Colorado Republican Congressman
Doug Lamborn has led the charge to strip government funds from public broadcasting, saying that outlets like PBS and NPR are biased against conservative politics and that the news shows are popular enough after 40 years to survive on advertising revenues.
Surveys have consistently shown however that, in the era of overheated cable news, Americans like the product that the not-for-profit business model has delivered, ranking
PBS, for example, the most trusted institution in the nation. This week the PBS Newshour was awarded the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for political television coverage. Gwen Ifill accepted the award in Los Angeles as PBS's cable news counterparts hosted "birther" conspiracy theorists and
sent hundreds of reporters each to London to cover the royal wedding, many more than they sent to Japan to cover the natural and nuclear disasters last month and many more than they have stationed in the powder keg Middle East.