As commented by our #1 fan/ my mother below:
unfortunately, this firing reinforces the false perception that NPR is ‘liberal’
I think the far worse misconception this story is promulgating is the myth of NPR as a taxpayer boondoggle.
Conservatives love pointing out that even though NPR receives no operating money directly from the Feds, there is a money chain along these lines:
Federal funding -> Corporation For Public Broadcasting -> Grants from CPB to local public radio stations -> Station dues to NPR
Nobody seems to have solid percentages on how much of NPR’s $166 million annual budget that ends up being, but it’s definitely somewhere in the single digits. For the sake of argument, let’s use the 2% in the same article I got the $166 million from.
Two percent of that budget is equivalent to a little over three million dollars— or the cost to support three US soldiers in Afghanistan for a year. If you want to use the higher numbers favored in this article, it’s eight percent, or $13 million dollars/ 13 US soldiers. We have something over 100,000 troops over there right now. So: a high-end estimate of federal funding of NPR amounts to 0.01% of the federal funding for our forces in Afghanistan.
Just sayin’.
Sam and Devin dot com 