I’ve never listened to NPR so I can’t really give an educated opinion as to its content. What I do know is if the government decides to use funding as a way to control or censor the content or the way in which it is reported, the populace would cry censorship and probably be correct. Yet, if NPR was privately funded through advertising, and the advertisers used their money to control the content, no one would say anything. IMHO, we lose sight of the bigger picture of censorship. It isn’t just the stifling of speech, spoken or written, but control of how the speech is presented. Whether taxes should pay for something that serves so few of the population is a debate for another day.
After I published this last night, I continued thinking about it, and published another consideration over in Notes:
"It’s had me thinking about government paid journalism, and how organizations like NPR shouldn’t really be considered in the same way as free and independent media. Because they just aren’t.
The New York Times and the Washington Post published The Pentagon Papers over the fierce objection of the United State’s government. Given its dependence on governmental funding, could NPR do the same?
What about other classified and embarrassing materials? The Edward Snowden materials? The Chelsea Manning materials? Sure they might do it after the materials are published elsewhere, but to do it first?
Does government funded media truly have the financial independence to stand up to its cash cow? If not, can it be rightly considered a part of a free and independent press?"
In 2017 that "cash cow" provided 10% of public radio's funding and, of course, NPR isn't the only public radio out there. While that's not an insignificant piece of the overall public radio budget, I wouldn't exactly call it NPR's cash cow either.
I think that it is more complex than the direct federal appropriations. As I understand it, other appropriations, made to the local broadcasters flow back to NPR itself.
I read that one from your original post earlier and there's much to digest in there like this particular quote: "That local stations are mandated to buy national radio programming should not be confused in any way with the idea that NPR is “government-affiliated.” ... ". And I'm not sure why anyone was asserting 1% as the funding number (according to the author of your opinion piece) but let me take another crack here to get my point across....
My local NPR station's revenue for 2022 was $18.1m. The funds from federal government entities, if I'm reading it correctly, is about $1.5m. So the federal government contributed 8.3% of their 2022 revenue. The membership revenue, which is pertinent to how much it has to pay NPR, was $1.4m. (1)
Based on membership revenue, the station has to pay NPR 17% of membership revenue and 19% of fees (2). I'm not sure what fees are, but looking at 17% of membership revenue, we get $238k and if we take the 8.3% of that (percentage of total revenue that comes from the federal government), we get about $20k that we can infer went back to NPR from the federal government,
There are 1100 NPR stations (3) so let's just assume for simplicity that they all have the same size member revenue stream (it appears a majority of them are smaller) (2) and we get a total of $22m back to NPR that could rightfully be thought of as government dollars. NPR's operating budget is $193m (1) or $279m if we go by the opinion piece, and we know NPR gets 10% from CPB (1) which I think is inclusive of the money coming back from the station but for argument's sake we'll assume it isn't so we'll say that, in total, they're getting approximately $42m, or 22% of their budget or 15% if they have the bigger budget, from the federal government.
Now, I know my math is only a rough estimation, but I'm still saying that the federal government, while not an insignificant portion of their budget, is not NPR's cash cow. They're making nearly double that (38%) just off of corporate sponsorships. (4)
Thanks for adding this explanation, I appreciate it. Surely the larger any entity gets, the more complex the accounting becomes and I'm happy if I can simply reconcile my own checkbook. 😉
I’ve never listened to NPR so I can’t really give an educated opinion as to its content. What I do know is if the government decides to use funding as a way to control or censor the content or the way in which it is reported, the populace would cry censorship and probably be correct. Yet, if NPR was privately funded through advertising, and the advertisers used their money to control the content, no one would say anything. IMHO, we lose sight of the bigger picture of censorship. It isn’t just the stifling of speech, spoken or written, but control of how the speech is presented. Whether taxes should pay for something that serves so few of the population is a debate for another day.
After I published this last night, I continued thinking about it, and published another consideration over in Notes:
"It’s had me thinking about government paid journalism, and how organizations like NPR shouldn’t really be considered in the same way as free and independent media. Because they just aren’t.
The New York Times and the Washington Post published The Pentagon Papers over the fierce objection of the United State’s government. Given its dependence on governmental funding, could NPR do the same?
What about other classified and embarrassing materials? The Edward Snowden materials? The Chelsea Manning materials? Sure they might do it after the materials are published elsewhere, but to do it first?
Does government funded media truly have the financial independence to stand up to its cash cow? If not, can it be rightly considered a part of a free and independent press?"
In 2017 that "cash cow" provided 10% of public radio's funding and, of course, NPR isn't the only public radio out there. While that's not an insignificant piece of the overall public radio budget, I wouldn't exactly call it NPR's cash cow either.
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RS22168.pdf
I think that it is more complex than the direct federal appropriations. As I understand it, other appropriations, made to the local broadcasters flow back to NPR itself.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3950550-the-truth-about-nprs-funding-and-its-possible-future/
I read that one from your original post earlier and there's much to digest in there like this particular quote: "That local stations are mandated to buy national radio programming should not be confused in any way with the idea that NPR is “government-affiliated.” ... ". And I'm not sure why anyone was asserting 1% as the funding number (according to the author of your opinion piece) but let me take another crack here to get my point across....
My local NPR station's revenue for 2022 was $18.1m. The funds from federal government entities, if I'm reading it correctly, is about $1.5m. So the federal government contributed 8.3% of their 2022 revenue. The membership revenue, which is pertinent to how much it has to pay NPR, was $1.4m. (1)
Based on membership revenue, the station has to pay NPR 17% of membership revenue and 19% of fees (2). I'm not sure what fees are, but looking at 17% of membership revenue, we get $238k and if we take the 8.3% of that (percentage of total revenue that comes from the federal government), we get about $20k that we can infer went back to NPR from the federal government,
There are 1100 NPR stations (3) so let's just assume for simplicity that they all have the same size member revenue stream (it appears a majority of them are smaller) (2) and we get a total of $22m back to NPR that could rightfully be thought of as government dollars. NPR's operating budget is $193m (1) or $279m if we go by the opinion piece, and we know NPR gets 10% from CPB (1) which I think is inclusive of the money coming back from the station but for argument's sake we'll assume it isn't so we'll say that, in total, they're getting approximately $42m, or 22% of their budget or 15% if they have the bigger budget, from the federal government.
Now, I know my math is only a rough estimation, but I'm still saying that the federal government, while not an insignificant portion of their budget, is not NPR's cash cow. They're making nearly double that (38%) just off of corporate sponsorships. (4)
(1) https://www.wfyi.org/files/wfyi/files/2022-cpb-annual-financial-report-radio.pdf
(2) https://current.org/2019/12/update-to-fee-model-ties-nprs-income-to-station-donor-revenue/
(3) https://www.statista.com/statistics/653081/npr-number-of-stations/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20study%20on,from%201%2C076%20a%20year%20earlier.
(4) https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
Thanks for adding this explanation, I appreciate it. Surely the larger any entity gets, the more complex the accounting becomes and I'm happy if I can simply reconcile my own checkbook. 😉
For sure. :D