NPR, Juan Williams and the CBC

The right side of the blogosphere, at least in the USA, is overflowing with commentary on the NPR's firing of Juan Williams. One of the points repeated over and over is a demand for the elimination of any further public funding for NPR.  At Pajama's Media, Roger Simon has a piece about it focusing on the public funding NPR receives, calling for legislation forbidding public funding of any news organization, with the exception of Voice of America. With a new Congress about to be elected, with the democrats about to trounced, there's a very good chance that this idea will come to fruition. There's this one little snippet in Simon's piece that cries to be heard by our politicians, too:

"It’s easy to understand that government financing of the news is at best unseemly and at worst totalitarian.   The possibilities for corruption are myriad.  I am not one to dwell on what the Founders intended, but I am reasonably certain they didn’t want a Fourth Estate that was bought and paid for by the government, even in part."

I so hope that was an idea discussed at yesterday's meeting with Stockwell Day.There are more reasons than just belt tightening to cut CBC loose from the public teat.