Oops, the $435 million figure is for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, my mistake. My point is that government should have no role in producing or broadcasting what purports to be news. Journalism was called "the Fourth Estate" for a reason, but has lost any credible claim to that title during my lifetime. Public funding for "news" is always a bad idea, and in the U.S. has created an interlocking group of companies (CPB, NPR, public tv, et al.) that are incapable of publishing anything that doesn't align with one party in particular.