President Bush’s new budget proposal cuts more than $53 million money from the budget of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that allocates federal money for NPR, PBS and other federally funded media. This is a quarter of the CPB budget. This same budget will drastically crank up military spending to support a war effort that is now heading toward $500 BILLION, an amount that is 10,000 times more than the proposed CPB cut. Iraq spending is now $300 Million per DAY. That daily expense is six times more than the ANNUAL amount of the proposed CPB budget cut.

Can you help out by signing this petition to Congress? It’s really easy — just click this link.

Here’s the basic message of the Petition (but you can modify this message as you please):

“Congress must save NPR and PBS once and for all. Congress should guarantee permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling.”

We’ve stopped similar cuts in the past, but enough is enough: With the new Congress, we can make sure this never happens again. For more on the amount Bush wants to cut from NPR and PBS, see here and here.

Here’s more background:

Congress can protect NPR and PBS from future cuts. The long-term solution to save public radio and TV is to:

fully restore this year’s funding

guarantee a permanent funding stream free from political pressure

reform how the money is spent and keep partisan appointees from pushing a political bias

Bush’s budget would cut federal funds for public broadcasting by nearly 25%. According to PBS, the cuts “could mean the end of our ability to support some of the most treasured educational children’s series” like “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” and “Arthur.”

The cuts could also decimate one of the last remaining sources of watchdog reporting on TV—continuing the partisan war on journalism led by the ex-chair of public broadcasting, Ken Tomlinson. More people trust public broadcasting than any corporate news media. President Bush would rather undermine our free press than face reporters who are asking tough questions.

For more on pressing media issues of the day, see here.

Thank you for considering this.