McDonald's heir leaves $200M to public radio

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

National Public Radio will announce today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc of about $200 million.

Link to story.

Personally I think they should invest the money and utilize the interest for their budget.

[JohnT]

Perhaps they can use it to give their morning and afternoon announcers lessons on vocal inflections.

[Buck Birdseed]

Unpleasant. Public stations should not subside on charity, you clearly need a licence fee.

[Jac de Molay]

It's quality news, and devotes a lot of time to issues that the Mc Media can't be bothered with.

Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation, great shows

[DanS]

This is a generous gift.

I listen to NPR and while I have problems with the left-of-center bias that they often display, it is generally excellent programming.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Jac de Molay
It's quality news, and devotes a lot of time to issues that the Mc Media can't be bothered with.

Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation, great shows

Interesting way to put it...

[Arrian]

Good.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

She also gave $50million to the Univsity of San Diego and $10million to KPBS. KPBS is San Diego's student administered public broadcasting radio station. Over her life time she gave very, very generous amounts of money to charities her in San Diego.

In fact more of the McDonald's millions went to charity then went to her children.

[Gangerolf]

Isn't public media supposed to be independent? Won't they get an image problem after this

[Shogun Gunner]

I'm going to love the McNews on McNPR! I especially will enjoy the McAll McThings McConsidered

[Dinner]

Gangerolf: Public Radio used to be 100% government funded but in the early 1990's the Republicans, correctly, claimed that NPR had become a partisan media source and that many of its programs weren't listened to by the public. To rectify this the Congress subsidized public radio and provided matching funds for for the membership fees NPR convinces their listeners to pay.

These means that a lot of useless political membo jumbo has been replaced with more popular programs or at least by less partisan news programs (since NPR bow wants to appal to as many people as possible).

[Gangerolf]

$200 million is a lot of money though. How can they avoid feeling at least slightly more postitive about McDonald's?

And what does people think? (see Shugun Runner's post)

I guess after receiving gifts like this they'll have to "prove" they're still unbiased.

[DanS]

A lot of public institutions in the U.S. are at least partially funded by donations from private individuals. It has been this way for at least 90 years. I can think of very few instances where there was any image problem attached to the gifts, and I don't foresee any problems arising from this one.

[MattH]

They're ok, but sometimes I think their world map looks like this:

[Kuciwalker]

All jagged?