last month by NPR for speaking intemperately about Muslims. Never mind that grants to public radio from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $94 million a year, amount to a rounding error, a tiny fraction of a fraction of the federal government's budget. Never mind that this week's action would have disproportionately harmed rural, small-town stations, not big-city powerhouses. Never mind that Williams (though terminated for no good reason, in my view) made an insignificant imprint on NPR's total news package.

Moving NPR to the very top of the GOP cut list has much more to do with symbolism and bowing to an emboldened political base than with good government, impartial media or serving the average citizen. After all, the audience for public radio has grown 60% over the last decade. Forty million listeners now tune in each week.