Why NPR Will Keep Its Funding

A reader at Commentary breaks down the radio network's funding: "A lot has been written about how the network only gets a couple million from taxpayers. This is very misleading … actually wrong. CPB gives scores of millions of dollars to NPR affiliates which, in turn, use that money to purchase NPR programming such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, etc. …"

And that's why attempts to doom NPR will probably fail. It's one thing to say you're going to yank funding from that New York-based radio network. But who wants to be the villain who pulled dollars from High Plains Public Radio? Stations out in the Oklahoma panhandle could never be self-sufficient, but they provide a valuable public service nonetheless -- and their constituents would raise holy hell if they were lost.