April 01, 2011
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Poll: Americans way off on public broadcasting funding
Most Americans think public broadcasting receives a much larger share of the federal budget than it actually does, according to a new poll from CNN/Opinion Research.
A majority of poll respondents think the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit created by Congress that helps fund NPR and PBS as well as other public media, receives a share of 1 percent or more of the federal government’s budget.
In the financial year for 2010, the CPB reported receiving $506 million in federal appropriations. According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, the federal budget for 2010 was $3.456 trillion. Using those numbers, the CPB receives about .00014 percent of the federal budget. Of course, poll respondents are way off in other areas, assigning a median of 137 percent of the federal government’s budget to various government programs, suggesting Americans think the government simply spends more than it actually does as a general rule.
Forty percent of those polled believe funding the CPB receives takes up 1 to 5 percent of the budget, 30 percent believe public broadcasting takes up 5 percent or more of the budget and 7 percent of respondents believe the non-profit receives 50 percent or more of the federal budget.
A majority of Americans also said they thought CPB should receive the same amount of funding or receive more, while 16 percent of respondents thought that government funding for public broadcasting should be eliminated entirely.
Historically, the CPB delivers about 15 percent of the funding for the United States’ public broadcasters. The organization does not create content.
The CNN poll interviewed more than 1,000 people total from March 11 to 13; the total margin for sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
