Democrat Congressman Wants to ‘Defund’ Fox News
The Left's panic concerning the defunding of NPR has become quite comical in recent days. Take for example Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) who took to the House floor Thursday and said, “If my friends on the other side of the aisle want to strip funding from NPR because they believe — wrongly, in my view — that NPR is biased, then we should be given the same opportunity” and prevent taxpayer dollars from being used for advertising “on the partisan political platform of Fox News” (video follows with commentary): According to FoxNews.com: McGovern cited a Rand Study that found the federal government subsidizes media companies all the time and that the Pentagon alone spent more than $600 million in advertising in 2007. McGovern did not cite any studies or statistics on how much federal advertising money is spent on Fox News. He did not return requests for comment submitted by FoxNews.com. So let's think about this logically. Pentagon advertising is likely to recruit military members, correct? And members of our armed forces tend to be more conservative than the general public. With this in mind, regardless of the actual dollars involved, it would make sense for the Department of Defense to want to advertise on a right-leaning news outlet. If McGovern's amendment had cleared the House Rules Committee – which it didn't – and had been approved by the House and the Senate, we'd be needlessly hampering military recruitment efforts as a silly quid pro quo for NPR. With regard to other federal government ads, these are likely from various agencies and departments such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service for example. Should Fox viewers have such announcements withheld from them because the network slants in the same political direction as they do? If so, then shouldn't the government be prohibited from doing any advertising since every media outlet has a bias? It doesn't appear that McGovern and his staff have thoroughly thought through all of the ramifications of this silly proposal, does it?
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Democrat Congressman Wants to ‘Defund’ Fox News
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on March 18, 2011. Filed under