Recent articles in The Salt Lake Tribune have reported on the proposals to cut PBS/NPR budgets to reduce overall federal expenditures and to help fund the tax cuts that are proposed in the current bill before Congress.
I oppose the tax cuts but not the reduction of federal expenditures. As a finance professional, there are constructive ways to reduce expenditures through careful analysis of the data, the public weighing of choices, and the use of careful and respectful communication to accomplish those ends. Destructive ways ignore the data, make decisions on personal biases, and communicate decisions in dehumanizing ways. I believe that PBS/NPR are being targeted in precisely that way. PBS/NPR is critical for our country and particularly our state. If it weren’t for KUED, a project I had worked on would likely have not been produced, nor aired many times during 2012, nor available online ever since.
“Ethically Speaking: Perspectives from Utah Business Leaders,” a PBS documentary, was produced by Erik Nielsen of KUED and was later recognized with one of the Utah Broadcasters Association’s awards for excellence in television. It was based on a series of interviews I conducted with 26 men and women who were prominent business leaders with ties to Utah. My goals were to document their stories and explore their business philosophies. To a person, and with no prompting from me, they said how important integrity and ethical decision making was to them while using stories from their families as to reasons why. I felt, and KUED agreed, that these were important stories for us to hear where ethical decision-making was foremost in the minds of our business leaders.
I am grateful for these individuals, the opportunity I had to get to know them, to KUED for producing a wonderful film, to PBS for their dedication to Utah programming, and to Congress for their financial support of these incredibly important broadcasting institutions. Please do not support the proposals to cut their funding. Utahns, you and I, will be hurt. Without that support, programs like “Ethically Speaking” would likely never have been produced and these important stories would likely have never been heard by the general public in our state. I am so grateful that didn’t happen. Don’t let future projects like this be sacrificed to fund tax cuts.
Calvin Boardman, professor emeritus of finance, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
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