Nader weighs in on "ludicrous corporatist right-wing" charges against pubcasting

"Public Broadcasting's Cowardly Executives" is the headline Ralph Nader's column on CounterPunch, a self-described "bi-weekly muckraking newsletter."

"The tumultuous managerial shakeup at National Public Radio headquarters for trivial verbal miscues once again has highlighted the ludicrous corporatist right-wing charge that public radio and public TV are replete with left-leaning or leftist programming," he writes. He goes on to furnish numbers for conservative vs. liberal guests on Charlie Rose (far more conservatives, by his count), and points out that Nader himself as appeared "not once on the hostile Terri Gross radio show."

"Here is a solution that will avoid any need for Congressional contributions to CPB," Nader writers. "The people own the public airwaves. They are the landlords. The commercial radio and TV stations are the tenants that pay nothing for their 24 hour use of this public property."

"Why not charge these profitable businesses rent for use of the public airwaves and direct some of the ample proceeds to nonprofit public radio and public TV as well as an assortment of audience controlled TV and radio channels that could broadcast what is going on in our country locally, regionally, nationally and internationally?" — an idea he's been promoting since 1988.