In this week's Washington Post, Laura R. Walker, president and chief executive of New York Public Radio, and Jaclyn Sallee, president and chief executive officer of Alaska-based Kohanic Broadcast Corporation, defended taxpayer-funded journalism. According to Walker and Sallee, the federal government currently allocates $430 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in turn provides “financial support for locally owned and operated public radio and television stations, and acts as a journalistic firewall between the government that provides this funding and the public media journalism it funds.”

Given the success of public radio and television and the growing criticisms of school boards, the governance and management structure of publicly funded media may be a model publicly funded education should consider emulating. (more…)