U.S. Public Overwhelmingly Opposes The GOP Cuts To Public Broadcasting

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 18th and 21st of a nationwide sample of 1,729 adults (including 1,551 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters. 

NPR/PBS/Marist Poll Has Biden With Double-Digit Lead

The charts above reflect the results of the newest NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll -- done between August 3rd and 11th of a national sample of 1,118 registered voters, with a 3.6 point margin of error.

General McChrystal Opposes Trump's Proposed PBS Cut

(Cartoon image is by Daryl Cagle at cagle.com.)

Donald Trump has proposed spending an additional $54 billion on the military budget. He says he will pay for that by making deep cuts to almost all domestic programs. One of those cuts would involve eliminating government funds to support Public Broadcasting (PBS).

General Stanley McChrystal (pictured) likes the military build-up, but thinks it's a big mistake to cut the funding for PBS. He sees PBS as a valuable entity that does good for our society. Here's what he had to say in an op-ed for the New York Times:

I like to say that leadership is a choice. As our leaders in Washington confront tough decisions about our budget priorities, I urge them to continue federal funding for public broadcasting. Public broadcasting makes our nation smarter, stronger and, yes, safer. It’s a small public investment that pays huge dividends for Americans. And it shouldn’t be pitted against spending more on improving our military. That’s a false choice.

This might seem like an unlikely position for me, a 34-year combat veteran. But it’s a view that has been shaped by my career leading brave men and women who thrive and win when they are both strong and smart. My experience has taught me that education, trusted institutions and civil discourse are the lifeblood of a great nation.

Public broadcasting plays a special role with young children. According to the Pew Research Center, rising numbers of American children live with one parent or with two parents who both work.

My son and daughter-in-law are a two-income family with two children, and day care is a part of their lives. Many other parents must get by without day care services. These parents are busy in the morning and busy at night. They want to protect their children from over-commercialized content. And they strive to prepare their children for school and lifelong learning. Having thoughtful television, games and other media that is not commercially driven is essential to good parenting.

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, more than half of all kids in our country do not have the opportunity to attend a preschool program. I’ve also seen research that PBS local stations reach more children ages 2 to 5 than any other children’s network, and the new dedicated PBS Kids channel is the only free national programming for children that is available anywhere and anytime.

Public television works hard to engage young learners and build the skills needed for a jump-start on life. We need our youngest to be curious, resilient and empathetic, and prepared for the jobs of the future.

Public, noncommercial broadcasting is also giving kids social-emotional skills like persistence and self-control that are fundamental to success in school, not to mention in the military, the institution where I spent most of my career.

In our society, I see public media as a lever. It pushes people by elevating them and their sights. It brings them into more thinking and understanding, and it brings us together. The federal appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — about $445 million annually — supports more than a thousand television and radio stations at a cost of about $1.35 per citizen. President Trump has proposed scrapping the corporation.

Trust among Americans and for many of our institutions is at its lowest levels in generations, and stereotyping and prejudice have become substitutes for knowing and understanding one another as individuals.

How Americans restore trust may be an existential question for our country, then, but it’s ultimately a practical one, and our elected officials should advance ideas not with lamentations but with practical measures.

I’ve seen articles that say PBS and its member stations are ranked first in public trust among nationally known institutions. Why then would we degrade or destroy an institution that binds us together?

We need public media that acts as our largest classroom. We need broadcasting that treats us as citizens, not simply as consumers. We need a strong civil society where the connection between different people and groups is firm and vibrant, not brittle and divided. We need to defend against weaknesses within and enemies without, using the tools of civil society and hard power. We don’t have to pick one over the other.

Most Fox Viewers Have A Simplistic View Of The World

The chart above is from the YouGov Poll, using information gathered from the profiles of 200,000 YouGov members.

It shows that most Fox News viewers (60%) see the world in black and white terms. Things are either true or false, and people either believe in truth or they are against the truth. This very simplistic view of the world helps explain why they can believe in the outrageous lies put forward by right-wingers, and passed on by Fox News. These are the people who accept bumper sticker solutions to the nation's and the world's problems.

Smarter people know that is simply not the case. We live in a world composed of many shades of gray -- and many times the things we hear about are neither completely true or completely false. And the solutions to problems are most of the time far too complex to be put on a bumper sticker. The people who know that prefer to get their news from PBS or MSBNC.

"Great Society" Programs Are Still Supported By The Public

During his term as president, Lyndon Johnson had a significant impact on this country -- probably far greater than he is usually given credit for. While he is generally remembered for the Vietnam War, civil rights legislation, and the War on Poverty, he also created several other programs under the umbrella of "Great Society" programs. These included Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts (and Humanities), school breakfasts, Job Corps, and a significantly expanded food stamp program.

Of course, every one of these programs was opposed by congressional Republicans, and even today they are still trying to destroy those programs (including Medicare, which they have voted to eliminate at least twice now).

But the real question (and the only important question) is what does the American public currently think of these Great Society programs? Do they support them, or has the GOP convinced them that these programs need to be done away with? A new YouGov Poll answers that question for us -- with a survey done between May 30th and June 2nd of a random sample of 1,000 adults (with a margin of error of about 4 points).

As you can see from the chart above, all of the Great Society programs are supported by a majority of the American public -- with support ranging from 76% for Medicare to 51% for the NEA(H). It seems that the congressional Republicans are out-of-step with the desires of the public (as they are on many issues). Most people know that these programs have been good for the country, and they want to keep them.

The charts below show how people of different political persuasions feel about the Great Society programs. Note that the congressional Republicans are even out-of-step with their own base voters on several of these programs. The Republican base supports Medicare (71%), Medicaid (53%), school breakfast (62%), Job Corps (53%), and half of them support Head Start (50%).

PBS Is The Most Trusted TV News In The United States

Public Policy Polling does a survey every year to determine the most and least trusted TV news organizations in the United States -- and once again the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is the hands down winner. About 57% of the public (13 points higher than the second place organization) trusts PBS, and only 24% of the public (13 points lower than any others) say they distrust PBS. In fact, PBS was the only news organization to be trusted by a majority of Americans.

The Fox News statistics showed the polarizing effect of that network. They were second in both the most trusted (44%) and least trusted (42%). The chart below shows the demographic breakdown of those trusting or distrusting Fox News. The trust/distrust for Fox by the general public is within the margin of error, which means the general public is divided over whether it can be trusted or not.

But there are four groups that trust Fox by more than the margin of error -- men (by 9 points), Whites (by 9 points), Republicans (by 61 points), and those over age 65 (by 24 points). That pretty much describes the average Fox viewer -- an old white Republican man. All other groups distrusted Fox by more than the margin of error (except for the 46 to 65 group, which was split).

MSNBC was the least trusted (34% trusting and 44% distrusting).

The Public Policy Polling survey was done between January 23rd and 26th of a national sample of 845 registered voters, and had a margin of error of 3.4 points.

Fred Rogers - The Ultimate Role Model

While I believe in the right of every American to believe or not believe in any religion, I have to admit that there are a lot of christians in the U.S. that I don't have a lot of respect for. That's because they use their religion to try and make themselves look good, to gain political favor, to justify their own bigotry and hatred, or to try and force others to agree with them. But there are exceptions -- and one of those exceptions was a remarkable man named Fred Rogers.

Although Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, he did not preach at others or try to force others to agree with him. Instead, he lived his beliefs and modeled them through the way he conducted himself. And he did this also through his long-running PBS children's show (Mr. Roger's Neighborhood), where he taught kids everywhere the values of love, acceptance, and tolerance of others. And kids all across this country responded to him in a positive way.

And it wasn't just so-called "normal" children. I worked in a facility for mentally-deficient children for a couple of years when I was younger. This was tough work, as there was almost no activity or show that could appeal to all those children and hold their attention for very long -- except Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. When that show was on TV, all of those children watched in rapt attention. They could feel and understand the love, acceptance, and caring of that gentle man.

A couple of weeks ago, the website called Ned Hardy published a list of "6 wonderful facts" about Mr. Rogers. Here is that list (and I hope you enjoy it a much as I did):

1. He basically saved public television. In 1969 the government wanted to cut public television funds. Mister Rogers then went to Washington where he gave an amazing merely six minute speech. By the end of the speech not only did he charm the hostile Senators, he got them to double the budget they would have initially cut down. The whole thing can be found on youtube, a video called “Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate.”

2. “Certain fundamentalist preachers hated him because, apparently not getting the “kindest man who ever lived” memo, they would ask him to denounce homosexuals. Mr. Rogers’s response? He’d pat the target on the shoulder and say, “God loves you just as you are.” Rogers even belonged to a “More Light” congregation in Pittsburgh, a part of the Presbyterian Church dedicated to welcoming LGBT persons to full participation in the church.”

3. According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”

4. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life—the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.

5. Most people have heard of Koko, the Stanford-educated gorilla who could speak about 1000 words in American Sign Language, and understand about 2000 in English. What most people don’t know, however, is that Koko was an avid Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fan. As Esquire reported, when Fred Rogers took a trip out to meet Koko for his show, not only did she immediately wrap her arms around him and embrace him, she did what she’d always seen him do onscreen: she proceeded to take his shoes off!

6. Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed. But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting "It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood." The result made Rogers smile wide.