NPR as a Bulwark: The Long View (2 Letters To The New York Times)
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May 19, 2005
To the Editor:
Re "NPR Conflict With Overseer Is Growing" (Business Day, May 16):
The paranoia of the right is as dangerous as the paranoia on the left. When we founded NPR in 1970, we were convinced that everyone would benefit from broadcasting that was balanced and impartial.
As professional broadcasters ourselves, we knew how difficult it would be to toe the line, obey our best instincts and not usurp the airwaves to promote our own ideas, but we did it.
For more than 30 years, NPR has been a bulwark against personal bias, corporate greed and government tyranny. It has achieved this despite efforts by both right and left to blackmail it, threaten it and push it around.
The legislation that originally set up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the parent of NPR, was designed to provide insulation from such insidious influences, not to aid and abet them. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting should stop its administration-inspired intrusion into NPR affairs.
NPR works, and it works very well indeed.
Bernard Mayes
Washington, May 17, 2005
The writer was a founding chairman of National Public Radio.
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To the Editor:
The Bush administration must keep its mitts off both public radio and television. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's increasingly right-wing influence will mean the death of independent public radio and television.
Its influence is already obvious in the diminished quality and heavy bias of reporting, which reflects government-sponsored rhetoric.
We don't need another CNN or Fox. We need independent news and analysis. Our very democracy is at stake.
Susan Isaacs
West Hollywood, May 16, 2005
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