 Welcome to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Emma, and I'm joined here today with Sarah and special guest, Issa. And today we have a very exciting topic, which is, should news organizations have public funding? And let's roll some clips about what adults in Davis have to say about it. Yes, because I think that if there is a decision to fund a news broadcast, if it's up to the government to decide what kind of a spin to put on the news, then you're corrupting the news. I would think so. What do you think that is? Because what's the purpose of having it if somebody is dictating what they should be saying? You know, it needs to be independent. Otherwise, there's no point. That would be my response. Yes. What do you think that is? Well, I guess I think it depends on, it shouldn't matter where on the political kind of spectrum they fall, because people should have access to information from different sides. But if it is, you know, media content that's like spewing hate or something like that, then that should not be publicly funded. So I think how you feel about state-funded media and state-funded news organizations really depends on how you feel about the government. So for example, if you're, say, a citizen of the United Kingdom where you have something like the British broad, you know, the BBC, you know, that seems like a pretty fair, unbiased, state-funded media. But then you look at something like, for example, like Russia today. I mean, obviously, there's a little bit of the government paying people off to say things that are positive for the government. Now, I don't know how much people really trust the United States government to remain unbiased in all media things that they'd want to fund. So I think you'd really have to make sure that it wasn't being heavily regulated by the government, because once the government decides that they're going to be regulating media, I think that's not very good. Well, everyone seems to think that they're pretty pro having money for the public funding by then. But they all had really different reasonings of why they thought that. What do you guys think about their reasonings? Yeah, for sure. I think that there is definitely a case to be made on how this affects countries like on a case-by-case basis based on how that government runs as a whole. Well, yeah, I think the last guy made an interesting point when he said that there's a difference in how much you regulate the media after you're funding it. But I think if you are funding media, there's a necessity to regulate what they're going to say, because once the government gives that money, they have to be kept accountable. They can't just give the money, and that channel is just airing going for seven of babies saying profanity, for example. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of points to be made that the government could have. They're a very specific point of view had in the news organizations, but definitely as you were saying, there has to be some sort of guideline in between having total freedom and having some regulations on what they're doing. What do you guys think? Are you pro-public-funded or against? Yeah, I'm pretty against public-funded. I just think that the Fourth Estate was created specifically to be a separate entity on its own, and so having a level of interference from a government affects how that information is processed and released to the public. Yeah, so as soon as somebody starts asking, should the government fund? I'm not automatically a no. And so the thing with public-funding of media is that we already have tons of that PBS, NPR, Pacifica Radio. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is an annual grant of just media for all kinds of news and productions, and I don't think that's necessary. I think that's outdated because one, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created. You had three networks in American houses. You had a couple of radio stations, and so that means the choice is greater by 33%, but at this point, if you shut down PBS, you're going to have 500 other channels to watch. Yeah, that's a good point. Should we have any more public funding for news stations? There seems to be so many different news stations to choose from that. Do we need PBS, NPR anymore? Should they be left to get funding on their own regards? Yeah, what do you guys think? Yeah, there's this big incoherence in the message, actually, because you see NPR and PBS constantly talking about how little of their funding they get from the government, yet when there are precious to cut funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they're saying we're trying to destroy PBS and NPR. The way that these stations get their funding, National PBS gets a lot of their funding from member organizations who, in turn, get their money from donors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I think there's a real incoherence in saying that we don't get that much money for the government, but if you take it away, we're going to die. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I mean, but on the other hand, if we don't have any publicly funded news stations, do you think, well, publicly funded news stations are supposed to be unbiased, supposed to present news as it is. Do you think there's any other news stations that are like that, or do you think that every news station inherently has a bias? I think in terms of the question, does every news station inherently have a bias, I definitely would agree with that statement just because these organizations are made up of individuals and every individual has their own opinion that will definitely be imposed in what they're creating in some sort of way. And so I don't think that's something that you can really strip away at a given level, but I also think that the way that Americans are intaking news is just completely different in terms of this shift from a really print ran age into a very digital based age. And I think that's something that has been brought up with our generation specifically. But yeah, that's my opinion on that as a whole. Yeah, I think you're right that individuals in the media have inherent biases. But the thing with that is that majority of the inherent biases all the same. You see a lot of group thing in the media. And that's fine with private news organizations. But then you get to the point where taxpayers who don't agree with the narrative that their local PBS station, that their local NPR station is promoting. That's just unfair. You're forcing taxpayers to subsidize views that they don't agree with. That's a really interesting point. I never I don't think I ever thought about it that way. So like, do you think that PBS and NPR are biased? Like all the other news organizations are? Yeah, I mean, I definitely would say that NPR. I know that's the radio station that I listen to. And where I get like morning news from at least every day. And I would say that there is to some degree of bias there. But I'm not sure if that bias is so much substantially greater than what you see in other news and very popular news organizations in this country for sure. No, I don't think it's greater. I just think there's the idea of taxpayer subsidization subsidies. And so CNN is just as liberal or maybe not as much. But it's a lot of the reporters are liberal. They're biased. But there are people who don't watch CNN. So their money through their cable subscription through advertising statistics doesn't CNN doesn't make money off of that. NPR makes money off of all taxpayers regardless. And so I think there's something about media bias that's totally normal. I just think taxpayer subsidies are a big factor when it comes to PBS NPR. And then stuff like Pacifica radio, which is even more liberal. So if we I don't see the publicly funding radio going away anytime soon. So if it does continue, do you think there should be greater lengths to make NPR and PBS as non-bias as possible? That's impossible. Yeah, that's true. Because if you listen to NPR, if you watch PBS, their news coverage isn't as much as you should vote this way. This is how we feel about an issue. It's the well for PBS News Hour, I think it's a big thing is the way they choose their stories, the prioritization of what to cover. And then there's the slight comments like when President Trump will do something versus when a Democratic politician will do something. I think the way that that's treated, it's not like they're actively trying to promote an agenda, but the way they think, the way they report on things, it's inherent that they are biased to the left. That's a really interesting point. Just going off a little bit on biases, I know you guys think that it's hard, if not impossible, to get rid of bias from a news organization. But do you think there should be some attempt to have some regulated thing? Because on either side, they say that there's one side that's way too on the left and one side that's way too on the right and they won't change? I think that it's less the news organizations that need to change, but it's kind of like a two-way street where it's also us people who are intaking that news. We need to be aware of what we're reading and we need to put the effort into fact check what we're reading as opposed to just relying on the fact that what we read is the truth. I think that's something that is really difficult when most news is taken in through either Facebook or social media or really catchy headlines. I think that that has definitely bred a culture that is very different and really harmful in a large sense for sure. It's not just the truth, it's the way we perceive the truth. There can be a car and there's a dent on one side on standing on one side and I see a car that's been in an accident. You can be on the other side and see the same car but think it's totally fine. I think all the media organizations do a fair job of reporting facts. It's just the veil through which we see everything and that's a really big thing in America now with perception bias. The way we think of how we're going to react to something before it even happens, we're just checking off things on a part of the checklist. Yeah it's definitely a good point. A lot of different things to think about. I guess I just have to say I know we talked a little bit about how like you can't like as you were saying that there's like different sides to facts like you might only see part of the truth but do you think there should be like even more regulations because I know in my experience what people do is they read the headline of something and then they won't bother to read the rest the article that might clarify something. Do you think like something like that should have more change some more regulation or is that just another thing that's like it is what it is? Are we talking strictly about public organizations or all organizations? Either one. So I think if we're talking about all organizations that's unconstitutional that's directly against the First Amendment if that's regulation. Public organizations in a legislature that has two parties it's not gonna happen. You might as well work to defund these organizations rather than work on regulations like that. I think in terms of what you're saying about going past just like a headline I think that there are definitely codes of ethics within like the journalism world that strictly go to kind of shape journalists to make sure that they're not doing that and that sort of work but I think that in today's culture that has just become the norm because a lot of these private companies they aren't getting funded as much right and so they rely a lot more on these really explicit and these really outgoing titles in order to really get the clicks and to get the ad money that they need to keep their company afloat at this point. So do you guys have any other statements that you'd like to talk about? Well we can talk about funding in the United States as we all know is in trillion dollars in debt so I read this analogy the other day that if you're just say thousands of dollars in debt you're a person living in Davis you don't know how to pay off that debt but you go to a furniture store and you see a beautiful chandelier and you pull out the Mastercard. That's what the Corporation of Public Broadcast is in America. We don't have money we're running out of entitlement money but we're continuing year after year even though they're every year somebody every Republican administration year there is a clause of the budget to remove the Corporation of Public Broadcast. We keep funding this thing that's a chandelier in our national budget. Do you know how much of our budget is actually being put into? It's actually very very small. Yeah. Total the Corporation of Public Broadcast and National Endowment for Humanities and National Endowment for Arts. They all in all of them combined are less than 1% of our budget. It's just obviously that's not a priority if you're trying to cut government that's one of the smaller things. Yeah. It's one of the smaller things but it's definitely something that needs to be looked on as pork barrel spending as something that's extra. Yeah I mean I think a lot of Americans just generally speaking and if we're talking about like government funding in general like the whole budget thing it should be I think that the public broadcasting part is really valid but I think that as a whole Americans aren't concerned about that aspect of it as opposed to what the other categories are generally speaking. Well thank you both for being here and talking that today. There were a lot of really interesting points of view seems like here in the studio that we both are that you guys think that we shouldn't have publicly funded stations for various things like you shouldn't have or that people shouldn't have to pay for a new station that they don't agree with and that it's money that we don't necessarily have to spend and then there's other people it seems like the people in Davis seem to agree with it saying that everyone has should have like a new source and like a stabilized new source so there's a really a lot of things to think about and so thank you both for talking about it and join us next week when we talk about the death penalty which would be super exciting.