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Slashdot Asks: Should NPR Stop Promoting Its Own Podcasts and NPR One App On Air? (boingboing.net)
A new "ethics" policy from NPR details new rules to stop promoting NPR One and its podcasts on the air, to ultimately please local station managers who pay the largest share of NPR's bills.
Chris Turpin, V.P. for news programming and operations, writes: As podcasts grow in number and popularity we are talking about them more often in our news programs. We are also fielding more and more questions from news staff and Member stations about our policies for referring to podcasts on air. To that end, we want to establish some common standards, especially for language in back announces. Our hope is to establish basic principles that are easy to understand and allow plenty of flexibility for creativity. These guidelines apply to all podcasts, whether produced by NPR or by other entities. No Call to Action: We won't tell people to actively download a podcast or where to find them. No mentions of npr.org, iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One, etc.
Basically, NPR won't promote "the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR" to listeners who would be most interested in it. How do you feel about NPR's new policy?
Chris Turpin, V.P. for news programming and operations, writes: As podcasts grow in number and popularity we are talking about them more often in our news programs. We are also fielding more and more questions from news staff and Member stations about our policies for referring to podcasts on air. To that end, we want to establish some common standards, especially for language in back announces. Our hope is to establish basic principles that are easy to understand and allow plenty of flexibility for creativity. These guidelines apply to all podcasts, whether produced by NPR or by other entities. No Call to Action: We won't tell people to actively download a podcast or where to find them. No mentions of npr.org, iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One, etc.
Basically, NPR won't promote "the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR" to listeners who would be most interested in it. How do you feel about NPR's new policy?
Or whatever the hell he does?
That app is hardly the future of NPR, because NPR probably has no future after the demise of radio. While there have been occasionally cases of successfully monetizing podcasts, I think it highly unlikely that NPR would be able to offer the high-quality programming it is known for through solely podcast revenue.
Using your own media channel to promote your other media channel is both ethical and standard operating procedure. All media outlets do it and there's no reason for NPR to stop. The question is stupid.
None the less; if NPR themselves don;t want to promote their own podcasts, then don't. why is it even a question.
TV stations, like Blockbuster, are dead and don't know it yet. I think it critically important that NPR promote its blogs whenever possible or risk fading to irrelevance in the future to a more savvy competitor.
Not promoting an app that gives NPR way too much information about viewers listening and usage? Not promoting an app that involves an amazing amount of poking and swiping to get to the content you want? Sounds like a good plan. I prefer listening to NPR more anonymously. I prefer less "curation" (a disturbing term on a bunch of levels) and more choice. We pick which NPR stations to support (and we do support them) and then we listen to their mp3 streams at the bitrates we want to. If we want to listen to podcasts, we have choices and RSS feeds for that, too. NPR One is NOT the solution. Glad to hear less about it.
This might be part of their ethics policy, but that's not where it belongs. As much as people have wined and complained about it being unfair for companies, like Google, to advertise their own products there's nothing unethical about it.
It's a competition issue. NPR gets a significant chunk of its money from radio stations. That's why not all NPR broadcasts are available as podcasts. This whole thing is merely about appeasing those radio stations who are worried about competition from podcasts that are more convenient and available.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I just need a download site, I have tools to play the content.
Apps just allow for thief of information.
Not sure how this helps the problem. It's the local stations, not the government, that are paying and complaining about this.
Understood - but how level the playing field is seems to always be the question with NPR. Insert competition and complaint du jour but the issue pervades.
How do I feel about it? When did /. turn into Oprah Fucking Winfrey???
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
they are a technological anachronism. Just as the concept of a Local BBS existed only because of the cost structure of long distance phone calls in the 1980s/1990s, and the technological issue of a lack of intetworking, so the "local affiliate radio station" is essentially an anachronism. of the centralized wireless transmitter based delivery of audio to a mass audience.
Radio towers are incredibly inefficient compared to the internet and essentially are an artefact of the 20th century. There is no reason to have "local stations" in the modern era, other than old people still like to use FM radios. Within 20 years, streaming will be how we receive everything.
NPR has to move with that, or cease to exist. For now, NPR's "old model" will limp on for a while, but in the long run, NPR's podcasts are the only thing that will keep it going.
I know people argue "but your local station is connected to your community". Absolute horse shit. My local station has never had a single program produced by students, even though it is located on a college campus. It bit the bullet and hired some semi local reporting a few years ago, that was a nice effort but its too little too late.
The cost of spewing out 100,000 watts of power into the plain air is unsustainable in an era where people can make podcasts out of their dining room and basement and garage and get a million downloads a month off of hosting services that cost some tiny fraction of what a transmitter would.
Yes, it is sad that some things will be lost. But it is not sad that new voices, decentralized, will rise in the place of what we lost, and make something new and better.
In case we have forgotten, that was the point of NPR in the first place. Not to prop up a dying business model, but to do something new and independent with the new technology available to them at the time.
That costs the stations money for the stream. Radio in the modern age is experiencing technical dificulties . . .
All your database are belong to U.S.
I listen to NPR mostly via Podcast, by why try to get me to install some separate siloed app? My podcast player of choice is better since I can find all the podcasts I am interested in no matter who makes them. (NPR, HowStuffWorks, my buddy Joe etc) Trying to get people to use another app is dumb.
I keep my finger hovering above the skip forward button when I start listening to CBC(Canada's sort of NPR) podcasts. They pretty much inevitably promote insider (politically powerful) shows on shows that appeal to a specific and different audience. The promotions are for podcasts that are highly irrelevant to the podcast in question. A science show will promote an arts show, a business show will promote an arts show, a news show will promote an arts show, etc.
To make it worse, the shows they are promoting are often long out of date when the podcast in question is something that is ageless and thus will be listened to potentially for a decade or more.
I have a strong feeling that the CBC is deeply unhappy with podcasts because with listeners choosing what they want to listen to it is in complete opposition with how budgets are being distributed and how by putting certain shows in prime slots it then confirms that those shows are "popular".
I would love to see the stats on podcast listening compared to what the CBC claims is the number of listeners to the live show.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if the CBC was 100% driven by its listeners that the lineups, budgets, and shows would be wildly re-prioritized.
Instead the CBC is driven by some mental image of what they should be doing.
Were does this quote come from? Even in TFA its a mystery quote hanging out there.
NPR doesn't attract "station surfers" they have a dedicated audience that will tune in to there favorite shows. eg that audience will find the pod casts without the help of mentioning them on air.
That's because NPR exists with the concern of fairness, and public concern. Any debates within the halls of Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, are hidden and inscrutable. The few that get outside? Are still a contentious problem, as any number of FCC hearings would show.
To make NPR like that, in any case, would be to change its very character and makeup, with little to no gain.
I'd rather have the debates and issues than silence.
This. Then their constant promotion of Trump wouldn't be at odds with the ethics of taking public money.
NPR seems to be damned if they do and damned if they don't
If NPR operates on government money we hear that they are producing shows with a liberal bias from public money and the conservatives in Congress cut their funding
If NPR takes donates from wealthy donors like the Koch bros, they end up doing puff-piece interviews with the Kochs where they let them claim that they are not attempting to influence elections without challenge and their listeners go ape-shit about a lack of reporting
If NPR takes public donations, then they face the challenge that is presented now where they cannot promote their own developments
I for one recognize great value in the services that NPR offers and would like to know about ways to enjoy their programming when I am unable to receive their radio signal.
Why exactly would there be a problem with a not-for-profit company using donations to promote themselves? The local blood services company does it all the time...
The dumbing-down of Slashdot from a tech site to a reactionary site is complete.
It should not be paid for by corporate giants that censor it. That's neither for the nation nor public. It should be paid for by everyone, because even those not actually using NPR are still utilizing NPR and should damn well pay for what they utilize.
NPR and PBS should be banned from taking any private donations and should be funded entirely through the federal tax system. They should be funded at levels comparable to Britain's BBC, after considering that they are addressing four times the population, with a guarantee of an annual increase in funding equal to 1.1x the average of the rate of inflation and the average national raise in pay of those considered fully employed (as opposed to under-employed, part-time, seasonal, zero-hour contract, etc, as employers always take advantage of such people).
They should be freed from all restrictions (political or economic) other than a charter that dictates that material be of a generally educational/informative nature (this would include music and short dramatizations from other cultures, but would not include soap operas or cartoons as knowing that K'xlx hates Z'mrp but is marrying P'fnang, Z'mrp's sister, is not really informative, just annoying). The charter should also guarantee absolute non-interference by the government, including budgetary controls or political pressure, with an automatic recall vote imposed on any politician who does this. A charter/contract only works if there are penalties in both directions.
They should be placed in their own department under the Department of Education to make it harder for the corporations to retake control, but their budget should be independent and should be wholly independent of the usual use-or-lose system. They should keep 100% of what they don't spend and get every last cent of what they're owed the next year as well.
As with the BBC, they should be entirely authorized to sell merchandise, copies of already-broadcast material, etc.
Finally, the charter should dictate an exit clause. Either side can terminate the charter on payment to the other of 15x the annual funding level at that time. That way, the stations can operate for some time without any financial support.
I want nationally-funded, nationally-run education of high standard, even though I won't personally use any of those schools, because I'm tired of living in a nation of idiots. I want my public broadcasting to the same high standard I expect of education, whether I tune in or not, for the same reason. Idiots are expensive. The nation can't afford them, I am sick of subsidizing them. Educated, intelligent, rational people are cheap - often self-supporting - and frequently give far more to the community than it costs the community to obtain them. Negative costs are the kind of costs I like. I can accept those. The morons, though, I despise utterly.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They don't push him as hard as CNN! I watched it about five hours last week, and the only thing they covered besides him was Syria.
It's good they're covering him since a couple of studies showed the more coverage she gets, the worse her favorability rating gets.
They should change their name to TPR. Trump Public Radio.
He is rich so it is morally wrong that our tax money is being used to advertise for Trump.
The basic problem, as I understand it, is that NPR programs, which NPR member stations pay to carry, are spending too much airtime talking about how the listener can cut their local member station out of the picture and access all NPR program streamed over the internet.. That's a reasonable complaint by the member stations.
The issue is that NPR wants to promote what it sees as The Future of NPR, specifically direct-streamed podcasts.
The simple answer is for NPR to use the same tools as other companies do and run advertisements for their streaming/podcast/apps - paid advertisements.
Simply put, NPR should figure out a pro-rated advertising rate (so many $ per minute), then refund the member stations every time a host promotes the podcasts, streaming service, smartphone app. That way broadcasters aren't paying NPR to educate consumers how to "disintermediate" member stations
Ken
Anecdotally, I listen to NPR in the car most every day and I make a yearly contribution to my local PBS station. I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but I do sometimes stream This American Life or Serial when I'm driving long distances. In years when feel like I've done a lot of that, I've also made a contribution to the station that does those (WBEZ, I believe).
I don't really know what NPR One is, and I am unlikely to replace my local station with it or any other podcasts. So from my perspective, this change doesn't seem necessary, but without any real data, how much weight can any of our opinions hold?
Actually, if local stations were to bit.ly to NPR's podcasts on their websites, they could promote them on their interstitial ads, and get local credit for doing so. But, NPR broadcast managers aren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.
... and the local stations need to realize that. Part of the reason I listen to NPR in the car, is because I also listen to the podcasts. Take the podcasts away and I would surely listen to NPR in the car less - and I certainly won't start listening to the radio at their specified time slots just to catch the damn Marketplace when it airs on the local station.
No, it concerns itself with advancing statism. Fairness is a distant third between expanding statism and socialism in the USA.
Wait, what? Do you listen to NPR?
What dichotomy?
The problem is that people listen to the app, rather than the local radio station. The local radio station then sees a decline in donations, and goes off the air. NPR then sees a decline in revenue from local stations purchasing the content they provide, and the service as a whole dies.
That's probably not what would actually happen, but it's the argument being presented.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The summary seems a bit misleading. If you read TFA (I know, I know), you'll find:
"Informational, not Promotional: When referring to podcasts, and the people who host, produce, or contribute to them, we will mention the name of the podcast but not in a way that explicitly endorses it."
Still a bit odd, but not as bad as the summary makes it look, I think. No mentioning sites, but it's fine to mention the podcasts themselves.
I admit, I'm left with mixed feelings. I can partly understand it. If it were, say, a book publisher, I can see why they might not want people to promote Amazon, since a lot of book sales still happen through local, indy booksellers, and I'm a fan of local indy booksellers myself. But of course, the podcast sites aren't a big for-profit corporation, so the analogy isn't perfect, but there are similarities.
Another interesting quote:
"No NPR One: For now, NPR One will not be promoted on the air."
(Emphasis mine.) I'm a little reassured by that "for now". That implies that this policy may be subject to change in the future. That maybe things are still a bit in flux, and there's people in the organization who aren't 100% sure about this approach.
So, yeah, I'm not entirely sure what I think about this. If they couldn't mention podcasts at all, I'd be strongly against it, but as it is, I'm kinda neutral. Not a fan, but I can't bring myself to care all that strongly one way or the other.
Sure, keep telling yourself that.
But at least having that discussion is part of having free discussion.
Another system? Why even bother?
Trump 2016
Suddenly I feel this aura of safety leave the room... Perhaps it's some musings left by python enthusiast ;^)
Presumably you don't mind reading it, or you wouldn't be here.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I like NPR but the fact that they get tax funding is BS. Taking tax money from other radio stations and giving it to their competitor is unfair.
I understand this, as far as if they listeners are getting the feeds from the podcasts, the local stations can't tack on their begging for donations at any point. This could cause them to lose revenue.
Unfortunately, this is short sighted, since you can't expect listeners to not take advantage of something which makes their life better.
I use podcasts so I can listen to my favorite shows at my own pack, not only when they have them on the air. That would be insane to go back to that way of listening.
They should have NPR tack on a quick ad blurb during the show of "and if you liked this show, let your local station know/consider becoming a member...."
The only people this will keep in the dark is their listeners who don't know how to connect an iPod to their computer. Eventually, they will realize their life will be easier on their own schedule. Keeping them in the dark won't stop progress.
I am not sure that it wouldn't go down that way. If I am listening to public radio, it's honestly to listen to a few flagship shows and NPR. I don't need to listen to a local station to hear classical radio these days.
I mean, I sure as heck don't listen to Clear Channel stations 1, 2, and 3 for pop anymore either, so it's not like I am discriminating against public radio. When your big draw is NPR and people can get NPR without you, then NPR might be doing better for it, but the local stations are screwed.
more streams, more non-sense, and when the bores and depresnicks on NPR-like stations get to you, you can always switch to the delusionists on the "conservative" talk shows. And when you are done with them you can always listen to something even more challenging, like the Philosophy Zone on ABC (Australia).
And rather than following a station, you can follow a show, this way you can always follow the show even if not on a specific station anymore.
As an American who has business abroad I often end up living in places that most of you never heard before
Yes, I do miss NPR programming - and that of BBC as well ! Thanks God there's podcast that enables me to listen to the programming without having to be there (UK or US)
Hmm... I'm going to out on a limb here and assume that you've never actually listened to NPR...
At least the two NPR stations I listen to air hardly any classical music except maybe on the weekends. It is almost all talk. I listen to podcasts too, but I still donate, and when I donate it is to a local station. If you want to be cheap and not donate, you can very easily do that listening to the radio as well. But if the podcasts are adding value to my experience, shouldn't that make me more likely to donate?
"Establishing a public radio station" (or even a "public newspaper") is not an enumerated power of the federal government under the constitution. Neither NPR nor any other medium or art should be subsidized at the taxpayer expense.
Let them subsist entirely on voluntary donations, then they can do whatever the hell the want.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I listen to NPR a lot. Local NPR stations run a lot of commercials for their financial supporters. Then they run multiple on-air fund drives. Then they hand an enormous amount of money over to some pretty quality content producers and some poor content producers.
When I hear part or all of a quality program and want to hear the rest of it or all of it again, I sometimes visit my local NPR station's website, or NPR's, or the website of the specific show. I always come away disappointed. Every drop of content is provided via Flash. Public radio content locked up in a proprietary client that threatens my security. That makes no sense. Every single show should put every episode online in an open format. Charge $0.10 a piece. You'd make $100K per episode--$2+ million per month, $26 million per year. But they don't do it. Which tells me they can make more than $26 million/year/show going through local stations. It's hard to believe that they can't cut out all the overhead of the local stations and make more money over the internet. For that kind of money they could plant robot stations all over the country like Clear Channel and still make more than they do now.
My local station weeps and begs multiple times a year for donations. They are barely surviving, they say. Too many people listen without contributing, they complain. So they want me to donate $1/day for membership. How about this? Work out deals with Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. to offer a $1/month premium content package that includes every NPR program ever recorded. Or offer it yourself through your own website. Then count the downloads and cull unpopular shows and spend your money developing more popular content. License it to local stations after it has sat on the shelf for a week or a month or a year. Or license it instantly if the content is time sensitive and the local stations will pay enough for it. People will still tune into the radio to listen to last month's "This American Life" or today's "Marketplace." What else are they going to do in the car, listen to Rush Limbaugh?
My two local NPR stations, KPCC and KCRW, produce original content that may not be aired on NPR One.
And I still do listen during my commute, every day, even when I listen to podcasts also. I'm not always in the car when some of my favorite shows come on (To The Point; Left, Right, and Center; PHC, and Wait, Wait...), so I will occasionally listen at work or while playing something like Minecraft.
I certainly am not going to try and stream a podcast over my phone while driving if I can listen to NPR on FM. So I'm actually listening more.
I can see the fnords!
NPR and its affiliates have their own agendas, likely in exchange for large donations from wealthy liberal supporters and liberal politicians, as evidenced by how NPR and its affiliates report on certain events, the frequency with which they report on certain subjects, and the one-sided sound bites they select to air repeatedly without challenge.
As an occasional listener to NPR podcasts and local stations, I've noticed there are more sponsors mentioned on the podcasts I listen to. It might be just the ones I listen to, but it does raise an interesting question: Are the podcasts a way to make money more effectively than the radio stations? It's certainly possible to produce podcasts with less overhead, but I imagine there are far fewer listeners. I'm not sure if it really could be enough to offset the local stations' declining income but I'd like to see local stations promoting their own branded and income generating podcasts.
NPR is far from fair. If you believe that it is, then you live in an echo chamber. Sorry to have to call you out on this, but it's true. NPR is very, very left- and progressive- leaning on their programming.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily bad. Some people enjoy that point of view (like you, obviously). But to claim that it is a fair and balanced source of information is completely incorrect.
Love sees no species.
NPR used to have a no ads policy. Now they have ads several times an hour, and always one congratulating themselves. It's disgraceful.
Play Command HQ online
I no longer listen to my local Houston NPR station at all, just NPR ONE. I love it that I can skip past stories I'm not interested in. And I also like it that the local station can insert their own stories into the mix (which I can also skip if I want to). It's like having a TiVo for radio.
The problem for local stations is, the app works so well that it just might put the local stations out of business, unless they can find a way to share the revenue. I'm sure that, in the interest of self-preservation, they will.
only because they don't willfully lie in order to help the nut cases pretend that they are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Remember son, just because some people cry to have the opposite side heard does not mean that that opposite side isn't a bunch of made up tripe
Typical down-modding of something that left does not want to hear --- scored -1 with NO rational counter argument. Just a hissy-fit, the modern version of censorship (push-down the ratings of messages so people with filters will never see something).
ha ha ha. Very "open minded". I'd bet the down-modder is one of those morons who's always yelling at people telling them not to watch Fox News.
I do not object to disagreement, just to SJW/PC/censorship garbage.
The local stations have to pay for the radio infrastructure and NPR fees just for NPR to tell them to listen elsewhere isn't really at good of a deal.
Last year there was some buzz about getting you cell phones to be enabled to play FM radio. Apparently that got shoved under some carpet. Do techies just seem to prefer audio that takes a lot of extra power to listen too?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I came here trying to find out what the heck this NPR is and read all the comments. What the duck is NPR and why is this on Slashdot?
I certainly am not going to try and stream a podcast over my phone while driving if I can listen to NPR on FM. So I'm actually listening more.
I'm not streaming either, but I listen to NPR programming via podcasts exclusively. I use a combination of BeyondPod and Android Auto and the podcasts are downloaded over wifi automatically when my phone is on the charger. It's far easier than radio and I don't miss anything if I have to turn off my car because it resumes automatically when I restart it.
That's what I was thinking too. To say there's a left and a right side implies that there are two equal sides, not one group based on science and reality and another "side" with tone deaf zealots who eschew facts and reality for internal monologue and self-reinforcing religious beliefs. But that's just my opinion...
NPR/PBS leans leftwards ... somewhat.
However if you're claiming 'Far from fair' you're discounting how many conservatives they have on air, entirely conservative based shows like Tucker Carlson, The Editorial board of the WSJ, the 60%-80% conservative panel of the McLaughlin group, Religious programming, local politics, et al. And that's before even talking about the number of conservative guests and think-tanks on the 'Liberal' shows.
So
A) NPR/PBS bends over backwards to make sure conservatives have a voice
B) When's the last time you heard NPR/PBS cut someones a conservatives mic because they were winning the argument?
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Perhaps if my local public stations offered more content than cartalk returns and prairie home companion for hours on end, they wouldn't have people listening to NPR content directly(podcast/app/other station streams). Oh and 14 hours a day of chamber music, yea for some reason one of the stations feels the need to live by the stuffy public radio stereotype.
We had a decent station that offered a mix of modern music and public radio content, but one of the other public radio stations bought it and switched it to music only.
I've been around long enough to remember the nature of the content back in the 1980s and it sure as hell wasn't anything like it is today. Reporting back then used to be actual reporting. Now, they take the approach of cherry-picking one or two sob stories to get you to generalize on a larger issue. Decidedly unethical.
I had not heard about that Emory U thing previously. All I can say is wow. Hopefully they never glimpse the Trump Tower, or any of the Trump properties, or they might go into shock from all the micro-agressions.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
... likely falls under the rubric of "un-American Activities". My word, how can they not realize this? They are covering the election, after all.
yeah, that never happens on NPR.. http://goo.gl/RzUuuw
No news source or person is perfectly fair and balanced. That's just not possible, I get that. And NPR does on occasion step into the left-trigger-trap and go all-out lefty progressive commando.
However, I watch and read Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and some more fringy left and right leaning news outlets, cycling through them over weeks or months, because they all kinda suck, I can't take any one source for too long. I have to force myself to. But I think it's important to see how others see the world.
One thing that stands out for U.S. based news outlets: NPR is biased, but is also the least biased. I might even argue it might not have enough bias if it wants more viewers/readers/listeners, since trying to be balanced hurts viewership/readership/listenership. Most humans like clickbait, belief-reaffirming, other-side-sucks environments and trying to show both sides they could be wrong never bodes well for a new outlet; and so NPR will remain at single-digit percentages of the population that use it as a main source of news.
All that being said, if NPR went under, that would be a tragedy for all but the big media companies.
The local stations need more time to yammer about this law firm and that garden center that are valued sponsors. And to pretend that the guy who's his own engineer and producer is a host of All Things Considered.
NPR as well as the local stations get less than 5% of their budget from the public (governments). Some stations such as WAMC, which is among the largest NPR stations, do not get a cent of public money. It was offered to them several times, but always with conditions to stop talking about certain issues and topics. WAMC's management thankfully declined...and we are talking a lot of money here. NY even passed a law that prohibits public money to be given to a radio station that does not also operate a TV station. A failed attempt to close down WAMC.
I think NPR is very mainstream middle. Just because some think that even the ultraconservative right is too leftist doesn't shift the spectrum.
I hear conservative view points regularly expressed on NPR...not sure which station you are listening to.
Depending on the station they have two broadcasts, one with classical music and one with talk/news.
Maybe the dial slipped? Anyhow, NPR covers Trump, yes, but due to the nature of Trump's tirades not in a favorable light. They also cover all the other candidates still in the running. What they should do is extend the same to the several third party candidates, many people do not even know they are running because 3rd party candidates do not get invited to big televised debates or have the tax payer foot the bill for their primaries. The parties should organize and pay for their own primaries and rent all polling places. But I guess in this case even the ultraright is in favor of government handouts.
Which tax money is used? Public radio gets next to nothing in public monies.