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Dear Editor,
    I'm writing in response to Richard Whittaker's story “'Economic Censorship': The Devastation of the NEA Grants Cut Grows," [Daily Arts, May 7].
    It's a simple question: Is The Austin Chronicle intentionally reporting only one side of the story, or was it an oversight? I'm sincerely curious to know the answer.
    There's been a long-held critique of government arts funding that it's a largely top-down affair, funded by ordinary taxpayers to benefit elites and those artists whose works aren't popular enough to pay their own freight.
    There's also the minor fact that the national debt is now about $35 trillion, doubling in nominal terms in the last 10 years. This amid an economic backdrop that even this morning, CNBC is citing the national deficit as a factor driving up bond rates.
    Yet this piece about government arts funding reads as if all agree on a simplistic, linear model that says more government arts funding is always better – and less is always worse – regardless of whatever the levels are at any point in time. It treats government arts funding the way a child would think about more ice cream. You don't even ask the fundamental questions of who are the people picking which arts have gotten the most free cash? What are their criteria? Did they do a good job last year of picking worthy projects, or did they fund projects no one bothered to see? Did they fund their friends' work? What level of funding would be too much?
    In other words, even if someone thoroughly agreed with the government arts funding paradigm, are there effective accountability mechanisms to monitor if or when the money is wasted? Wouldn't that be important? But does anyone even ever ask that question? Has this publication?
    To be clear, I'm not even suggesting a tone purely critical of arts funding (although that could be justified at this point as balance), but simply that you include that these criticisms exist alongside the unmitigated, gushing praise of arts funding or hand-wringing about its proposed decrease. Offering both sides on a topic respects your readers to decide for themselves.
    Whereas not doing so is exactly what's eroding trust in mainstream journalists, and it furthers their reputation as purveyors of propagandistic group think narrative spinning, with little interest in the good-faith telling of both sides.