The Corner

What a Kroc

Joan Kroc–the widow of the founder of McDonald’s–has bequeathed $200 million to National Public Radio. It’s being called “the largest monetary gift ever received by an American cultural institution.” I do like “Morning Edition,” but I can also think of a few American cultural institutions that I’d support with that kind of money before giving it to that bastion of media liberalism. Kroc, as you may have guessed, was a big-time Democrat. This Washington Post story says that NPR gets less than 1 percent of its budget from the government (though “member stations” get about 15 percent of theirs from federal coffers, via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). In light of the Kroc gift, can we finally quit using tax dollars to pay for some of America’s most biased journalism? Pretty please?

John J. Miller, the national correspondent for National Review and host of its Great Books podcast, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.
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