Saturday, April 08, 2006

Taxpayers, it's time to get pissed

The Smithsonian has entered into a deal with Showtime where filmmakers other than Showtime will get severely restricted access to the Smithsonian's collection and employees.

The Smithsonian Institution is 74 percent taxpayer supported.

And they are not even releasing the details of the deal.

Sigh.

CC

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is annoying. Wasn't the Smithsonian given to "The People"? If so, making a deal with a cable company should be against the rules.

I would suggest, if we can't get it reversed, that people stop giving their historical papers and artifacts to the Smithsonian. If they find their sources dry up, they may think twice about restricting their archives.

The real problem is the culture that thinks that "the bottom line" excuses anything.

Notice that they said in the article that they charge $2000 a day to film at the Smithsonian and that they don't make any money from it. What? $2000 isn't any money? How are they figuring? Why didn't the reporter ask that question?