This is a giant thread full of people lamenting the demise of public broadcasting so it seems like someone should write the comment that points out that CPB doesn't do PBS programming. They don't develop content. They're a grantmaking organization that manages the distribution of the congressional PBS appropriation.
The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately, and then purchased by local PBS stations (streaming access to PBS content runs through "Passport", which is a mechanism for getting people to donate to their local PBS station even while consuming that content on the Internet). This (and other streaming things like it) is how most people actually consume this content in 2025. If your local PBS affiliate vanishes, you as a viewer are not going to lose Masterpiece Theater or Nova, because you almost certainly weren't watching those shows on linear television anyways.
The cuts are bad, I just want to make sure people understand what CPB ceasing operations actually means.
This is one place some sorta "trickle down" economics worked. CPB contributed to developing the content on PBS. Now PBS either has to cut costs by either canceling programs or ordering cheaper content that corporate sponsors like, run more pledge drives, or seek more corporate sponsors. None of those are appealing to me.
Also CPB helps keep rural stations open means all the niche local productions about state history or geology or whatever can happen.
It's a cut to the already strained budget of a wonderful resource. I'd be surprised if there weren't lost jobs and less quality as a result.
Edit to add: Just sentimental but I'll miss hearing "this program was made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions from viewers like you!"
I think the cuts are bad and certainly there will be programming losses. It's just not an existential threat to public media in America, which has over the last 20 years become far less dependent on local stations. GBH, which produces Frontline, gets $177MM in revenue from major donors and viewer subscriptions.
PBS stations in major markets will likely be able to carry on due to donations and corporate underwriting, but stations in rural areas (the types of places where Internet streaming is less viable due to poor infrastructure) will be heavily affected. Some rural stations get up to half their budgets from the CPB, and these cuts will likely make them have to shut down. In heavily rural states like West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico, and Montana, the average public media station relies on CPB funding for over 30% of its budget. All of those stations are now at risk. More information: https://current.org/2025/04/heres-how-much-public-media-reli...
I think the idea that people in rural markets are watching PBS OTA linear content is a claim that will need to be supported with evidence. Linear television is dead, pretty much everywhere.
> because you almost certainly weren't watching those shows on linear television anyways.
I'm just one person, but I definitely am watching the local PBS over an antenna, and so do several members of my family (living in different households).
The local broadcast is excellent quality, I get a good signal to it, never any glitches, and I enjoy the local news and other programming too.
I don’t watch my local PBS over antenna much anymore, but it is great, just like you describe. Amazing what you can watch for free OTA, when you think about it.
CPB doesn't create programming. But they do write grants to the stations that purchase the programming. Isn't that just funding the creation of the programming with several steps in between?
> The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately, and then purchased by local PBS stations
Purchased using funds from CPB. Most of the grants went to stations, not content producers. But pulling funds from stations will in fact harm the content producers too.
With a quick search online, here's a list of the donation links for the 21 states that are currently listed as "Red" (based on 270toWin.com). It's kind of a Googlish reply.
Some are a little difficult because they're kind of fractured, like Missouri is a St. Louis link, Texas is an Austin link, Tennessee is a Nashville link, so its challenging to tell if your donation is going to the state in general or just the local town PBS. (May want to check specifically if you're targeting a specific market). Most tend to be statewide portals. However, you seem like you want to support PBS, so here's some links.
The PBS budget has been cut by 15%, and the NPR budget by 1%. That's not enough to end either one at the national level. However, local stations depend on the CPB funding for 50% or more of their budgets. (Local stations provide local disaster alert systems and local programming.) There will definitely be local station closures and major cutbacks in the stations that survive. Large metropolitan areas will be the least affected. PBS and NPR will continue at the national level, as before.
The funding cuts are the result of an executive order that Trump issued on May 1, ordering the immediate cessation of all federal funding. Similar executive orders have been found to be illegal in federal court. (Congress had already guaranteed funding for CPB from 2025-2027, and only congress can take that money away.)
However, congress supported Trump a short while later (on July 24) by passing the Rescissions Act, which officially (and legally) ended all funding for CPB. And that's the reason for the current crisis: all federal funding for CPB is ending by the end of this year, which is only a few months away.
> PBS and NPR will continue at the national level, as before.
It is not a given that they will continue as they did before, CPB's funding mostly goes to PBS and NPR for content, some programs are funded more than other via the CPB.
It is likely PBS and NPR will continue, but not as before, the cuts will impact programming and their ability to buy content that's produced at smaller stations that rely on CPB funds more.
PBS doesn’t make PBS content either. They acquire it from people who make it using CPB money, among others. Then the stations that don’t make the content license it from PBS, mainly using CPB money. And they use it to attract members/donors.
You’ve framed this as if the disappearance of CPB and its money is basically a big nothing-burger, which is extremely far from the truth.
Source: I work in the system at a level with visibility into these things.
I don't think it's a nothing-burger. I think there will be programming cuts and layoffs even in the major market stations. But it's clearly not an existential threat to PBS.
If those stations go off the air, who is buying that content?
It's like arguing it doesn't matter if the stream dries up the plants don't get water from the stream, the plants get the water from the ground. Where did that water in the ground come from? The stream!
You're right, these shows aren't going off the air tomorrow. But this does affect the funding for the shows produced by PBS and NPR.
This would make sense if CPB cuts meant all stations were going off the air, but the major market stations where most of the money comes from are fine.
not something one gets to say very often, but you're insufficiently cynical, tptacek.
killing this means cutting of swathes of simple, orderly funding. what remains is donations etc, which is far less regular, and requires work to get, and is also easily attackable by presidential fiat.
we already know there's a bunch of actual lunatics in charge of the federal government, with a very wide variety of very stupid hobby horses. they get to ride them now and then, so how about some guesses at future trips:
- IRS starts going after big non-profit donors to public broadcasters, claiming they're in breach of some somewhat arbitrary and subjective rule that's been poorly enforced in the past, I don't know foundation disbursement rate or something, but also nudge nudge wink wink, if you stopped giving to PBS, maybe we'd forget about it
- FEC "clarifies" that promoting non-traditional-sexuality or whatever is political and thus it's illegal for non-profits to fund it, which of course would be an extremely funny turn given how the Right Wing Lunatics Association of America actually couped the country. this could of course be enforced entirely randomly - go after the NPR stations that are loud and annoying, go after the individual donors to them that the regime wants to make an example of.
- Congress passes some law that "clarifies" the purpose of non-profit status or something, to exclude anti-American speech, which is of course a clear abridgment of the 1st amendment, but of course that's fine in 2025 if it targets notional enemies of the regime.
killing this corporation just grants more power to the extremely partisan executive branch and extremely corrupted government and turns ever more of the functioning of the United States in to just expressions of the whims of the supreme leader and his favoured courtiers.
the current deliberate structural destruction of the united states seems underappreciated - every one of these moves turns the country in to more of a Whimocracy and destroys the bedrock of society that let it weather past terrible administrations.
Nixon was a historically horrible president, but the Washington Post fucking took him down. now almost all the big media is owned by Rich Cunts who make a public show of displaying subservience to the Dear Leader.
So this certainly won't be the death of PBS, as I had feared.
Update 2: For the record (easier to respond in this original post than to each response), I am not defending the decision at all. I grew up listening to NPR, and have been on recurring monthly donations to PBS for years.
I was genuinely curious about what percentage comes from federal funds. So I am just trying to level-set and get ahead of any hysteria about the actual impact.
PBS and NPR do not operate like the commercial networks --
ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/Etc are big corporations that produce (or commission/license, it gets...weird) shows to be distributed on their affiliates, that, depending on the city you are in, can be owned by the network OR another company that operates it like a franchise. Their affiliate agreement governs how much of the network programming they play -- though there are other agreements for non-network programming -- Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, for example, are syndicated and NOT network.
PBS on the other hand is more of a consortium of public TV stations around the country. Shows that you might think of as "PBS Shows" are actually produced by these individual stations and then distributed to other stations that want them. Even PBS Newshour and Washington Week are produced by WETA in DC.
Radio gets even more complicated. Many of the shows I've seen referenced on this thread aren't even necessarily NPR. Marketplace, for example, is American Public Media, which is sort of an outcropping from Minnesota Public Radio.
So funding going to ACTUAL PBS is a tiny part of this. What happens to the money going to various stations? What happens to the grants to produce and run these stations, especially in rural areas?
As others have said, the big guys (WGBH in Boston, WETA in DC, etc) will have minimal impact since they have a large pool of donors.
But the little guys will suffer more. Ultimately, I think we can all agree that we hope the impact won't be catastrophic as far as the number of listeners impacted.
Rural stations relied heavily on CPB funding; urban stations get most of their funding from donations or corporate underwriting. So big city public TV and radio will survive, but those in less populated areas might go under unless some other source of funding is found.
> PBS only receives about 15% of its funds from federal funding
I'm a big fan of PBS, but I wonder if this common stat is misleading. Don't a huge portion of PBS funds come from member stations, which get a portion of their funds from federal funding?
Yes it is so obviously misleading and incorrect that only the mainstream media could have perpetuated this unquestioned for decades.
The federal money goes to member stations which then hands it right over to NPR to pay for programming, I believe it’s $500 per hour. It’s 1 layer of indirection but no one seemed to mention this in all of the reporting
Man, sometimes losing 15% is enough to make things unsustainable. It is not like they are an Ivy League university with an endowment bigger than a developing country's GDP.
That's a nice chunk of change, though low enough that a few friendly billionaires could put some pocket change into a trust today and make up for this funding in perpetuity. And there undoubtedly will be a massive surge in donations from small donors in response to this.
As long as the bigger fish are willing to subsidize the smaller rural stations, I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
The removal of this Sword of Damocles is in my opinion a great thing for PBS and NPR.
A few friendly billionaires could have funded them entirely for the last 60 years. I see no reason to think that they suddenly will now. Many stations will be closed, and people will lose out on valued programing.
I think your usage of the word “only” is a mistake. This is an important piece of information but if you are going to imply value like that then you should also explain the consequences of that cut.
No I totally understand. I'm not trying to defend the decision or anything.
But I am just trying to set expectations of what people should expect to see. I'm trying to get ahead of the predictable hysteria about the death of public radio/tv.
Honestly, given the news that the Trump administration now has editorial control over all of CBS, it’s probably good that they’re no longer holding NPR’s purse strings anymore.
> Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said.
If that was true, losing the CPB would be a travesty. But as a loyal NPR listener for decades, I've found their stuff lately to be unlistenable. It's Fox, but for the Left, and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
There was a distinct shift to the right at NPR when Obama took office, and by the time he took his second term, NPR News' social media was posting clickbait trash instead of real headlines. "The liberal media" is an irrational boogeyman used to whip ownership in line. Everyone who complains about "bias in the media" is arguing in bad faith while they continue to turn a blind eye to the overwhelmingly dominant conservative slant of the 21st century American media.
Yeah I've been bummed by how far NPR has swerved leftward, especially since 2016. Even ten years ago I liked tuning in because it was quality journalism that still made an honest effort to cover multiple sides of an issue, even if the topics they chose were primarily "liberal" topics. But yeah, now they seem just as tribal as Fox.
Not every side deserves to be covered for each story. This is the problem with major media today, they give equal opportunity to people that have no idea what they are talking about. It's like one side says 2+2=4, the other 2+2=5, and media gives them equal air time.
lol, I stopped caring about them because they weren’t willing to say anything about Gaza and bent over backwards to excuse what Trump was doing. If center-right NPR is too liberal I shudder to think of your politics
I am always confused by this narrative. People extolling the virtues of old media organization as if those people weren't toeing the government line and were cold robots with no bias.
It is the rise of media org like Fox news where these kinds of comments have started surfacing. Because for Fox news is more commentary than facts. And then the narrative trick from Fox and other conservative media outlets have constantly pushed an agenda - "others do it too".
It has led to comments like these and this is fine.
> It's Fox, but for the Left
But then when you start adding stuff like this:
> and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
It becomes clear you are regurgitating RW talking points and both side-ism. And because Fox is worse, the only saving argument is that Fox at least knows their bias. God help this country if this is level of intellectual spin people can give to reinforce their points.
How about using terms like "pregnant people"? Or the fact that on my local NPR station I can count down from 60 and something like 80% of the time, before I reach 0, they've talked about race or ethnicity at least once.
As you can see, it’s mostly gotcha quotes and unfair glosses. For example:
> NPR also called America’s interstate highways racist. I did not know our highways were racist. I thought they were concrete, but not according to NPR.
Of course, it’s a historical fact that many minority neighborhoods were bulldozed to make room for interstate highway development, among them Cincinnati, OH and St. Louis, MO.
I'm not against abortion. In fact, I actually see the legal necessity of it in an overpopulating world. But NPR's bias on the front does not align with my own bias or, I think, with most people.
Everyone has bias and that's perfectly human. The problem is when we don't own up to it. NPR tries to cover theirs with circuitous language and lies-by-omission, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/05/29/7280694.... That double-talk served well in insulating them from criticism, but it ended up costing them the public trust.
Adam Carolla was interviewed by NPR and tried to Gotcha him by saying he said racist comments against Asians, but the comments were from an Asian comedian. NPR canned the interview and never aired it, despite telling him they would air it.
There is a surprising amount of influence in terms of what stations you listen to, not just due to the local programming but due to their choice of which national programming they air.
The right in the US is so far right that centrism looks like communism to some people. NPR and PBS are far more influenced by their corporate donors than they are the political leanings of their audience.
Considering that reporting factual information gets blamed as left wing bullshit... I don't think your post has merit.
See: COVID, vaccines, climate change. You have one side explicitly denying what we can do with the scientific method and decades of peer reviewed research, and then blaming anyone who contradicts them as biased sources.
Comparing to Fox News is even more ridiculous. You say that them knowing they're spouting bullshit is better than the people not spouting bullshit at all?
Cmon now. Take the group that is actually trying to engage in good faith rather than the one that is knowingly producing crap. Maybe this is why people voted for Trump: he told them what he is, and they liked the honesty.
The real narrative problem is that relying on "science" as truth.
Science has been weaponized by all sides it is incredivly easy to manipulate research into a narrative. But the left's media empire is by far the most effective at doing this and with heavy left bias in academia it's a corrupt system.
Data has a priority say in everything we do but dropping context and information then calling everyone dumb for not "trusting the science" is propoganda. The response of the left is to simply call everyone who denies today's science as ignorant.
This is how you get climate deniers. Weaponize science and unsuprisingly you get countless people who stop believing ANY politically angled research.
Not sure how much you've spent in academia but modern science is nasty buissness. Incentive structures are completely warped.
Must see TV when I was little was Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street. As I grew and my interest in what makes the natural world work became more sophisticated, Nova was something I watched regularly. Every one of these programs was supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I am saddened by this loss.
This Old House taught me mortal fear of water damage, and The Woodwright’s Shop taught me terrible, terrible puns. And some woodworking skills. Roy, you absolute legend.
I listen to NPR every day and, honestly, I think this might be for the best. It's going to hurt for a while, but in the end, I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
Can we call it public broadcasting when it fails to even dimly reflect the diversity of ideas for the areas it serves? Milk toast conservatives like Juan Williams were deemed intolerable a long time ago, so calling it public radio at this point is a misnomer and a sad farce.
NPR can also be a bit of a meme sometimes. Maybe it's just circumstance but every time I hear NPR for any period of time longer than about 20 minutes they do a segment on a topic like polyamory, how women are proudly reclaiming the word "bimbo", or people protesting the administration using interpretive dance.
It is certainly not programming with much mass market appeal.
> when it stands on its own without interference from politicians
Why on earth do you think it will be free of interference? Obviously they will find other ways to pressure and censor them. As they have done in many cases already.
It's been a political football for decades. Conservatives use it as an example of liberal spending run amok, so public broadcasting has had to constantly look over its shoulder during that time.
No, I would like to eliminate corporate influence as well, but that might not be possible in a capitalist society.
Most of NPR's news programming has been terrible for many years.
Pay attention to how many segments—even that are sort-of connected to an actual news event, which, many aren't—revolve around political strategy, poll numbers, and (in season, which is now like three years out of four) electoral race polling.
It's, like... a lot of them, outside the human-interest and arts coverage stuff. They consistently divert into talking about political media messaging strategy and poll numbers and crap, and they do it so very much that it's got to be something they're doing on purpose. This isn't news reporting, it's lazy, safe (because you don't have to engage with substantive questions of policy and outcomes, nor even questions of fact) horse-race bullshit. It's a complete waste of the listener's time, if they're there for actual news reporting.
On the flip side, though, I'm not seeing a lot of "sink or swim in the market" US media doing much better, so I wouldn't bet on them shifting to anything better (though shift they might).
Contrary to the conservative spin over the years, I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources of headline news and information available. (For their national broadcasts at least - local ... can be hit or miss).
In particular, their kids programming is the absolute best. Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda. And the PBS kids apps are one of the few things I can hand to my kid worry-free. And the fact that it's money-free and ad-free to access in this modern age is a miracle.
The only people who could support this are not just wrong, they are people out of touch with reality. These are people who think public parks are a waste of space. Or that having nice things to share is elitist.
Thats expected. In functioning democracies state media is run for the purpose not profit. It doesnt have the corrupting influence of political money. PBS in the US could be so much better. Just look at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
PBS Newshour is pretty much the best/balanced news programming on US TV at this point. They take deeper dives into issues than most of the other shows out there. And then there's Frontline which is excellent and goes even deeper with a documentary format. The rest of PBS - there are a few good parts like Nova, but a lot of what plays on PBS stations these days is UK crime dramas - man, there seems to be a lot of mayhem going on in merry old England these days.
This is funny because BBC is a prime example of being a propaganda channel for the government of the day. And that's not new at all just look back at the coverage of the Troubles or the miners strikes in the 70s-80s.
Yes it's not on the level of CGTN or Russia Today but BBC is not neutral at all
BBC has unparalleled quality TV programming for both kids and adults, but their news channel has been compromised by conservative influence (namely the director Tim Davie) for a while now.
Channel 4 news is surprisingly now the better news source for actual events.
BBC is not 100% neutral on all issues. No one is. One could argue that it is less bad than the for-profit channels in the UK but no channel is without biase.
BBC is a bad example because they clearly cater to local politics and their monopoly on programming and news for large swaths of their country is not particularly healthy.
State media is inherently going to be pro-establishment and failures to report on their own internal scandals I think should give everyone pause about being all-in on something like the BBC.
Every household that watches BBC in the UK needs to pay £174.50 ($230) a year. (the wording here has to be done carefully, let's not digress into being exact on who has to pay it)
Federal funding for public media distributed out to $1.54 per person in the US last year.
There's... uh... a bit of a difference in the national funding for the BBC and public media in the US.
> In particular, their kids programming is the absolute best. Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
I dunno, the Odd Squad has almost as much green screen as a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. If that's not flashy, I dunno. And Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman was pretty out there; a space ghost style host ordering kids around the streets of Boston.
Also, the reboot of CyberChase was pretty clearly on the Ag agenda, all about Organic this and that. Maybe that doesn't count as an Agenda because the department of agriculture was funding it.
Also, Sesame street has always been in the pocket of those letter and number sponsors.
I agree. I swore off of cable news many years ago because they're ALL toxic. They all have to keep people watching so it's stuffed full of breathless journalism making you think something major is happening any moment now. We'd all be better served with NO 24/7 news networks at all. NPR is not breathless, and is very fair.
I hated Fox News because it's so full of lies. I hated CNN because it's making mountains out of molehills and manufactured outrage. MSNBC was less yellow, but it's still full of opinion shows engineered to make you upset. NPR didn't do that, ever. They'd say when democrats screwed up just as much as when republicans did. It was true.
Right now I'm drinking out of my NPR mug that I pay $12/month for. I've been a daily listener since college, it's my default radio station in the car, and when I road trip I like searching for the local station. But I disagree with this. There are a number of nationally syndicated shows (at least, in all the markets I've lived in) that I'd put in this category. 1A just off the top of my head. Reveal is another, but that's because their mission is to find things that need to be revealed and they're usually pretty upsetting.
I wasn't very happy with the PBS defunding. One of their best shows was Frontline and the amount of just straight down the middle documentaries they did was great. For a lot of the issues that became very politicized, I would regularly turn to them for an unbiased view of what was going on.
I agree on the educational stuff as well. How many generations of kids grew up watching PBS kids shows? My parents donated regularly and supported PBS the whole time.
Hopefully they can continue, I'm sad to see such a pillar of goodness go away.
I’m socially liberal by American standards, but on the subject of government funding for media I feel like a small-c conservative. Government funded media faces constant pressure to become propaganda.
I’m rather looking forward to public radio programming that would strike you as liberally biased, now that public radio productions no longer have to please Republicans in government.
Your parents efforts, like many of the the good efforts to move humanity forward over many decades, have been thrown into the trash. The next generations of Americans will have social/educational gaps that CPB/PBS filled for educational, cultural, historical, and sociological reasons; not because they liked influencing little kids ideologically. And the future will suffer for it, as they say, if you don't learn it at home, society foots the bill to correct it.
> Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
Yeah yeah. If you want to find the Republicans in public broadcasting, look at the board members. Same thing happened with newspapers and local TV news after Bush 2 loosened media ownership rules.
Next you're going to tell me the New York Times has a liberal bias, right? Save it.
> When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me. While it’s widely believed that most mainstream journalists are Democrats, I’ve had colleagues that I was pretty sure were conservative (I don’t ask), and I’ve learned just since Uri’s article that I am one of several NPR hosts of “no party” registration.
To a broader point, viewpoint diversity != unbias. If I staff half a newspaper with Stalinists that doesn't mean the reporting is going to become more factual or the coverage less biased. If it's become a Republican party position to attack mainstream media, we shouldn't expect them to even be applying for these jobs.
Just because conservatives hate kids and don't want to be teachers/educators/work at universities doesn't mean it's biased or bad.
It's like if you wanted a diversity of opinions designing a rocket so you decided to pull in flat earth's as well as new earth creationist. You're not getting a better rocket. Perhaps a better fireworks show, though.
Every parent reading this knows full well how much time their kid has spent watching PBS Kids and playing the many pretty-decent games on the PBS Kids app.
> but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
I totally support public broadcasting of all stripes, and do not advocate for this POV at all, but ... there are people who claim the opposite. Sesame Street is 'full woke', apparently, because it has talked about skin color and race with muppets.
What many people consider normal... is 'full woke agenda' to others.
> Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
That’s not true. It just matches your agenda which you feel is no agenda. Of course you are against getting rid of instruments of persuasion that agree with your world view.
In the end it’s better for you too. Government shouldn’t support media.
>Contrary to the conservative spin over the years, I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources
Can we break this down?
You open with a effectively derogatory accusation about conservatives making things up…which I have no opinion on.
That immediately shows your own likely liberal bias and then you say you saw no problem with the programming.
Isn’t that exactly the issue? That you saw no issue and everyone that disagrees is just wrong?
How do you know? How would you know if CBP’s biases weren’t just your own?
Do you know the arguments against the biases of CPB, NPR, PBS from the people that can make their most effective arguments against those orgs, or do you know the lines of the people that already agree with you?
Jon Stewart Mill’s On Liberty has a great part about this… [It is not enough to know the refutations from your own teachers, you must learn them from the people that present them in their truest form].
Your argument is just assuming the (1) previous poster has liberal bias, (2) CPB has liberal bias, (3) previous poster is unable to recognize their own or CPB’s liberal bias.
Maybe these are true, but I don’t see the basis for it here.
The national stuff was okay to good. The Children’s programming was in general good.
The local stuff though was quite questionable. For example they’d support different causes or efforts by referencing a single poorly supported research paper. Usually those research papers supported some narrative. It could be homelessness, drug treatments, etc., however there was little if any scrutiny of the paper the whole effort or narrative was based on.
They also had annoying presenters like Kai Ryssdahl. He was insufferable but hardly the only one.
Also, despite being a public system, individual comp is high relative to their listeners', I'd say[1]. I'd guess most listeners would not imagine their comp being as high as it is, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Public_Radio
[1] In addition, those at the top enjoy perks like being invited to elite events, and the perks of schmoozing for donations. Those are experiences that are alien to the average listener.
PBS and NPR don't have regional programming. They're national. Local, member stations provide regional content. You'd be comparing WETA to OETA.
I'm looking at your WETA TV guide and it is completely standard material. We've got kids cartoons, Bob Ross, some selections from BBC and Bloomberg, and Ask This Old House (one of my favorites). OETA has almost identical programming.
Where's the programming where they bully people about race and sex? Are you talking about that couple that give the good financial advice? Or maybe those cooks on America's Test Kitchen? I never did trust that Wishbone dog...
I don't want to be "that guy", but I often find myself as the "intolerable lib" in some situations and the "intolerable con" in others, so here we go:
There is a degree of quasi-political messaging in PBS children's shows. I can say this because I've watched more hours than I'd like of several of them, but I'd like to focus on on Molly Of Denali. It's a good children's show about an inuit girl who lives in Alaska and teaches children general good morals and specifics of inuit and Alaskan culture.
When I say it's political, I mean that it makes points without nuance on historical and current issues which range from widely accepted and important ideas (example: They didn't let Native Alaskan People vote in the past, so it's important to exercise the right to vote now), to what I would consider less widely agreed upon and important ideas, such as it being deeply upsetting and disrespectful for a "white" teacher to call a native child "T", because she had trouble pronouncing his native name. Another example is them introducing the importance of "land acknowledgements" in a children's show. A final example is the "clueless white" trope wherein the offensive rude white visitor has to be educated by the wise natives over and over and over.
I'm not trying to say that any of these examples are "right" or "wrong", but they do represent "politics" in the mind of wide sections of the population.
This said I like the show and of course we need to fund public broadcasting, I would just prefer if we did our best to keep the most controversial stuff for when the kids are a bit older to make it a smaller target for outrage (from the right or left).
The most jarring part, to me personally, is the drastic shift in tone and presentation for injustices with wildly different levels of impact. Perhaps rudely, I think to myself in the voice of the Inuit grandfather from the show "The white man took me from my family, did not allow me to speak my language, beat me and did not allow me to vote, and worst of all...... He did not let me smile in photos"
I don't mean any of this as racist or disrespectful and I hope this is a nuanced comment for consideration and not a kneeejerk reaction or evidence of my subconscious biases run wild.
Counterpoint, when these episodes were first aired, these weren't viewed as political issues. Only in response to these ideas have they become politicized.
And since PBS has backed away from making episodes like these.
> When I say it's political, I mean that it makes points without nuance on historical and current issues which range from widely accepted and important ideas [...] to what I would consider less widely agreed upon and important ideas
Another example of this: when Mr. Rogers invited an African American neighbor to share his pool. It certainly wasn't widely agreed upon at the time.
> such as it being deeply upsetting and disrespectful for a "white" teacher to call a native child "T", because she had trouble pronouncing his native name.
Imagine not finding it disrespectful for your teacher to just completely ignore and disrespect your heritage and you're expected to just accept it and be totally OK with it.
IMO kids should be taught to be proud of their names. Apparently, that's a political stance.
I have many coworkers who I have trouble saying their names. I try as best as I can to say their names and be as respectful as possible. I wouldn't just go "I can't say your name, so you're just T now."
I hear many things on broadcast media that are contrary to my values, and tend to prune those sources from my media diet. When I am obliged by law to support those sources anyway, I get resentful. So I have been wishing for this since Ronald Reagan proposed it.
To me the bright line of "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" is crossed at least in spirit when the state seizes a dollar from a taxpayer and spends it on speech, because that abridges the taxpayer's resources for speech by a dollar. "You have free speech but I can take the money you use to be heard to speak against you" is a big loophole.
While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend. We elect them to speak and choose on our behalf. It isn’t a “loophole” when this runs afoul of an individual’s values. It is simply that we have a representative government that makes decisions by majority votes. I don’t agree with most defense spending, but I acknowledge that a majority of this country wants it. This is the purpose of compromise. If there had been a good-faith proposal to reform CPB [1], we could have made it better. The collateral damage from destroying the good parts (e.g., PBS) due to our failure to compromise should not be celebrated.
[1] Such a proposal isn’t hard to imagine. A key purpose of local stations is to give a platform to the voices of local people. Simply shifting funding from national programming to local programming (without changing the total) would have accomplished this “debiasing” and empowered the (tragically endangered) local news.
> While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend.
Without limit? If Trump and the Congressional GOP force a bunch of tax-funded in-your-face right-wing propaganda that would be ok with you because "[y]ou pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend"?
The government is allowed and required to say things about the current state of the law (i.e., they must publish the law, and they may educate the public about it, and they must enforce it). The government is not required and perhaps should not be allowed to say anything promoting specific political opinions or promoting specific Acts that have not passed yet. By "say" you [I think, and therefore] I mean as in publish with taxpayer money, because naturally elected officials and even appointees should be able to speak with anyone, even interviewers, and publish on their own dime as long as they don't do anything to prevent the opposition also speaking in that way, but publish? as in print or broadcasting? OP here thinks not, and OP has a very good point.
When Congress passed the CPB defunding bill, the Republican sponsors paraded around the most deranged takes to air on NPR in the last few years and asked, why should our tax dollars keep going to this?
And I'll be the first to admit that NPR has completely lost its mind, it's losing its listenership, and it needs to be humbled a bit. But audio is much cheaper than video and NPR's remaining listeners will easily be able to make up the shortfall. Meanwhile we're going to see PBS, whose news coverage mostly avoided the pitfalls NPR fell into and who run a lot more non-news programming, take a huge funding hit and resort to even more pledge drives and reruns, while local affiliates in large swaths of the country have to close entirely.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and not even throwing out the bathwater.
This is true. We can't view every postwar boomer institution as sacrosanct. These organizations aren't meant to grow in perpetuity.
I just wish Americans saw some of that saved money either in their pocket or public works. But the reality is probably just going to be one more missile shipped to a foreign country.
From Claude -> Notable Programs They Fund: Public television shows like Sesame Street, NOVA, PBS NewsHour, and Masterpiece, as well as NPR programming like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
I like all of those. NPR: $300m budget / 42m listeners = $7.14/yr. Sounds like if I donate $5/mo to KQED and $5/mo to KCSM, I'm supporting them to cover myself and couple other citizens?
I don't get what I can do to support PBS - when I press donate on PBS site, it sort of wants to direct me to KQED/KCSM donations again.
Anyone here with a little more time to understand/explain it?
I think the children's programming is a really undiscussed aspect of this. Some investments don't have immediately measurable outcomes. But as someone whose parents worked long hours growing up, I'm really grateful that my exposure to television was PBS rather than cable children's shows.
If your parents couldn't afford cable, then you couldn't get round the clock children's content from Nickelodeon. Your content during day time would have been stuff like the Maury Show, all the Judge shows, soap operas, and day time talk shows. PBS would have been the thing that offered the free children's content.
As with many things, I wonder if we should start unbundling services the federal government provides. If many states like public broadcasting, what if a pool of states were to opt-in to continuing to fund it (and decide whether to limit it to supporting stations in those states)?
Some things (defense, diplomacy) perhaps can only be done through the federal government. But so many things (national weather service operations, HUD housing assistance, grants for local PBS stations, SNAP benefits) have a largely local or regional benefit. Rather than disassembling these things entirely, why not allow them each to be run by and for a coalition of states (or even cities?) which opt to participate?
> But so many things (national weather service operations, HUD housing assistance, grants for local PBS stations, SNAP benefits) have a largely local or regional benefit.
You should look up which states/regions/counties provide the funding and which states/regions/counties receive the benefits, it's disproportional. Unironically, unbundling HUD, SNAP, and NWS would probably cause famine in Mississippi.
Oh I'm acutely aware that my taxes have been subsidizing people in red states that call me a slur.
But it's pretty messed up that presently the places that _were_ willing to pay for these things are deprived of the benefits. If instead we kept things alive on an optional basis, the participating states might get _better_ services and outcomes for a while because some poor red state communities would not be a sink for funds. But also, if the political pendulum swings the other way in a future election cycle, and more places opt-in, then having kept these programs alive in a reduced form would put them in a better position to resume activity.
Woah! This stuff is unwinding faster than my priors. I'm going to have to re-evaluate everything I thought true about the US. I just always assumed "strong institutions" meant something here. That it was all a house built on sand is disconcerting.
Before you think this is happening quickly, do note that public institutions have been under attack from the right for generations, including publicly funded education, public broadcasters, public health and social programs.
These attacks are not unique to the United States; there is a coordinated effort across many countries by public policy groups and private interests. The United States are highly visible due to their ownership of global media, but the Republican party has been pursuing these objectives publicly and clearly for more than 30 years, and has made incremental progress to the point where they were able to re-engineer the Supreme Court and lower courts, as well as elect far right politicians who would tear up the rules to make it happen.
This is the sharp upwards curve of increase in velocity that is the result of sustained accelleration over the last few decades. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and not just in the United States.
This has been a project under way since the friggin' John Birchers and the postwar "think-tank" boom. They've (this specific set of interests, not conservatism in general) been successfully ratcheting things toward authoritarianism since their Chicago school pals got the right people in the right places to radically change how we enforced anti-trust in the '70s (that is, they made it impossible for us to enforce in all but the most egregious cases, period) and have been winning one boring but effective battle after another ever since (plus the occasional headline-grabbing one).
Often these victories have contributed to further momentum—concentration of wealth means more money for the cause; death of the "fairness doctrine" opens up the possibility of wholly partisan media for propagandizing, which was instantly capitalized on with a boom in right wing AM radio; Citizens United decision de facto ending campaign finance regulation, well that's sure convenient; all kinds of things.
This has been more than a half-century in the making.
The dissolution and dismantling of US gov institutions that we are witnessing is unprecedented in modern times. Hell, a few of the agencies being attacked were created with bipartisan support.
I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls.
It is easier to destroy almost anything than it is to create it in the first place.
> I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls.
This isn't due to one man (Musk) or a rogue government agency, or even the executive branch.
This is Congress, which tells you how bad things have gotten.
The institutions that are not being dismantled are the ones required by the constitution. The ones being dismantled, being statutory in nature, are fair game, and if anything this shows that the constitutional institutions are in fact able to rule over the statutory ones, thus the constitutional institutions come out of this stronger, not weaker. The constitutional institutions are:
- Congress
- the Executive
- the Judiciary
- the States and their constitutional
institutions
- the jury
CPB and the like are statutory institutions. Those can come and they can go. Sometimes they go. They can come back you know. The next time the Democrats are in power they can bring all those institutions back and then some, and they can tear down any institutions that Trump creates or takes over. The critical thing is that it be possible for the Democrats to win again in the future, and then that Republicans be able to win again in the future, and so on.
This isn't Musk's fault; he's just the asshole scapegoat. This is directly from the Conservative Think Tanks who finally got a President willing to strip everything down in government while increasing insane spends elsewhere (e.g., $200MM ballroom for the White House while cutting revenue) based on the will of 44% of the voting population of the country.
If anything, government should have been cut AND revenues increased; but, that's not how either party works. (disgusting oversimplification: Republicans reduce revenue and reduce spend while Democrats increase revenue and increase spend).
My point here is that "strong institutions" were supposed to stem this tide. Of course, I should have thought through who made up these institutions. In some ways institutions kind of held up pretty well 2016-2020. Which is why I was a little less worried. But looks like that was a dry run. The efficiency with which this is happening now is shocking. Honestly, I'm kind of impressed. If we applied this much efficiency constructively in the US, we'd probably see post-war prosperity levels. I imagine even NASA would approach the 1960s productivity.
My "holy shit, we're in for... interesting times, and like, soon" moment was when Trump suggested his supporters might shoot Hillary if she won ("If she wins, I can't do anything about it. But the 'Second Amendment people'...."), and didn't see a huge hit to his popularity, and supporters in his own camp distancing themselves, immediately.
Norms are dead, you can just suggest assassination of your opponent and still win a Presidential election now, the batshit crazy stuff's not just for races in rural Montana or whatever. Like, IDK how this reads to younger folks, but I assure them that things are now happening practically daily that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago, let alone farther back. Things got visibly weirder fast.
Capturing the Supreme Court so completely was the turning point, in terms of ability to enact their agenda quickly. It's been conservative my entire not short any more life, but it's strongly packed with disingenuous, ideologically-motivated jurists vetted and guided by the "correct" organizations, now.
I wish anyone with even a little power were talking about ditching the position of "Supreme Court Justice" and just drawing for the role by lot from the "lower" federal courts each term. That could be done with a law, not an amendment-there has to be a Supreme Court, and federal judgeships are "during good behavior" (de facto "for life") but Supreme Court Justice per se doesn't have to be a permanent role. The closest I hear anyone talking about is court expansion, but that's a less-effective fix, and one more likely to draw strong push-back and to be unpopular, I think.
Europeans seem to understand this better than Americans, because the US has never really devolved from democracy into authoritarianism, but several European countries have. That's why e.g. in Germany it's possible to ban political parties that have as their goal the overflow of the democratic order.
NPR in particular has been an insane parody of leftism for at least a decade at this point. The fact that it took this long to lose funding is a testament to how strong it was as an institution.
Institutions are only as strong as their defenders and supporters - and like countless Empires before it, the USA has bled its institutions dry of credibility and/or resources over the past several decades in a futile attempt to satiate a handful of wealthy extremists.
This was entirely expected and predicted once neoliberalism took hold in the Democratic and Republican parties and began rotting out the central pillars of American Democracy and Empire.
This has been an attack on democracy over 40 years in the making. Conservatives have been openly saying what they've wanted to do all the time, but most people thought there'd never be a moment where they'd actually have enough power to pull it off. Meanwhile, liberal politicians have and still are operating under the delusion that they don't have to pass laws when they gain power, they can merely cast feelings and hope that the courts will back that up.
I am quite literally in the middle of reading this now [0]. This would be great required reading for high school students. Anyone that runs across this comment should put it at the top of their reading list.
Most frustratingly, many people know how to be properly skeptical. To use Sagan's example, it comes out in full-force any time someone buys a used car. Never trust the dealer. Everybody knows that.
I really appreciate that Sagan refrains from looking down on anyone. It's all too easy to do and I am guilty of it at times. It also leads to a much more useful conversation. Sagan provides hope that we can educate better. Compared to say, Dawkins, who I think has ultimately hurt the cause. Nobody will listen when they feel insulted.
> So sad to see its worst predictions come true.
The most recent bit of the book I read involved James Randi. I was curious about the guy so I did some other reading. Randi gave out an annual "award" called the "Pigasus Award" to fraudsters and similar. Mehmet Oz received the award [1] three times. Now Oz runs Medicaid!
Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi. Sometimes it feels like the world has lost any sort of check against gullibility. To paraphrase from the book, many scientists are particularly not equipped to call these scammers out. Scientists wrestle with nature - nature has laws. Trying to call out the Oz's of the world is hard because they don't play by the rules of reason.
I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi at different points. Along with Paul Kurtz, also sadly gone now, these were some of the most in influential people in the beginnings of the modern skeptical movement. If you aren't familiar with Prometheus books and CSICOP (now CSI), look them up. You'll find years worth of groundbreaking skeptical reading material.
I came to this book too late for the core message to resonate as far as mindset and methods (yeah, yeah, I found this path and walked at least this far on it already, you're preaching to the choir, should have read this when I was like 10 or 12 I guess...) but did make the mistake of dismissing an absolute chorus of warnings about anti-intellectualism from Sagan and a dozen other authors I read as a kid and in my 20s (which warnings, yes, were a significant component of this book)
They were all from roughly the same time period, and I thought their focus on that particular issue was overblown. A relic of the time they'd lived through and their efforts, which efforts had gotten us here, where anti-intellectualism is a curiosity, periodically an annoyance, but not a threat. Sure, we could swing back toward that being a real concern, but it'd take a while. We'd see it.
What's weird is I could also list a bunch of ways that we were swinging back toward it. I think on some level I just didn't believe that these kinds of big shifts backwards could happen, actually and not just in shootin'-the-shit discussions with friends, in my lifetime. Bumps on the road of progress, sure, but going backwards entirely? I even shied away from labeling authoritarian-enabling changes, policies, or actions "fascist", even as I literally protested some of them in the street—well, that's alarmist, surely. It's silly and childish that I was embarrassed of the term.
It's so damn foolish when I look back on it. I had so many of the particulars right, but just couldn't believe in something so big actually happening, I guess. I'd have told you that sure, it could, if you'd asked, even outlined a plausible path from here to there based on recent and current goings-on... but I didn't believe it might happen. Not really.
Probably not. CPB gave funding to rural smaller stations which buy programming from PBS (or NPR).
It will drastically scale back the funding and coverage of public broadcasters, but they should (hopefully) survive.
That said, they effectively cease being public at this point. And ironically enough, they have no reason anymore to pander to wider audiences so if anything they will become more "left leaning" over time.
No. What's really going to end PBS as we grew up with it is streaming. CPB is an vehicle for distributing public funding to PBS stations; only a small fraction of PBS station funding comes from CPB through the government.
No, but I think it's likely that NPR and PBS will change because of this. A lot of people work there because of its explicit mission to serve the public. As with every other federal institution that's being pointlessly kneecapped, lots of good people will look elsewhere.
For the last twenty years PBS proponents have been telling me that PBS and NPR are mostly member supported, and that the Federal funds couldn't corrupt the messaging because there just wasn't enough of it to matter.
So if that's true, I guess not. If it was actually a mouthpiece, I guess so
Yah they also took money from the “Archer Daniels Midland” corporation (not that I’d have anything against organic produce, for example) and the Ford and many other biased endowments —so I think it’d be hard to believe their messaging was unaffected. That or they bit the hand that fed it and the hand didn’t mind getting bitten for some reason.
I certainly remember hearing the name many times, on good TV programming, so am surprised that the Wikipedia article doesn't talk much about the CPB's impact.
When I was a teenager in the 90s an old guy took me aside and told me there'd be a day we get rid of public radio, and a day we'd have our final serving of affordable tuna sushi, and that after that, I'd be living in what he deemed the future.
Of course, if you live in a large metro the local stations will survive due to large numbers of wealthy and middle class benefactors. This is not necessarily so if you live in a typical red state middle size city or less.
Somewhat ironically a lot of the extreme cuts (this included) only serve to reinforce the status of major blue state metros as more desirable, since they have more resources available to fill the gaps left by federal austerity.
Public television and public radio stations are literally being shut down, now, as per the topic article. Any station meaningfully relying on CPB is done.
With the inevitable cutbacks coming to NPR, I wonder how big a hit classical music will take. NPR delivers 95% of the classical music that airs in America, much of which comes from small market stations which will be the first to die with the end of CPB.
Commenters in this thread citing NPR as a reason that dollars shouldn't go towards helping kids learn how to count and not be antisocial is the kind of win right wing media could only dream about a decade or so ago.
Absolutely embarrassing for a site like this that claims to value education and democratizing it (and always jumps into threads about childrens education with all of their anecdotally built ideas, of course!) isn't condemning this.
Whenever the question of federal funding for public broadcasting has come up in the past, a small army of commenters would always claim that less then 1% of the funding for public media comes from the government.
Turns out that was perhaps an incomplete argument.
For NPR 1-2% of their budget came directly from the federal government mostly through the CPB. That's where the 1% number some quote comes from.
However, NPR also receives funding from member station fees, and those member stations typically get about 13% of their budgets from the federal government.
Putting it all together about 10% of NPR's budget comes from the federal government.
For PBS about 15% of their budget comes from the federal government. Some local PBS affiliates, especially in rural areas, get up to 60% of their budgets from the federal government.
Certainly an incomplete picture. NPR its self may only get a small percentage of its total pie from CPB, but member stations (that license NPR content and what not) that exist all over the country use various amounts. The result will likely be that many small, local, already underfunded local stations will cease to function in their current capacity.
> It will regain its trust, but it has a long, uphill battle to get there since, especially since the months leading up to 2016.
Why do you think that? Do you imagine that the individuals and institutions pushing the idea that the media is untrustworthy will suddenly stop pushing their agenda?
I wonder if now, shorn of the need to “bothsides” everything to justify government funding, public radio news will begin to reflect the political affiliations of its donor base more closely.
What's really horrifying here is that, even if the appetite for funding CPB were to come back in 2026, 2028, or whenever, you can't just spin it up again; those people have moved on, those assets are liquidated. You would have to start up again pretty much from scratch.
That's why this careless crusade against governmental institutions is so horrific. Institutions with decades of history are being destroyed, and it would take years to decades to spin up something even close to equivalent, in an insane political environment where every public institution is framed as horrible socialism.
I guess I just don’t find that as horrifying as you do. The market cannot hold public broadcasting accountable, and this is one of the few levers that we have to do so.
Conservatives have wanted to defund public broadcasting for decades. What made it finally possible was that public broadcasting made their bias obvious and undeniable. Over the past 10 years, the stark shift leftward has been undeniable — they became what they’ve been accused of being for a very long time.
I identify neither as a liberal nor as a conservative, but outsiders will likely see a left bent in me.
The thing about PBS and NPR: I just don't have any alternatives! Wherever I've lived, all the other radio stations/channels just suck - liberal or not. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News totally suck. ABC, CBS, NBC mostly suck. The half-good radio stations are just way too biased and make NPR/PBS appear like paragons of neutraltity. I can tolerate losing NPR/PBS if I had alternatives. I simply don't.
Conservatives lump NPR/PBS viewers with other liberals. It's generally not true. All my liberal friends declare NPR to be "part of the problem". NPR/PBS viewers are just in another category altogether. They don't have choices.
I'd really like to hear from conservatives: Are there any channels/radio stations they like? Their complaint is continually that NPR/PBS is too left wing (which I can dispute but won't). But do they have a gaping hole in their choices the way people like me are about to have?
I like that NPR/PBS is calm. Most other outlets are based around breaking news, excitement, and often anger. I started watching PBS News Hour on youtube this year. Now I can't stand watching a show like ABC evening news which starts with intense music and urgent words from Muir at the start of every broadcast.
The flagship big-city / large-state stations will very likely continue to function. The real hit for this action will be in rural regions where alternatives to the local NPR translator station are typically religious stations, right-wing talk, and increasingly Spanish-language programming.
If you've access to streaming media, podcasts, or shortwave, you still do have options.
There are several excellent national broadcasters, with the CBC, BBC, and ABC (Australia) operating in English, or a reasonable facsimile. There are often English-language broadcasts from non-anglophone countries, including France (France-24) and Germany (Deutsche-Welle English service), off the top of my head.
Of course, these will get you international news (and occasionally national stories from the broadcaster's home state), but you're straight outta luck for journalism local to your area. OTOH, NPR and PBS have struggled to deliver that (as has commercial news media) for the past decade or two.
If you've always wanted to learn a foreign language but never quite had the inspiration to do so, a further option is to start listening to non-anglophone country's native programming, whether broadcast (shortwave or Internet streaming) or podcast. There are many excellent options. I'm particularly fond of German radio's programming (Deutschlandfunk and its variants, the federated public broadcasting model might offer some lessons and learnings to PBS and NPR going forward), though there are others on top of that.
I round things out with text-based news, typically major newspapers (e.g., NYTimes, Guardian), or newswires (Reuters is pretty good).
But yes, the state of streaming / OTA / linear-programmed news media in the US is absolutely abysmal.
I’ll listen to snippets of right wing talk radio but it generally doesn’t take long before the exaggeration (Glenn Beck) or Trump idol worship (Clay Travis) get annoying.
I like hearing perspectives on stories that I won’t hear elsewhere but in general, I don’t need very much political news in my life. I’m happier spending my time on audio books and podcasts.
I’m not sure I’ve ever engaged with NPR beyond seeing conservatives mock some of their silliest propaganda headlines in the past few years.
I’ll listen to snippets of right wing talk radio but it generally doesn’t take long before the exaggeration (Glenn Beck) or Trump idol worship (Clay Travis) get annoying.
I remember being in the gym and catching some coverage of Fox News on Trumps trade war and potential deals. I believe the quote from one of the people talking was something like:
"We don't know the specifics about what's in this deal but we do know that this is a huge win for American businesses and the American people."
Thank you so, so much GOP! Now children won't have the educational programming from PBS and us adults won't have our PBS documentaries and shows. I'm so very disappointed in our government right now.
Good it’s a completely outdated concept. There’s no barrier to producing and distributing content today. That public tax dollars go to a place where partisans distribute it to their favorite projects is a 1960s era concept that needs to die.
Really the 1960s and 70s were such an insane era we should examine all government programs from that era that are still in commission with very suspicious eyes.
They could have chosen which specific shows they would fund, they weren't required to give out no-strings-attached grants. They once hand-picked Tucker Carlson to host a new PBS show that they would fund.
I'm pretty certain that if public libraries didn't already exist and someone proposed the idea now it would be labeled "woke" and "socialist" and not get anywhere. We're in a very weird era, but pendulums swing and this too shall pass (in the meantime lots of damage is being done).
> I'm pretty certain that if public libraries didn't already exist and someone proposed the idea now it would be labeled "woke" and "socialist" and not get anywhere.
Public libraries do already exist and they are labeled "woke" and "socialist" and are dealing with both assaults on their funding and on their function.
True. I'm fortunate to live in a community that funds it's public libraries well, but I do know that downstate there are rural communities that have completely defunded theirs. I just don't think the idea of public libraries would get any traction now given how far to the right we've gone.
Unfortunately we've been running a massive and growing budget defect since 2002. The government would need to bring in or cut an extra 1.6 trillion dollars per year to get back to balanced in order for your statement to make sense.
One has to see the positives. After the isolationist, fiscal conservatives caused their great depression , they turn for one generation into fishes. Any public discussion, mouth opens, brain reminds them of the backlash they will get for what they caused, no sound escapes, mouth closes. Fishes.
I loved many NPR / PBS creations, like “Car Talk”. What a great show.
But I was dismayed to see how NPR turned a blind eye to stories like the Hunter Biden bombshell. NPRs CEO started wearing a Biden hat, and openly criticizing Trump. A former NPR employee wrote a well publicized substack article (irony!) that claimed deep, systemic political bias. It’s hard not to agree.
I hope NPR and PBS take a hard look at themselves and come up with some ways to assure political neutrality. Absent that, I have to agree that tax dollars should not be spent here.
Again, it's all part of the plan, which is referred to as the butterfly revolution, by Curtis Yarvin. Leaders that have literally invested in this platform are buying into this nonsense. These guys have polarized the two parties to a point all weaknesses are surfacing. It isn't about democrats vs republicans. It's just working class vs the billionaires. You know the ppl sitting behind Trump at his inauguration. Literally, they want to break apart the US and discredit the constitution. Unless we come together and carve a new narrative that works. These guys may succeed and you can kiss your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness goodbye, as well bill of rights.
Peter Theil, JD Vance, Marc Andreesen, Garry Tan, Srinivasan, and many others, wanting to overthrow democracy and dissolve nation states. This effort is to establish Network States with those that worship them, sycophants and cults. They want to transform the US into an Autocracy. The polarization of the media and political parties is on purpose. They want America to fall. It's not a secret, not a conspiracy theory. It's definitely being rolled out by billionaires. It would be wise for others here to really do your research and understand why we are being polarized to hate each other. Enter the butterfly revolution:
1. Reboot (“full-power start”) Suspend or bypass existing constitutional limits; concentrate absolute sovereignty in one new organization—analogous to Allied occupation powers in post-1945 Japan/Germany. Eliminate checks and balances that block rapid change.
2. CEO-Monarch model A single executive (chosen like a corporate CEO) rules; the former president becomes a figurehead “chairman of the board.” Treat the state as a firm run for efficiency, not democratic representation.
3. RAGE strategy “Retire All Government Employees” by mass-firing the civil service and replacing it with loyal appointees. Remove institutional resistance (“the Cathedral”) and ensure obedience.
4. Parallel regime Build a fully staffed shadow government in exile before inauguration; unveil it on Day 1 to take over agencies at once. Prevent the bureaucratic slow-rolling that stymied Trump’s first term.
5. Media & academia clampdown Defund or shutter universities and independent press seen as hostile. Break what Yarvin calls the Cathedral’s cultural dominance.
I appreciate your response and agree with it, but don’t quite get the emphasis on polarization. They don’t want two polarized media sources, they want one completely controlled propaganda source. And I don’t see how it’s playing into their hands or something being “polarized” against billionaires and trump supporters.
This is a giant thread full of people lamenting the demise of public broadcasting so it seems like someone should write the comment that points out that CPB doesn't do PBS programming. They don't develop content. They're a grantmaking organization that manages the distribution of the congressional PBS appropriation.
The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately, and then purchased by local PBS stations (streaming access to PBS content runs through "Passport", which is a mechanism for getting people to donate to their local PBS station even while consuming that content on the Internet). This (and other streaming things like it) is how most people actually consume this content in 2025. If your local PBS affiliate vanishes, you as a viewer are not going to lose Masterpiece Theater or Nova, because you almost certainly weren't watching those shows on linear television anyways.
The cuts are bad, I just want to make sure people understand what CPB ceasing operations actually means.
> The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately
Off the top of my head, two programs I watch that get CPB funding include: Frontline https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/about-us/our-funders/ NOVA https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/funders/
This is one place some sorta "trickle down" economics worked. CPB contributed to developing the content on PBS. Now PBS either has to cut costs by either canceling programs or ordering cheaper content that corporate sponsors like, run more pledge drives, or seek more corporate sponsors. None of those are appealing to me.
Also CPB helps keep rural stations open means all the niche local productions about state history or geology or whatever can happen.
It's a cut to the already strained budget of a wonderful resource. I'd be surprised if there weren't lost jobs and less quality as a result.
Edit to add: Just sentimental but I'll miss hearing "this program was made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions from viewers like you!"
I think the cuts are bad and certainly there will be programming losses. It's just not an existential threat to public media in America, which has over the last 20 years become far less dependent on local stations. GBH, which produces Frontline, gets $177MM in revenue from major donors and viewer subscriptions.
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PBS stations in major markets will likely be able to carry on due to donations and corporate underwriting, but stations in rural areas (the types of places where Internet streaming is less viable due to poor infrastructure) will be heavily affected. Some rural stations get up to half their budgets from the CPB, and these cuts will likely make them have to shut down. In heavily rural states like West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico, and Montana, the average public media station relies on CPB funding for over 30% of its budget. All of those stations are now at risk. More information: https://current.org/2025/04/heres-how-much-public-media-reli...
I think the idea that people in rural markets are watching PBS OTA linear content is a claim that will need to be supported with evidence. Linear television is dead, pretty much everywhere.
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If I was in a place without internet streaming, I'd get Starlink.
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> because you almost certainly weren't watching those shows on linear television anyways.
I'm just one person, but I definitely am watching the local PBS over an antenna, and so do several members of my family (living in different households).
The local broadcast is excellent quality, I get a good signal to it, never any glitches, and I enjoy the local news and other programming too.
I don’t watch my local PBS over antenna much anymore, but it is great, just like you describe. Amazing what you can watch for free OTA, when you think about it.
This is useful, though it leaves open the question of what it means in practice that the grant-making organization is disappearing.
CPB doesn't create programming. But they do write grants to the stations that purchase the programming. Isn't that just funding the creation of the programming with several steps in between?
> The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately, and then purchased by local PBS stations
Purchased using funds from CPB. Most of the grants went to stations, not content producers. But pulling funds from stations will in fact harm the content producers too.
Given that CBP is only 15% of PBS funding, I’m surprised they don’t start a national fundraising campaign instead.
I’d happily donate some cash to keep PBS’s lights on in red states.
Do you subscribe to your local station and have a Passport account? Consider doing that first.
Nothing stops any of us from donating to local stations or PBS/NPR directly. Here's a good reference link:
https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/5000692392-w...
With a quick search online, here's a list of the donation links for the 21 states that are currently listed as "Red" (based on 270toWin.com). It's kind of a Googlish reply.
Some are a little difficult because they're kind of fractured, like Missouri is a St. Louis link, Texas is an Austin link, Tennessee is a Nashville link, so its challenging to tell if your donation is going to the state in general or just the local town PBS. (May want to check specifically if you're targeting a specific market). Most tend to be statewide portals. However, you seem like you want to support PBS, so here's some links.
Alabama (https://donate.aptv.org/aptv/donate), Alaska (https://alaskapublic.org/support), Arizona (https://azpbs.org/support/), Georgia (https://www.gpb.org/support), Idaho (https://idahoptv.pledgecart.org/home?campaign=1FF20990-A386-...), Kansas (https://donate.kansascitypbs.org/kcpbs/donate), Kentucky (https://ket.secureallegiance.com/ket/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P...), Louisiana (https://lpb.secureallegiance.com/lpb/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P...), Mississippi (https://donate.mpbfoundation.org/mspb/donate), Missouri (https://www.ninepbs.org/support/), Montana (https://donate.montanapbs.org/kusm/donate), Nebraska (https://donate.nebraskapublicmedia.org/alleg/WebModule/Donat...), North Dakota (https://www.prairiepublic.org/support/), Oklahoma (https://www.pbs.org/donation/?station_id=edf8065c-f56a-42f7-...), South Carolina (https://www.pbs.org/donation/?station_id=50ac3de0-09e0-43db-...), South Dakota (https://sdpb.pledgecart.org/donate/home), Tennessee (https://donate.wnpt.org/wnpt/donate), Texas (https://donate.austinpbs.org/austinpbs/donate), Utah (https://donate.nprstations.org/upr/support-upr?gad_source=1&...), West Virginia (https://afg.secureallegiance.com/wvpb/WebModule/Donate.aspx?...), Wyoming (https://donate.wyomingpbs.org/kcwc/donate)
Here's a summary of the changes and the impact: https://democracy.diy/issues/save-pbs-and-npr/
The PBS budget has been cut by 15%, and the NPR budget by 1%. That's not enough to end either one at the national level. However, local stations depend on the CPB funding for 50% or more of their budgets. (Local stations provide local disaster alert systems and local programming.) There will definitely be local station closures and major cutbacks in the stations that survive. Large metropolitan areas will be the least affected. PBS and NPR will continue at the national level, as before.
The funding cuts are the result of an executive order that Trump issued on May 1, ordering the immediate cessation of all federal funding. Similar executive orders have been found to be illegal in federal court. (Congress had already guaranteed funding for CPB from 2025-2027, and only congress can take that money away.)
However, congress supported Trump a short while later (on July 24) by passing the Rescissions Act, which officially (and legally) ended all funding for CPB. And that's the reason for the current crisis: all federal funding for CPB is ending by the end of this year, which is only a few months away.
> PBS and NPR will continue at the national level, as before.
It is not a given that they will continue as they did before, CPB's funding mostly goes to PBS and NPR for content, some programs are funded more than other via the CPB.
It is likely PBS and NPR will continue, but not as before, the cuts will impact programming and their ability to buy content that's produced at smaller stations that rely on CPB funds more.
> Local stations provide local disaster alert systems
These days sending alerts via texting them to phones should be far more effective.
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PBS doesn’t make PBS content either. They acquire it from people who make it using CPB money, among others. Then the stations that don’t make the content license it from PBS, mainly using CPB money. And they use it to attract members/donors.
You’ve framed this as if the disappearance of CPB and its money is basically a big nothing-burger, which is extremely far from the truth.
Source: I work in the system at a level with visibility into these things.
I don't think it's a nothing-burger. I think there will be programming cuts and layoffs even in the major market stations. But it's clearly not an existential threat to PBS.
> and then purchased by local PBS stations
If those stations go off the air, who is buying that content?
It's like arguing it doesn't matter if the stream dries up the plants don't get water from the stream, the plants get the water from the ground. Where did that water in the ground come from? The stream!
You're right, these shows aren't going off the air tomorrow. But this does affect the funding for the shows produced by PBS and NPR.
This would make sense if CPB cuts meant all stations were going off the air, but the major market stations where most of the money comes from are fine.
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Don’t worry, they will be able to get plenty of grants for content promoting Trump’s businesses
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You may be right, but I'm guessing the Administration is not done with NPR and PBS yet. This is just phase I.
Maybe you weren't watching them on the TV but your grandma was most likely was.
The more important thing is that this is just another tiny step in the death spiral of the United States. Sad to watch.
not something one gets to say very often, but you're insufficiently cynical, tptacek.
killing this means cutting of swathes of simple, orderly funding. what remains is donations etc, which is far less regular, and requires work to get, and is also easily attackable by presidential fiat.
we already know there's a bunch of actual lunatics in charge of the federal government, with a very wide variety of very stupid hobby horses. they get to ride them now and then, so how about some guesses at future trips:
- IRS starts going after big non-profit donors to public broadcasters, claiming they're in breach of some somewhat arbitrary and subjective rule that's been poorly enforced in the past, I don't know foundation disbursement rate or something, but also nudge nudge wink wink, if you stopped giving to PBS, maybe we'd forget about it
- FEC "clarifies" that promoting non-traditional-sexuality or whatever is political and thus it's illegal for non-profits to fund it, which of course would be an extremely funny turn given how the Right Wing Lunatics Association of America actually couped the country. this could of course be enforced entirely randomly - go after the NPR stations that are loud and annoying, go after the individual donors to them that the regime wants to make an example of.
- Congress passes some law that "clarifies" the purpose of non-profit status or something, to exclude anti-American speech, which is of course a clear abridgment of the 1st amendment, but of course that's fine in 2025 if it targets notional enemies of the regime.
killing this corporation just grants more power to the extremely partisan executive branch and extremely corrupted government and turns ever more of the functioning of the United States in to just expressions of the whims of the supreme leader and his favoured courtiers.
the current deliberate structural destruction of the united states seems underappreciated - every one of these moves turns the country in to more of a Whimocracy and destroys the bedrock of society that let it weather past terrible administrations.
Nixon was a historically horrible president, but the Washington Post fucking took him down. now almost all the big media is owned by Rich Cunts who make a public show of displaying subservience to the Dear Leader.
I mean you kind of made it sound not too bad at all.
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According to this page [1] PBS only receives about 15% of its funds from federal funding. The rest is from donations.
1: https://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/gifts-to-the-pbs-end...
So this certainly won't be the death of PBS, as I had feared.
Update 2: For the record (easier to respond in this original post than to each response), I am not defending the decision at all. I grew up listening to NPR, and have been on recurring monthly donations to PBS for years.
I was genuinely curious about what percentage comes from federal funds. So I am just trying to level-set and get ahead of any hysteria about the actual impact.
PBS and NPR do not operate like the commercial networks --
ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/Etc are big corporations that produce (or commission/license, it gets...weird) shows to be distributed on their affiliates, that, depending on the city you are in, can be owned by the network OR another company that operates it like a franchise. Their affiliate agreement governs how much of the network programming they play -- though there are other agreements for non-network programming -- Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, for example, are syndicated and NOT network.
PBS on the other hand is more of a consortium of public TV stations around the country. Shows that you might think of as "PBS Shows" are actually produced by these individual stations and then distributed to other stations that want them. Even PBS Newshour and Washington Week are produced by WETA in DC.
Radio gets even more complicated. Many of the shows I've seen referenced on this thread aren't even necessarily NPR. Marketplace, for example, is American Public Media, which is sort of an outcropping from Minnesota Public Radio.
So funding going to ACTUAL PBS is a tiny part of this. What happens to the money going to various stations? What happens to the grants to produce and run these stations, especially in rural areas?
As others have said, the big guys (WGBH in Boston, WETA in DC, etc) will have minimal impact since they have a large pool of donors.
But the little guys will suffer more. Ultimately, I think we can all agree that we hope the impact won't be catastrophic as far as the number of listeners impacted.
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ah so like the cathedral vs the bazaar...
PBS themselves[1] state that CPB funding is what kept local stations solvent, so without funding, they will likely close.
They also state that the bulk of CPB funding pays for national NPR and PBS programs, so those will see cuts, too.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-gives-final-appr...
Rural stations relied heavily on CPB funding; urban stations get most of their funding from donations or corporate underwriting. So big city public TV and radio will survive, but those in less populated areas might go under unless some other source of funding is found.
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> PBS only receives about 15% of its funds from federal funding
I'm a big fan of PBS, but I wonder if this common stat is misleading. Don't a huge portion of PBS funds come from member stations, which get a portion of their funds from federal funding?
Yes it is so obviously misleading and incorrect that only the mainstream media could have perpetuated this unquestioned for decades.
The federal money goes to member stations which then hands it right over to NPR to pay for programming, I believe it’s $500 per hour. It’s 1 layer of indirection but no one seemed to mention this in all of the reporting
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My link is literally from the PBS foundation. I'm very careful about my sources in this age of constant misinformation.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5408014-rural-stations-vu...
> Rural stations hit hardest
> Up to 18 percent of about 1,000 member stations would close
Man, sometimes losing 15% is enough to make things unsustainable. It is not like they are an Ivy League university with an endowment bigger than a developing country's GDP.
Totally agree. But there's a much bigger chance to survive with a 15% change, rather than a 30% or 40% change, for example.
The CEO stated repeatedly that many small stations are likely to be forced to shutdown
Per https://cpb.org/funding, $357m goes to public tv and $119m to public radio.
That's a nice chunk of change, though low enough that a few friendly billionaires could put some pocket change into a trust today and make up for this funding in perpetuity. And there undoubtedly will be a massive surge in donations from small donors in response to this.
As long as the bigger fish are willing to subsidize the smaller rural stations, I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
The removal of this Sword of Damocles is in my opinion a great thing for PBS and NPR.
A few friendly billionaires could have funded them entirely for the last 60 years. I see no reason to think that they suddenly will now. Many stations will be closed, and people will lose out on valued programing.
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I think your usage of the word “only” is a mistake. This is an important piece of information but if you are going to imply value like that then you should also explain the consequences of that cut.
It will be the death of public radio and television in small markets. Not all stations are affected equally.
This is not a fiscal decision. This is a ideology that demonizes the open exchange of ideas and truth.
No I totally understand. I'm not trying to defend the decision or anything.
But I am just trying to set expectations of what people should expect to see. I'm trying to get ahead of the predictable hysteria about the death of public radio/tv.
Honestly, given the news that the Trump administration now has editorial control over all of CBS, it’s probably good that they’re no longer holding NPR’s purse strings anymore.
Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.
> Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said.
If that was true, losing the CPB would be a travesty. But as a loyal NPR listener for decades, I've found their stuff lately to be unlistenable. It's Fox, but for the Left, and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
> It's Fox, but for the Left
There was a distinct shift to the right at NPR when Obama took office, and by the time he took his second term, NPR News' social media was posting clickbait trash instead of real headlines. "The liberal media" is an irrational boogeyman used to whip ownership in line. Everyone who complains about "bias in the media" is arguing in bad faith while they continue to turn a blind eye to the overwhelmingly dominant conservative slant of the 21st century American media.
smithkl42 says that NPR is leftward, and you say that it's rightward. Maybe we're all operating from different baselines.
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Yeah I've been bummed by how far NPR has swerved leftward, especially since 2016. Even ten years ago I liked tuning in because it was quality journalism that still made an honest effort to cover multiple sides of an issue, even if the topics they chose were primarily "liberal" topics. But yeah, now they seem just as tribal as Fox.
Not every side deserves to be covered for each story. This is the problem with major media today, they give equal opportunity to people that have no idea what they are talking about. It's like one side says 2+2=4, the other 2+2=5, and media gives them equal air time.
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lol, I stopped caring about them because they weren’t willing to say anything about Gaza and bent over backwards to excuse what Trump was doing. If center-right NPR is too liberal I shudder to think of your politics
> If that was true, losing the CPB would be a travesty.
America and many Americans have lost their way, and have always struggled to get perspective on a topic.
As out outsider looking in, let me be clear.
This IS a travesty, and will be a notable mark in the history books when people look back in 50 or 100 years and ask “how did it happen?”
I am always confused by this narrative. People extolling the virtues of old media organization as if those people weren't toeing the government line and were cold robots with no bias.
It is the rise of media org like Fox news where these kinds of comments have started surfacing. Because for Fox news is more commentary than facts. And then the narrative trick from Fox and other conservative media outlets have constantly pushed an agenda - "others do it too".
It has led to comments like these and this is fine.
> It's Fox, but for the Left
But then when you start adding stuff like this:
> and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
It becomes clear you are regurgitating RW talking points and both side-ism. And because Fox is worse, the only saving argument is that Fox at least knows their bias. God help this country if this is level of intellectual spin people can give to reinforce their points.
And you are clearly regurgitating left-wing talking points etc.....
If Fox keeps moving further and further right, even centric stuff starts sounding far left.
Can you cite specific examples of this "bias?"
As linked elsewhere in this thread, see Uri Berliner on the subject https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
How about using terms like "pregnant people"? Or the fact that on my local NPR station I can count down from 60 and something like 80% of the time, before I reach 0, they've talked about race or ethnicity at least once.
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Here’s Fox reporting on NPR’s bias: https://www.foxnews.com/media/npr-head-asks-critics-show-me-...
As you can see, it’s mostly gotcha quotes and unfair glosses. For example:
> NPR also called America’s interstate highways racist. I did not know our highways were racist. I thought they were concrete, but not according to NPR.
Of course, it’s a historical fact that many minority neighborhoods were bulldozed to make room for interstate highway development, among them Cincinnati, OH and St. Louis, MO.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-freeways-flattened-black...
But of course this history that actually happened is interpreted as Reuters’ liberal bias. There’s no winning this.
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"Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses." from https://wamu.org/story/19/05/15/guidance-reminder-on-abortio...
I'm not against abortion. In fact, I actually see the legal necessity of it in an overpopulating world. But NPR's bias on the front does not align with my own bias or, I think, with most people.
Everyone has bias and that's perfectly human. The problem is when we don't own up to it. NPR tries to cover theirs with circuitous language and lies-by-omission, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/05/29/7280694.... That double-talk served well in insulating them from criticism, but it ended up costing them the public trust.
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Adam Carolla was interviewed by NPR and tried to Gotcha him by saying he said racist comments against Asians, but the comments were from an Asian comedian. NPR canned the interview and never aired it, despite telling him they would air it.
> Can you cite specific examples of this "bias?"
Read https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru... by NPR veteran that shows how NPR developed a left wing bias over time. Also at https://archive.is/H7QNM
https://washingtonstand.com/news/npr-has-zero-republicans-87...
NPR Has Zero Republicans, 87 Democrats on Editorial Staff
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There is a surprising amount of influence in terms of what stations you listen to, not just due to the local programming but due to their choice of which national programming they air.
I don't agree -- NPR is about as center-right as it's possible to be. Just look at the efforts they've made to normalize Trump, it's way over the top.
And nonetheless it's an important voice to have since it will leave a void in the media landscape to be filled by opportunists.
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So true, it is so telling that everyone complaining about it is a conservative...
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The right in the US is so far right that centrism looks like communism to some people. NPR and PBS are far more influenced by their corporate donors than they are the political leanings of their audience.
What I said about NPR might apply to some of their listeners as well: "What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias."
i dont think they are blind to their own bias, i think they are championing their own values, but that's the problem.
Well, congratulations, now there won’t even be that, but Fox will persist.
Is Fox news government funded ?
Considering that reporting factual information gets blamed as left wing bullshit... I don't think your post has merit.
See: COVID, vaccines, climate change. You have one side explicitly denying what we can do with the scientific method and decades of peer reviewed research, and then blaming anyone who contradicts them as biased sources.
Comparing to Fox News is even more ridiculous. You say that them knowing they're spouting bullshit is better than the people not spouting bullshit at all?
Cmon now. Take the group that is actually trying to engage in good faith rather than the one that is knowingly producing crap. Maybe this is why people voted for Trump: he told them what he is, and they liked the honesty.
This is one point that has irked me.
The real narrative problem is that relying on "science" as truth.
Science has been weaponized by all sides it is incredivly easy to manipulate research into a narrative. But the left's media empire is by far the most effective at doing this and with heavy left bias in academia it's a corrupt system.
Data has a priority say in everything we do but dropping context and information then calling everyone dumb for not "trusting the science" is propoganda. The response of the left is to simply call everyone who denies today's science as ignorant.
This is how you get climate deniers. Weaponize science and unsuprisingly you get countless people who stop believing ANY politically angled research.
Not sure how much you've spent in academia but modern science is nasty buissness. Incentive structures are completely warped.
Must see TV when I was little was Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street. As I grew and my interest in what makes the natural world work became more sophisticated, Nova was something I watched regularly. Every one of these programs was supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I am saddened by this loss.
This Old House taught me mortal fear of water damage, and The Woodwright’s Shop taught me terrible, terrible puns. And some woodworking skills. Roy, you absolute legend.
Sesame Street helped black boys succeed in school, whereas the new regime wants them to literally pick cotton.
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/app.20170300
https://tonicrowewriter.medium.com/did-maga-farmers-believe-...
I listen to NPR every day and, honestly, I think this might be for the best. It's going to hurt for a while, but in the end, I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
> I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
What does the "public" in "public broadcasting" mean to you?
Ideally, it would be entirely non-commercial, funded by direct donations from the public.
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Can we call it public broadcasting when it fails to even dimly reflect the diversity of ideas for the areas it serves? Milk toast conservatives like Juan Williams were deemed intolerable a long time ago, so calling it public radio at this point is a misnomer and a sad farce.
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NPR can also be a bit of a meme sometimes. Maybe it's just circumstance but every time I hear NPR for any period of time longer than about 20 minutes they do a segment on a topic like polyamory, how women are proudly reclaiming the word "bimbo", or people protesting the administration using interpretive dance.
It is certainly not programming with much mass market appeal.
Perhaps not every form of media needs to be engagement-driven?
The beautiful thing about public media is that it can broadcast things that don't have a profit-motive for being broadcast.
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> when it stands on its own without interference from politicians
Why on earth do you think it will be free of interference? Obviously they will find other ways to pressure and censor them. As they have done in many cases already.
I wonder how the people at NPR feel about all those donations they took from the Koch Foundation over the years...
They feel fine about it. They're run plenty of pieces that run counter to Koch Industries' interests.
(Also, did you mean the Charles Koch Foundation or the David H. Koch Foundation? The Koch Foundation is a different entity with a different mission.)
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Hasn't it been largely free of interference up until now? And would you prefer it suffer from corporate interference like all other media?
It's been a political football for decades. Conservatives use it as an example of liberal spending run amok, so public broadcasting has had to constantly look over its shoulder during that time.
No, I would like to eliminate corporate influence as well, but that might not be possible in a capitalist society.
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Most of NPR's news programming has been terrible for many years.
Pay attention to how many segments—even that are sort-of connected to an actual news event, which, many aren't—revolve around political strategy, poll numbers, and (in season, which is now like three years out of four) electoral race polling.
It's, like... a lot of them, outside the human-interest and arts coverage stuff. They consistently divert into talking about political media messaging strategy and poll numbers and crap, and they do it so very much that it's got to be something they're doing on purpose. This isn't news reporting, it's lazy, safe (because you don't have to engage with substantive questions of policy and outcomes, nor even questions of fact) horse-race bullshit. It's a complete waste of the listener's time, if they're there for actual news reporting.
On the flip side, though, I'm not seeing a lot of "sink or swim in the market" US media doing much better, so I wouldn't bet on them shifting to anything better (though shift they might).
You prefer interference by corporations?
> I think public broadcasting will be stronger when it stands on its own without interference from politicians.
What does the "public" in public broadcasting mean to you?
It hasn't been interfered with until now, what are you talking about about?
Contrary to the conservative spin over the years, I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources of headline news and information available. (For their national broadcasts at least - local ... can be hit or miss).
In particular, their kids programming is the absolute best. Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda. And the PBS kids apps are one of the few things I can hand to my kid worry-free. And the fact that it's money-free and ad-free to access in this modern age is a miracle.
The only people who could support this are not just wrong, they are people out of touch with reality. These are people who think public parks are a waste of space. Or that having nice things to share is elitist.
> one of the least biased sources of headline news and information available
I’m pretty sure that’s the fundamental problem they have with it. They want media whose content they control.
(All of this is about control/power, not making things nice or doing things right.)
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Facts have a well known liberal bias
Thats expected. In functioning democracies state media is run for the purpose not profit. It doesnt have the corrupting influence of political money. PBS in the US could be so much better. Just look at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
> PBS in the US could be so much better.
PBS Newshour is pretty much the best/balanced news programming on US TV at this point. They take deeper dives into issues than most of the other shows out there. And then there's Frontline which is excellent and goes even deeper with a documentary format. The rest of PBS - there are a few good parts like Nova, but a lot of what plays on PBS stations these days is UK crime dramas - man, there seems to be a lot of mayhem going on in merry old England these days.
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>Just at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
This is funny because BBC is a prime example of being a propaganda channel for the government of the day. And that's not new at all just look back at the coverage of the Troubles or the miners strikes in the 70s-80s.
Yes it's not on the level of CGTN or Russia Today but BBC is not neutral at all
https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-...
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BBC has unparalleled quality TV programming for both kids and adults, but their news channel has been compromised by conservative influence (namely the director Tim Davie) for a while now.
Channel 4 news is surprisingly now the better news source for actual events.
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> PBS in the US could be so much better.
Do you have a specific grievance? How could it be better?
BBC is not 100% neutral on all issues. No one is. One could argue that it is less bad than the for-profit channels in the UK but no channel is without biase.
BBC is a bad example because they clearly cater to local politics and their monopoly on programming and news for large swaths of their country is not particularly healthy.
State media is inherently going to be pro-establishment and failures to report on their own internal scandals I think should give everyone pause about being all-in on something like the BBC.
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State media doesn’t have corrupting influence of POLITICAL money? It’s inheriting my political! Government media is the worse possible thing.
>Just at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
Every household that watches BBC in the UK needs to pay £174.50 ($230) a year. (the wording here has to be done carefully, let's not digress into being exact on who has to pay it)
Federal funding for public media distributed out to $1.54 per person in the US last year.
There's... uh... a bit of a difference in the national funding for the BBC and public media in the US.
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> In particular, their kids programming is the absolute best. Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
I dunno, the Odd Squad has almost as much green screen as a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. If that's not flashy, I dunno. And Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman was pretty out there; a space ghost style host ordering kids around the streets of Boston.
Also, the reboot of CyberChase was pretty clearly on the Ag agenda, all about Organic this and that. Maybe that doesn't count as an Agenda because the department of agriculture was funding it.
Also, Sesame street has always been in the pocket of those letter and number sponsors.
FYI, Odd Squad was/is a Canadian kids TV show.
It really surprised me to learn this; it always felt so Ohio to me.
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You clearly have multiple kids… or a very niche set of entrainment you prefer.
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The world of Daniel Tiger is the definition of a welfare state - too socialist for my taste.
Peg + Cat relies on numerology and emphasizes DEI above all else.
Alma’s Way is pro-illegal immigration and unbelievably on the nose about it.
I can keep going. Point is, PBS Kids should have been shutdown a long time ago.
/s
I agree. I swore off of cable news many years ago because they're ALL toxic. They all have to keep people watching so it's stuffed full of breathless journalism making you think something major is happening any moment now. We'd all be better served with NO 24/7 news networks at all. NPR is not breathless, and is very fair.
I hated Fox News because it's so full of lies. I hated CNN because it's making mountains out of molehills and manufactured outrage. MSNBC was less yellow, but it's still full of opinion shows engineered to make you upset. NPR didn't do that, ever. They'd say when democrats screwed up just as much as when republicans did. It was true.
> NPR didn't do that, ever.
Right now I'm drinking out of my NPR mug that I pay $12/month for. I've been a daily listener since college, it's my default radio station in the car, and when I road trip I like searching for the local station. But I disagree with this. There are a number of nationally syndicated shows (at least, in all the markets I've lived in) that I'd put in this category. 1A just off the top of my head. Reveal is another, but that's because their mission is to find things that need to be revealed and they're usually pretty upsetting.
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Losing PBS Kids will be a tragedy. One of the few high quality sources of kids' programming out there. So much of the commercial options are dreck.
+1. PBS Kids is a goldmine. Time to sails the high seas if you aren’t already :)
The other tragedy is the PBS Kids Games app on iOS and Android. It is chock full of educational games that tie into the various shows.
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I'm pretty sure it's because it's unbiased.
Do a mental exercise, if they had joined the MAGA loving trump train, would that have saved them?
Now you have your real answer. They're not going to fund anything unless it's a bunch of lackeys
Conservative here.
I wasn't very happy with the PBS defunding. One of their best shows was Frontline and the amount of just straight down the middle documentaries they did was great. For a lot of the issues that became very politicized, I would regularly turn to them for an unbiased view of what was going on.
I agree on the educational stuff as well. How many generations of kids grew up watching PBS kids shows? My parents donated regularly and supported PBS the whole time.
Hopefully they can continue, I'm sad to see such a pillar of goodness go away.
I’m socially liberal by American standards, but on the subject of government funding for media I feel like a small-c conservative. Government funded media faces constant pressure to become propaganda.
I’m rather looking forward to public radio programming that would strike you as liberally biased, now that public radio productions no longer have to please Republicans in government.
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Frontline is one of the best (if not the best) current events/documentary shows on US television. It'd be a tragedy if it went away.
Your parents efforts, like many of the the good efforts to move humanity forward over many decades, have been thrown into the trash. The next generations of Americans will have social/educational gaps that CPB/PBS filled for educational, cultural, historical, and sociological reasons; not because they liked influencing little kids ideologically. And the future will suffer for it, as they say, if you don't learn it at home, society foots the bill to correct it.
> Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
Yeah yeah. If you want to find the Republicans in public broadcasting, look at the board members. Same thing happened with newspapers and local TV news after Bush 2 loosened media ownership rules.
Next you're going to tell me the New York Times has a liberal bias, right? Save it.
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For the record, Uri story is not corroborated and doesn't seem to be in good faith.
https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...
> When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me. While it’s widely believed that most mainstream journalists are Democrats, I’ve had colleagues that I was pretty sure were conservative (I don’t ask), and I’ve learned just since Uri’s article that I am one of several NPR hosts of “no party” registration.
To a broader point, viewpoint diversity != unbias. If I staff half a newspaper with Stalinists that doesn't mean the reporting is going to become more factual or the coverage less biased. If it's become a Republican party position to attack mainstream media, we shouldn't expect them to even be applying for these jobs.
Just because conservatives hate kids and don't want to be teachers/educators/work at universities doesn't mean it's biased or bad.
It's like if you wanted a diversity of opinions designing a rocket so you decided to pull in flat earth's as well as new earth creationist. You're not getting a better rocket. Perhaps a better fireworks show, though.
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Every parent reading this knows full well how much time their kid has spent watching PBS Kids and playing the many pretty-decent games on the PBS Kids app.
All free.
Donate. Recurring is better.
> but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
I totally support public broadcasting of all stripes, and do not advocate for this POV at all, but ... there are people who claim the opposite. Sesame Street is 'full woke', apparently, because it has talked about skin color and race with muppets.
What many people consider normal... is 'full woke agenda' to others.
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Apologies for the following snark - it's tragic, so this is more of a reaction comment:
> I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources of headline news and information available
> kids programming is the absolute best
Fixed that for you:
> I USED TO FIND public broadcasting provided the least biased sources of headline news and information available
> kids programming WAS the absolute best
CPB is going away, NPR and PBS are not.
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> Nothing flashy or exciting, but it's laser focused on education and has zero agenda.
That’s not true. It just matches your agenda which you feel is no agenda. Of course you are against getting rid of instruments of persuasion that agree with your world view.
In the end it’s better for you too. Government shouldn’t support media.
>Contrary to the conservative spin over the years, I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources
Can we break this down?
You open with a effectively derogatory accusation about conservatives making things up…which I have no opinion on.
That immediately shows your own likely liberal bias and then you say you saw no problem with the programming.
Isn’t that exactly the issue? That you saw no issue and everyone that disagrees is just wrong?
How do you know? How would you know if CBP’s biases weren’t just your own?
Do you know the arguments against the biases of CPB, NPR, PBS from the people that can make their most effective arguments against those orgs, or do you know the lines of the people that already agree with you?
Jon Stewart Mill’s On Liberty has a great part about this… [It is not enough to know the refutations from your own teachers, you must learn them from the people that present them in their truest form].
Your argument is just assuming the (1) previous poster has liberal bias, (2) CPB has liberal bias, (3) previous poster is unable to recognize their own or CPB’s liberal bias.
Maybe these are true, but I don’t see the basis for it here.
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One does not need to hold liberal bias to identify conservative spin.
The national stuff was okay to good. The Children’s programming was in general good.
The local stuff though was quite questionable. For example they’d support different causes or efforts by referencing a single poorly supported research paper. Usually those research papers supported some narrative. It could be homelessness, drug treatments, etc., however there was little if any scrutiny of the paper the whole effort or narrative was based on.
They also had annoying presenters like Kai Ryssdahl. He was insufferable but hardly the only one.
Also, despite being a public system, individual comp is high relative to their listeners', I'd say[1]. I'd guess most listeners would not imagine their comp being as high as it is, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Public_Radio
[1] In addition, those at the top enjoy perks like being invited to elite events, and the perks of schmoozing for donations. Those are experiences that are alien to the average listener.
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PBS and NPR don't have regional programming. They're national. Local, member stations provide regional content. You'd be comparing WETA to OETA.
I'm looking at your WETA TV guide and it is completely standard material. We've got kids cartoons, Bob Ross, some selections from BBC and Bloomberg, and Ask This Old House (one of my favorites). OETA has almost identical programming.
Where's the programming where they bully people about race and sex? Are you talking about that couple that give the good financial advice? Or maybe those cooks on America's Test Kitchen? I never did trust that Wishbone dog...
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Can you define what you mean by "racial and sexual hectoring" and provide an example or three?
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I don't want to be "that guy", but I often find myself as the "intolerable lib" in some situations and the "intolerable con" in others, so here we go:
There is a degree of quasi-political messaging in PBS children's shows. I can say this because I've watched more hours than I'd like of several of them, but I'd like to focus on on Molly Of Denali. It's a good children's show about an inuit girl who lives in Alaska and teaches children general good morals and specifics of inuit and Alaskan culture.
When I say it's political, I mean that it makes points without nuance on historical and current issues which range from widely accepted and important ideas (example: They didn't let Native Alaskan People vote in the past, so it's important to exercise the right to vote now), to what I would consider less widely agreed upon and important ideas, such as it being deeply upsetting and disrespectful for a "white" teacher to call a native child "T", because she had trouble pronouncing his native name. Another example is them introducing the importance of "land acknowledgements" in a children's show. A final example is the "clueless white" trope wherein the offensive rude white visitor has to be educated by the wise natives over and over and over.
I'm not trying to say that any of these examples are "right" or "wrong", but they do represent "politics" in the mind of wide sections of the population.
This said I like the show and of course we need to fund public broadcasting, I would just prefer if we did our best to keep the most controversial stuff for when the kids are a bit older to make it a smaller target for outrage (from the right or left).
The most jarring part, to me personally, is the drastic shift in tone and presentation for injustices with wildly different levels of impact. Perhaps rudely, I think to myself in the voice of the Inuit grandfather from the show "The white man took me from my family, did not allow me to speak my language, beat me and did not allow me to vote, and worst of all...... He did not let me smile in photos"
I don't mean any of this as racist or disrespectful and I hope this is a nuanced comment for consideration and not a kneeejerk reaction or evidence of my subconscious biases run wild.
Counterpoint, when these episodes were first aired, these weren't viewed as political issues. Only in response to these ideas have they become politicized.
And since PBS has backed away from making episodes like these.
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> When I say it's political, I mean that it makes points without nuance on historical and current issues which range from widely accepted and important ideas [...] to what I would consider less widely agreed upon and important ideas
Another example of this: when Mr. Rogers invited an African American neighbor to share his pool. It certainly wasn't widely agreed upon at the time.
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> such as it being deeply upsetting and disrespectful for a "white" teacher to call a native child "T", because she had trouble pronouncing his native name.
Imagine not finding it disrespectful for your teacher to just completely ignore and disrespect your heritage and you're expected to just accept it and be totally OK with it.
IMO kids should be taught to be proud of their names. Apparently, that's a political stance.
I have many coworkers who I have trouble saying their names. I try as best as I can to say their names and be as respectful as possible. I wouldn't just go "I can't say your name, so you're just T now."
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It's impossible to make self or mind small enough to be safe from regressives.
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I hear many things on broadcast media that are contrary to my values, and tend to prune those sources from my media diet. When I am obliged by law to support those sources anyway, I get resentful. So I have been wishing for this since Ronald Reagan proposed it.
To me the bright line of "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" is crossed at least in spirit when the state seizes a dollar from a taxpayer and spends it on speech, because that abridges the taxpayer's resources for speech by a dollar. "You have free speech but I can take the money you use to be heard to speak against you" is a big loophole.
While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend. We elect them to speak and choose on our behalf. It isn’t a “loophole” when this runs afoul of an individual’s values. It is simply that we have a representative government that makes decisions by majority votes. I don’t agree with most defense spending, but I acknowledge that a majority of this country wants it. This is the purpose of compromise. If there had been a good-faith proposal to reform CPB [1], we could have made it better. The collateral damage from destroying the good parts (e.g., PBS) due to our failure to compromise should not be celebrated. [1] Such a proposal isn’t hard to imagine. A key purpose of local stations is to give a platform to the voices of local people. Simply shifting funding from national programming to local programming (without changing the total) would have accomplished this “debiasing” and empowered the (tragically endangered) local news.
> While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend.
Without limit? If Trump and the Congressional GOP force a bunch of tax-funded in-your-face right-wing propaganda that would be ok with you because "[y]ou pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend"?
>While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes,
The number of steps that “Pay Taxes” is removed from “Literally At Fucking Gunpoint” is not as many steps as you might think.
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So the government should just not say anything? Let’s just get all our news from X, the famously truthful platform!
The government is allowed and required to say things about the current state of the law (i.e., they must publish the law, and they may educate the public about it, and they must enforce it). The government is not required and perhaps should not be allowed to say anything promoting specific political opinions or promoting specific Acts that have not passed yet. By "say" you [I think, and therefore] I mean as in publish with taxpayer money, because naturally elected officials and even appointees should be able to speak with anyone, even interviewers, and publish on their own dime as long as they don't do anything to prevent the opposition also speaking in that way, but publish? as in print or broadcasting? OP here thinks not, and OP has a very good point.
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Yes the government should just not say anything but this is not dependent on X existing or not existing.
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And balanced. Don't forget balanced.
When Congress passed the CPB defunding bill, the Republican sponsors paraded around the most deranged takes to air on NPR in the last few years and asked, why should our tax dollars keep going to this?
And I'll be the first to admit that NPR has completely lost its mind, it's losing its listenership, and it needs to be humbled a bit. But audio is much cheaper than video and NPR's remaining listeners will easily be able to make up the shortfall. Meanwhile we're going to see PBS, whose news coverage mostly avoided the pitfalls NPR fell into and who run a lot more non-news programming, take a huge funding hit and resort to even more pledge drives and reruns, while local affiliates in large swaths of the country have to close entirely.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and not even throwing out the bathwater.
Every government program should have an expiration date attached to it when signed into law.
There are plenty of countries where all government services have "expired". Which one would you like to live in?
This. And to make it even better: every law should only be about one thing, just the thing it's meant to deal with, and nothing else.
I would have them split the laws up as separate entities but let them vote on a package of laws under one vote.
I feel the current rules against earmarking has made it so they negotiate less.
Then the obstructionists will just always get what they want.
This is true. We can't view every postwar boomer institution as sacrosanct. These organizations aren't meant to grow in perpetuity.
I just wish Americans saw some of that saved money either in their pocket or public works. But the reality is probably just going to be one more missile shipped to a foreign country.
Including the military. Hell, even the constitution.
Well, looks like that problem has been solved for you!
The expiration date should be 0 seconds after it's signed.
From Claude -> Notable Programs They Fund: Public television shows like Sesame Street, NOVA, PBS NewsHour, and Masterpiece, as well as NPR programming like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
I like all of those. NPR: $300m budget / 42m listeners = $7.14/yr. Sounds like if I donate $5/mo to KQED and $5/mo to KCSM, I'm supporting them to cover myself and couple other citizens?
I don't get what I can do to support PBS - when I press donate on PBS site, it sort of wants to direct me to KQED/KCSM donations again.
Anyone here with a little more time to understand/explain it?
Basically, you donate to a PBS member station, and the station uses at least some portion your money to pay PBS dues.
I think the children's programming is a really undiscussed aspect of this. Some investments don't have immediately measurable outcomes. But as someone whose parents worked long hours growing up, I'm really grateful that my exposure to television was PBS rather than cable children's shows.
If your parents couldn't afford cable, then you couldn't get round the clock children's content from Nickelodeon. Your content during day time would have been stuff like the Maury Show, all the Judge shows, soap operas, and day time talk shows. PBS would have been the thing that offered the free children's content.
A good day to make sure you're a member of your local public media station and supporting them directly.
As with many things, I wonder if we should start unbundling services the federal government provides. If many states like public broadcasting, what if a pool of states were to opt-in to continuing to fund it (and decide whether to limit it to supporting stations in those states)?
Some things (defense, diplomacy) perhaps can only be done through the federal government. But so many things (national weather service operations, HUD housing assistance, grants for local PBS stations, SNAP benefits) have a largely local or regional benefit. Rather than disassembling these things entirely, why not allow them each to be run by and for a coalition of states (or even cities?) which opt to participate?
> But so many things (national weather service operations, HUD housing assistance, grants for local PBS stations, SNAP benefits) have a largely local or regional benefit.
You should look up which states/regions/counties provide the funding and which states/regions/counties receive the benefits, it's disproportional. Unironically, unbundling HUD, SNAP, and NWS would probably cause famine in Mississippi.
Oh I'm acutely aware that my taxes have been subsidizing people in red states that call me a slur.
But it's pretty messed up that presently the places that _were_ willing to pay for these things are deprived of the benefits. If instead we kept things alive on an optional basis, the participating states might get _better_ services and outcomes for a while because some poor red state communities would not be a sink for funds. But also, if the political pendulum swings the other way in a future election cycle, and more places opt-in, then having kept these programs alive in a reduced form would put them in a better position to resume activity.
the disproportionately black american mississippi?
Woah! This stuff is unwinding faster than my priors. I'm going to have to re-evaluate everything I thought true about the US. I just always assumed "strong institutions" meant something here. That it was all a house built on sand is disconcerting.
Before you think this is happening quickly, do note that public institutions have been under attack from the right for generations, including publicly funded education, public broadcasters, public health and social programs.
These attacks are not unique to the United States; there is a coordinated effort across many countries by public policy groups and private interests. The United States are highly visible due to their ownership of global media, but the Republican party has been pursuing these objectives publicly and clearly for more than 30 years, and has made incremental progress to the point where they were able to re-engineer the Supreme Court and lower courts, as well as elect far right politicians who would tear up the rules to make it happen.
This is the sharp upwards curve of increase in velocity that is the result of sustained accelleration over the last few decades. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and not just in the United States.
This has been a project under way since the friggin' John Birchers and the postwar "think-tank" boom. They've (this specific set of interests, not conservatism in general) been successfully ratcheting things toward authoritarianism since their Chicago school pals got the right people in the right places to radically change how we enforced anti-trust in the '70s (that is, they made it impossible for us to enforce in all but the most egregious cases, period) and have been winning one boring but effective battle after another ever since (plus the occasional headline-grabbing one).
Often these victories have contributed to further momentum—concentration of wealth means more money for the cause; death of the "fairness doctrine" opens up the possibility of wholly partisan media for propagandizing, which was instantly capitalized on with a boom in right wing AM radio; Citizens United decision de facto ending campaign finance regulation, well that's sure convenient; all kinds of things.
This has been more than a half-century in the making.
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The dissolution and dismantling of US gov institutions that we are witnessing is unprecedented in modern times. Hell, a few of the agencies being attacked were created with bipartisan support.
I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls.
It is easier to destroy almost anything than it is to create it in the first place.
> Hell, a few of the agencies being attacked were created with bipartisan support.
It's worse than that. PEPFAR was a signature initiative of the previous Republican president.
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> I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls.
This isn't due to one man (Musk) or a rogue government agency, or even the executive branch.
This is Congress, which tells you how bad things have gotten.
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The institutions that are not being dismantled are the ones required by the constitution. The ones being dismantled, being statutory in nature, are fair game, and if anything this shows that the constitutional institutions are in fact able to rule over the statutory ones, thus the constitutional institutions come out of this stronger, not weaker. The constitutional institutions are:
CPB and the like are statutory institutions. Those can come and they can go. Sometimes they go. They can come back you know. The next time the Democrats are in power they can bring all those institutions back and then some, and they can tear down any institutions that Trump creates or takes over. The critical thing is that it be possible for the Democrats to win again in the future, and then that Republicans be able to win again in the future, and so on.
>more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw
I think it's very fitting that you'd use this metaphor, because the people you oppose wouldn't even find that slightly challenging.
This isn't Musk's fault; he's just the asshole scapegoat. This is directly from the Conservative Think Tanks who finally got a President willing to strip everything down in government while increasing insane spends elsewhere (e.g., $200MM ballroom for the White House while cutting revenue) based on the will of 44% of the voting population of the country.
If anything, government should have been cut AND revenues increased; but, that's not how either party works. (disgusting oversimplification: Republicans reduce revenue and reduce spend while Democrats increase revenue and increase spend).
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i guess they should have been more trustworthy. once its lost, trust is hard to earn back.
Large groups voting for "tear it all down, we don't trust institutions" wasn't a sign for you back in 2016? what were your priors before this year?
My point here is that "strong institutions" were supposed to stem this tide. Of course, I should have thought through who made up these institutions. In some ways institutions kind of held up pretty well 2016-2020. Which is why I was a little less worried. But looks like that was a dry run. The efficiency with which this is happening now is shocking. Honestly, I'm kind of impressed. If we applied this much efficiency constructively in the US, we'd probably see post-war prosperity levels. I imagine even NASA would approach the 1960s productivity.
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My "holy shit, we're in for... interesting times, and like, soon" moment was when Trump suggested his supporters might shoot Hillary if she won ("If she wins, I can't do anything about it. But the 'Second Amendment people'...."), and didn't see a huge hit to his popularity, and supporters in his own camp distancing themselves, immediately.
Norms are dead, you can just suggest assassination of your opponent and still win a Presidential election now, the batshit crazy stuff's not just for races in rural Montana or whatever. Like, IDK how this reads to younger folks, but I assure them that things are now happening practically daily that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago, let alone farther back. Things got visibly weirder fast.
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The institutions WERE strong. It’s taken decades to unwind them. But yes, we’ve definitely crossed a big acceleration lately.
Capturing the Supreme Court so completely was the turning point, in terms of ability to enact their agenda quickly. It's been conservative my entire not short any more life, but it's strongly packed with disingenuous, ideologically-motivated jurists vetted and guided by the "correct" organizations, now.
I wish anyone with even a little power were talking about ditching the position of "Supreme Court Justice" and just drawing for the role by lot from the "lower" federal courts each term. That could be done with a law, not an amendment-there has to be a Supreme Court, and federal judgeships are "during good behavior" (de facto "for life") but Supreme Court Justice per se doesn't have to be a permanent role. The closest I hear anyone talking about is court expansion, but that's a less-effective fix, and one more likely to draw strong push-back and to be unpopular, I think.
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Europeans seem to understand this better than Americans, because the US has never really devolved from democracy into authoritarianism, but several European countries have. That's why e.g. in Germany it's possible to ban political parties that have as their goal the overflow of the democratic order.
It's only been a couple hundred years or so for us so I guess this is just our turn then.
I feel like there's been talk about dismantling the CPB for a long time. I recall talk about it on Rush Limbaugh's radio show in the 90's.
Freedom means you're allowed to own enough rope to hang yourself with. We've always been one or two elections away from our own destruction.
NPR in particular has been an insane parody of leftism for at least a decade at this point. The fact that it took this long to lose funding is a testament to how strong it was as an institution.
Institutions are only as strong as their defenders and supporters - and like countless Empires before it, the USA has bled its institutions dry of credibility and/or resources over the past several decades in a futile attempt to satiate a handful of wealthy extremists.
This was entirely expected and predicted once neoliberalism took hold in the Democratic and Republican parties and began rotting out the central pillars of American Democracy and Empire.
Yep, billionaires-as-termites on the public infrastructure is an apt analogy
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This has been an attack on democracy over 40 years in the making. Conservatives have been openly saying what they've wanted to do all the time, but most people thought there'd never be a moment where they'd actually have enough power to pull it off. Meanwhile, liberal politicians have and still are operating under the delusion that they don't have to pass laws when they gain power, they can merely cast feelings and hope that the courts will back that up.
I recall NPR throwing a fit over getting a "state media" label on Twitter.
Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" was so prescient. So sad to see its worst predictions come true.
I am quite literally in the middle of reading this now [0]. This would be great required reading for high school students. Anyone that runs across this comment should put it at the top of their reading list.
Most frustratingly, many people know how to be properly skeptical. To use Sagan's example, it comes out in full-force any time someone buys a used car. Never trust the dealer. Everybody knows that.
I really appreciate that Sagan refrains from looking down on anyone. It's all too easy to do and I am guilty of it at times. It also leads to a much more useful conversation. Sagan provides hope that we can educate better. Compared to say, Dawkins, who I think has ultimately hurt the cause. Nobody will listen when they feel insulted.
> So sad to see its worst predictions come true.
The most recent bit of the book I read involved James Randi. I was curious about the guy so I did some other reading. Randi gave out an annual "award" called the "Pigasus Award" to fraudsters and similar. Mehmet Oz received the award [1] three times. Now Oz runs Medicaid!
Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi. Sometimes it feels like the world has lost any sort of check against gullibility. To paraphrase from the book, many scientists are particularly not equipped to call these scammers out. Scientists wrestle with nature - nature has laws. Trying to call out the Oz's of the world is hard because they don't play by the rules of reason.
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[0] https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709
[1] https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-apr-01-la-heb-dr-...
> Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi.
I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi at different points. Along with Paul Kurtz, also sadly gone now, these were some of the most in influential people in the beginnings of the modern skeptical movement. If you aren't familiar with Prometheus books and CSICOP (now CSI), look them up. You'll find years worth of groundbreaking skeptical reading material.
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I came to this book too late for the core message to resonate as far as mindset and methods (yeah, yeah, I found this path and walked at least this far on it already, you're preaching to the choir, should have read this when I was like 10 or 12 I guess...) but did make the mistake of dismissing an absolute chorus of warnings about anti-intellectualism from Sagan and a dozen other authors I read as a kid and in my 20s (which warnings, yes, were a significant component of this book)
They were all from roughly the same time period, and I thought their focus on that particular issue was overblown. A relic of the time they'd lived through and their efforts, which efforts had gotten us here, where anti-intellectualism is a curiosity, periodically an annoyance, but not a threat. Sure, we could swing back toward that being a real concern, but it'd take a while. We'd see it.
What's weird is I could also list a bunch of ways that we were swinging back toward it. I think on some level I just didn't believe that these kinds of big shifts backwards could happen, actually and not just in shootin'-the-shit discussions with friends, in my lifetime. Bumps on the road of progress, sure, but going backwards entirely? I even shied away from labeling authoritarian-enabling changes, policies, or actions "fascist", even as I literally protested some of them in the street—well, that's alarmist, surely. It's silly and childish that I was embarrassed of the term.
It's so damn foolish when I look back on it. I had so many of the particulars right, but just couldn't believe in something so big actually happening, I guess. I'd have told you that sure, it could, if you'd asked, even outlined a plausible path from here to there based on recent and current goings-on... but I didn't believe it might happen. Not really.
Does this mean the end of PBS?
Probably not. CPB gave funding to rural smaller stations which buy programming from PBS (or NPR).
It will drastically scale back the funding and coverage of public broadcasters, but they should (hopefully) survive.
That said, they effectively cease being public at this point. And ironically enough, they have no reason anymore to pander to wider audiences so if anything they will become more "left leaning" over time.
“Reality has a well known liberal bias”, as they say.
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No. What's really going to end PBS as we grew up with it is streaming. CPB is an vehicle for distributing public funding to PBS stations; only a small fraction of PBS station funding comes from CPB through the government.
It does for smaller stations that depended on federal funding to operate.
No, but it means the end of financial support for many programs on PBS and NPR.
No idea. Anyone have a good source of how much of PBS's funding comes from CPB?
Update: Just confirmed, no. Federal funds only makes up 15% of PBS's funding. [1]
1: https://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/gifts-to-the-pbs-end...
No, but I think it's likely that NPR and PBS will change because of this. A lot of people work there because of its explicit mission to serve the public. As with every other federal institution that's being pointlessly kneecapped, lots of good people will look elsewhere.
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For the last twenty years PBS proponents have been telling me that PBS and NPR are mostly member supported, and that the Federal funds couldn't corrupt the messaging because there just wasn't enough of it to matter.
So if that's true, I guess not. If it was actually a mouthpiece, I guess so
Yah they also took money from the “Archer Daniels Midland” corporation (not that I’d have anything against organic produce, for example) and the Ford and many other biased endowments —so I think it’d be hard to believe their messaging was unaffected. That or they bit the hand that fed it and the hand didn’t mind getting bitten for some reason.
I certainly remember hearing the name many times, on good TV programming, so am surprised that the Wikipedia article doesn't talk much about the CPB's impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...
The Wikipedia page looks almost entirely about politics and funding.
Superficially this is 'just' partisan politics, but I wonder if it's actually much more of a death knell for traditional media.
When I was a teenager in the 90s an old guy took me aside and told me there'd be a day we get rid of public radio, and a day we'd have our final serving of affordable tuna sushi, and that after that, I'd be living in what he deemed the future.
One down.
Idk where you're living, but where I am, fresh tuna has gone from $16.00 a # to $25.00 a # in only the last couple years.
Public television and public radio isn't going anywhere, at least not anywhere any of the rest of linear media isn't already going.
Of course, if you live in a large metro the local stations will survive due to large numbers of wealthy and middle class benefactors. This is not necessarily so if you live in a typical red state middle size city or less.
Somewhat ironically a lot of the extreme cuts (this included) only serve to reinforce the status of major blue state metros as more desirable, since they have more resources available to fill the gaps left by federal austerity.
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Public television and public radio stations are literally being shut down, now, as per the topic article. Any station meaningfully relying on CPB is done.
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Hate to say it, but... username checks out, I guess
I was curious about that as well.
Tuna, at least bluefin, is definitely not too far behind.
What's happening to tuna sushi?
Overfishing? 15% Tariffs?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38913649
With the inevitable cutbacks coming to NPR, I wonder how big a hit classical music will take. NPR delivers 95% of the classical music that airs in America, much of which comes from small market stations which will be the first to die with the end of CPB.
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Commenters in this thread citing NPR as a reason that dollars shouldn't go towards helping kids learn how to count and not be antisocial is the kind of win right wing media could only dream about a decade or so ago.
Absolutely embarrassing for a site like this that claims to value education and democratizing it (and always jumps into threads about childrens education with all of their anecdotally built ideas, of course!) isn't condemning this.
Whenever the question of federal funding for public broadcasting has come up in the past, a small army of commenters would always claim that less then 1% of the funding for public media comes from the government.
Turns out that was perhaps an incomplete argument.
For NPR 1-2% of their budget came directly from the federal government mostly through the CPB. That's where the 1% number some quote comes from.
However, NPR also receives funding from member station fees, and those member stations typically get about 13% of their budgets from the federal government.
Putting it all together about 10% of NPR's budget comes from the federal government.
For PBS about 15% of their budget comes from the federal government. Some local PBS affiliates, especially in rural areas, get up to 60% of their budgets from the federal government.
Certainly an incomplete picture. NPR its self may only get a small percentage of its total pie from CPB, but member stations (that license NPR content and what not) that exist all over the country use various amounts. The result will likely be that many small, local, already underfunded local stations will cease to function in their current capacity.
It's 15% for PBS, and CPB != PBS and CPB != NPR.
It's a terrible time to be convincing the American public that the media is trustworthy.
It will regain its trust, but it has a long, uphill battle to get there since, especially since the months leading up to 2016.
> It will regain its trust, but it has a long, uphill battle to get there since, especially since the months leading up to 2016.
Why do you think that? Do you imagine that the individuals and institutions pushing the idea that the media is untrustworthy will suddenly stop pushing their agenda?
I wonder if now, shorn of the need to “bothsides” everything to justify government funding, public radio news will begin to reflect the political affiliations of its donor base more closely.
This is sad but the US is too diverse to have a single source of public broadcasting. It was always destined to end like this.
What's really horrifying here is that, even if the appetite for funding CPB were to come back in 2026, 2028, or whenever, you can't just spin it up again; those people have moved on, those assets are liquidated. You would have to start up again pretty much from scratch.
That's why this careless crusade against governmental institutions is so horrific. Institutions with decades of history are being destroyed, and it would take years to decades to spin up something even close to equivalent, in an insane political environment where every public institution is framed as horrible socialism.
I guess I just don’t find that as horrifying as you do. The market cannot hold public broadcasting accountable, and this is one of the few levers that we have to do so.
Conservatives have wanted to defund public broadcasting for decades. What made it finally possible was that public broadcasting made their bias obvious and undeniable. Over the past 10 years, the stark shift leftward has been undeniable — they became what they’ve been accused of being for a very long time.
I identify neither as a liberal nor as a conservative, but outsiders will likely see a left bent in me.
The thing about PBS and NPR: I just don't have any alternatives! Wherever I've lived, all the other radio stations/channels just suck - liberal or not. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News totally suck. ABC, CBS, NBC mostly suck. The half-good radio stations are just way too biased and make NPR/PBS appear like paragons of neutraltity. I can tolerate losing NPR/PBS if I had alternatives. I simply don't.
Conservatives lump NPR/PBS viewers with other liberals. It's generally not true. All my liberal friends declare NPR to be "part of the problem". NPR/PBS viewers are just in another category altogether. They don't have choices.
I'd really like to hear from conservatives: Are there any channels/radio stations they like? Their complaint is continually that NPR/PBS is too left wing (which I can dispute but won't). But do they have a gaping hole in their choices the way people like me are about to have?
I like that NPR/PBS is calm. Most other outlets are based around breaking news, excitement, and often anger. I started watching PBS News Hour on youtube this year. Now I can't stand watching a show like ABC evening news which starts with intense music and urgent words from Muir at the start of every broadcast.
The flagship big-city / large-state stations will very likely continue to function. The real hit for this action will be in rural regions where alternatives to the local NPR translator station are typically religious stations, right-wing talk, and increasingly Spanish-language programming.
If you've access to streaming media, podcasts, or shortwave, you still do have options.
There are several excellent national broadcasters, with the CBC, BBC, and ABC (Australia) operating in English, or a reasonable facsimile. There are often English-language broadcasts from non-anglophone countries, including France (France-24) and Germany (Deutsche-Welle English service), off the top of my head.
Of course, these will get you international news (and occasionally national stories from the broadcaster's home state), but you're straight outta luck for journalism local to your area. OTOH, NPR and PBS have struggled to deliver that (as has commercial news media) for the past decade or two.
If you've always wanted to learn a foreign language but never quite had the inspiration to do so, a further option is to start listening to non-anglophone country's native programming, whether broadcast (shortwave or Internet streaming) or podcast. There are many excellent options. I'm particularly fond of German radio's programming (Deutschlandfunk and its variants, the federated public broadcasting model might offer some lessons and learnings to PBS and NPR going forward), though there are others on top of that.
I round things out with text-based news, typically major newspapers (e.g., NYTimes, Guardian), or newswires (Reuters is pretty good).
But yes, the state of streaming / OTA / linear-programmed news media in the US is absolutely abysmal.
That's nice, but I'm not looking for news - I already get that from better sources than NPR. I'm looking for good, thoughtful, engaging content.
I’ll listen to snippets of right wing talk radio but it generally doesn’t take long before the exaggeration (Glenn Beck) or Trump idol worship (Clay Travis) get annoying.
I like hearing perspectives on stories that I won’t hear elsewhere but in general, I don’t need very much political news in my life. I’m happier spending my time on audio books and podcasts.
I’m not sure I’ve ever engaged with NPR beyond seeing conservatives mock some of their silliest propaganda headlines in the past few years.
> I’m not sure I’ve ever engaged with NPR beyond seeing conservatives mock some of their silliest propaganda headlines in the past few years.
What about all the nonpolitical shows on NPR/PBS? Snap Judgement, This American Life, Prairie Home Companion, Nature, NOVA, etc.
Lots of people watch PBS/NPR not for politics, but for the entertainment/educational content.
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I’ll listen to snippets of right wing talk radio but it generally doesn’t take long before the exaggeration (Glenn Beck) or Trump idol worship (Clay Travis) get annoying.
I remember being in the gym and catching some coverage of Fox News on Trumps trade war and potential deals. I believe the quote from one of the people talking was something like:
"We don't know the specifics about what's in this deal but we do know that this is a huge win for American businesses and the American people."
Fox News. Supposedly they love the thing, although it gets a bit left-wing radical at times.
Don't worry, this will help us consume the new truth easier.
Thank you so, so much GOP! Now children won't have the educational programming from PBS and us adults won't have our PBS documentaries and shows. I'm so very disappointed in our government right now.
I can't fucking stand these Republican fucks
Turns out elections have consequences.
Unbelievable!
Coming soon to a Tiny Desk Concert near you: Ticketmaster!
The amount of damage trump and musk have done this is country is absolutely criminal.
Good it’s a completely outdated concept. There’s no barrier to producing and distributing content today. That public tax dollars go to a place where partisans distribute it to their favorite projects is a 1960s era concept that needs to die.
Really the 1960s and 70s were such an insane era we should examine all government programs from that era that are still in commission with very suspicious eyes.
This is a better outcome than Trump minions taking over CPB
What would they have been able to do? CPB mostly just funnels money to stations. They don't produce content.
They could have chosen which specific shows they would fund, they weren't required to give out no-strings-attached grants. They once hand-picked Tucker Carlson to host a new PBS show that they would fund.
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Put conditions on said funneled money?
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I'm pretty certain that if public libraries didn't already exist and someone proposed the idea now it would be labeled "woke" and "socialist" and not get anywhere. We're in a very weird era, but pendulums swing and this too shall pass (in the meantime lots of damage is being done).
There's a reason public libraries are under attack, and it's this.
> I'm pretty certain that if public libraries didn't already exist and someone proposed the idea now it would be labeled "woke" and "socialist" and not get anywhere.
Public libraries do already exist and they are labeled "woke" and "socialist" and are dealing with both assaults on their funding and on their function.
True. I'm fortunate to live in a community that funds it's public libraries well, but I do know that downstate there are rural communities that have completely defunded theirs. I just don't think the idea of public libraries would get any traction now given how far to the right we've gone.
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I'm sure the elimination of free, educational content will be great for the working class.
They also raised $100 billion from tariffs. No clue where all this money is being diverted to. Obviously not PBS.
Unfortunately we've been running a massive and growing budget defect since 2002. The government would need to bring in or cut an extra 1.6 trillion dollars per year to get back to balanced in order for your statement to make sense.
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One has to see the positives. After the isolationist, fiscal conservatives caused their great depression , they turn for one generation into fishes. Any public discussion, mouth opens, brain reminds them of the backlash they will get for what they caused, no sound escapes, mouth closes. Fishes.
Exhibit 39 on the List of American Institutions That Have Been Killed
shake my head
Disgraceful.
Am I mistaking that repeatedly CBP claimed that they were only minority government funded?
You might be mistaking CBP for PBS or NPR.
The Taliban used to destroy their history too:
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/afghanista-tal...
I loved many NPR / PBS creations, like “Car Talk”. What a great show.
But I was dismayed to see how NPR turned a blind eye to stories like the Hunter Biden bombshell. NPRs CEO started wearing a Biden hat, and openly criticizing Trump. A former NPR employee wrote a well publicized substack article (irony!) that claimed deep, systemic political bias. It’s hard not to agree.
I hope NPR and PBS take a hard look at themselves and come up with some ways to assure political neutrality. Absent that, I have to agree that tax dollars should not be spent here.
Trump sucks
Again, it's all part of the plan, which is referred to as the butterfly revolution, by Curtis Yarvin. Leaders that have literally invested in this platform are buying into this nonsense. These guys have polarized the two parties to a point all weaknesses are surfacing. It isn't about democrats vs republicans. It's just working class vs the billionaires. You know the ppl sitting behind Trump at his inauguration. Literally, they want to break apart the US and discredit the constitution. Unless we come together and carve a new narrative that works. These guys may succeed and you can kiss your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness goodbye, as well bill of rights.
Peter Theil, JD Vance, Marc Andreesen, Garry Tan, Srinivasan, and many others, wanting to overthrow democracy and dissolve nation states. This effort is to establish Network States with those that worship them, sycophants and cults. They want to transform the US into an Autocracy. The polarization of the media and political parties is on purpose. They want America to fall. It's not a secret, not a conspiracy theory. It's definitely being rolled out by billionaires. It would be wise for others here to really do your research and understand why we are being polarized to hate each other. Enter the butterfly revolution:
1. Reboot (“full-power start”) Suspend or bypass existing constitutional limits; concentrate absolute sovereignty in one new organization—analogous to Allied occupation powers in post-1945 Japan/Germany. Eliminate checks and balances that block rapid change.
2. CEO-Monarch model A single executive (chosen like a corporate CEO) rules; the former president becomes a figurehead “chairman of the board.” Treat the state as a firm run for efficiency, not democratic representation.
3. RAGE strategy “Retire All Government Employees” by mass-firing the civil service and replacing it with loyal appointees. Remove institutional resistance (“the Cathedral”) and ensure obedience.
4. Parallel regime Build a fully staffed shadow government in exile before inauguration; unveil it on Day 1 to take over agencies at once. Prevent the bureaucratic slow-rolling that stymied Trump’s first term.
5. Media & academia clampdown Defund or shutter universities and independent press seen as hostile. Break what Yarvin calls the Cathedral’s cultural dominance.
Resources:
"The Straussian Moment", https://www.hoover.org/research/peter-thiel-straussian-momen...
Freedom Cities in Trumps presser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJA_GBhCGgE
Billionaire example: https://www.praxisnation.com
Apocalypse Now? Peter Thiel on Ancient Prophecies and Modern Tec, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqHueZNEzig
A.I., Mars and Immortality: Are We Dreaming Big Enough? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV7YgnPUxcU&t=404s
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-p...
It’s all so horrible and obvious.
I appreciate your response and agree with it, but don’t quite get the emphasis on polarization. They don’t want two polarized media sources, they want one completely controlled propaganda source. And I don’t see how it’s playing into their hands or something being “polarized” against billionaires and trump supporters.
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a corrupt government would have appropriated it for propaganda. instead an old and out of use tax payer forced program is being finally put to rest.