For decades, Republicans have argued that if supporters of NPR and PBS were so fond of keeping the purported “news” organizations operational, then they should have no problem forking over the donations needed to keep them going.
As it turns out, that is exactly what is happening, with the New York Times reporting that in the aftermath of NPR and PBS losing their federal funding thanks to the GOP-controlled Congress, donations from private citizens have “exploded” at “unprecedented” levels:
The number of new donors has surged to over 120,000 in a roughly 90-day period, the Times also noted:
Over the last three months, as the prospect of the cuts intensified, roughly 120,000 new donors have contributed an estimated $20 million in annual value, said Michal Heiplik, the president and chief executive of the Contributor Development Partnership, a firm that analyzes public media fund-raising data. Overall, donations committed to public media for the year are about $70 million higher than last year.
Further, many of the new donors are not just one-timers:
There are encouraging signs that the new donors aren’t just making one-time contributions. A greater share of them — up 51 percent from last year — are becoming sustaining members, who contribute on a recurring basis, Mr. Heiplik said.
It would also appear that the defunding becoming official was the catalyst for supporters ponying up some serious cash:
Some stations have reported a particularly sharp uptick in donations in the days since Congress approved the cuts. Amanda Mountain, the president and chief executive of Rocky Mountain Public Media, a PBS and NPR member network in Colorado, said she received 6,620 donations from Friday to Sunday, including 1,000 from new contributors. One donor gave a $500,000 gift.To help keep the momentum going, Rocky Mountain Public Media has started a $9.7 million campaign to support innovation in technology and local content, Ms. Mountain said. The campaign has already received $1.55 million in contributions, most of it from the network’s board of directors.
Though they’ll need to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 milliona a year to make up for what they’ll no longer get from taxpayer funds, it sorta kinda proves the point that if there’s a strong enough market for something, consumers will make it happen, and that neither PBS nor NPR “need” public funding to survive:
Last but not least, let’s remember to thank singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, who seemingly started a trend back in February by making a very public show of selling her Tesla and then donating what she got from it to NPR:
As we noted at the time, this, of course, was not the own she thought it was, since that is precisely what conservatives have said supporters of public radio and TV stations should do instead of one more dime of taxpayer money going towards funding them.
At long last, that has become a reality. This is what Trump supporters voted for, and it feels really good.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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