Ever since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and National Public Radio (NPR), their longstanding tagline tells the story: “This program is sponsored by viewers like you.”
Translated: The taxpayers.
When it comes to actual donations from “viewers like you” they amount to a rounding error.
CPB will receive $1.07 billion from Uncle Sam over the next two years. A friend claims that such monies are a drop in the bucket for a federal government that yearly spends over $6 trillion. It is this type of reasoning that grows the national debt by $1trillion – every 100 days.
Enter President Donald Trump whose executive order cancelled all future federal funding for public broadcasting. You would think Trump was taking a flamethrower to the Smithsonian.
The left went apoplectic with the thought of Big Bird unemployed and bringing with it the end of democracy. The left’s laments are archaic and tedious just like that condescending voice that introduces a syncopated interlude of classical music leading up to any one of PBS’ melodramatic British mini-series.
Having worked in commercial radio for years, public broadcasting always had a goaded Soviet Pravda feel where boat loads of tax dollars underwrite leftist propaganda masquerading as “news.” Public broadcasting is where the government-funded gatekeepers decide what is newsworthy and what isn’t. Rather than broadcasting in the public square, CPB is holed up in a luxury box intoxicated on leftist dogma serving as the mascot media outlet of the Democrat Party.
Trump declared that public broadcasting’s trifecta tax drain does not “present a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” This is one instance where Trump is understating a plethora of evidence.
NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher’s testimony before Congress showed nothing but contempt. Moreover, Maher on X is donning a “Biden for President” hat and once described “reverence for the truth” as a “distraction.” Maher then went Malcom X by promising “to use all means available” to fight Trump’s executive order.
Still not convinced.
In 2021, NPR declared the Declaration of Independence to have “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.” The following year, NPR abandoned its longtime July 4th tradition of reading America’s most famous document in favor of equality.
Other outlandish programming for “viewers like you” included an NPR investigation on why the thumbs-up emoji is racist and how there is “limited scientific evidence of physical advantage” between male and female athletes. Another one featured what ‘queer ducks’ can teach teenagers about sexuality in the animal kingdom.
To little fanfare and to no surprise, when the media bias rating website All Sides surveyed NPR listeners, it found their bias aligns with “left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.”
When 25-year NPR senior editor Uri Berliner reported that registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 87 to 0 in NPR’s newsroom and then argued in The Free Press how NPR went progressive and lost the public’s trust, his days were numbered. Berliner stated he could not continue working for NPR where he felt disparaged and subsequently joined The Free Press last year.
Commercial radio must innovate and have done so for decades, or they go dark. Why should public broadcasters be exempt and supported by tax dollars? If they are as good as they claim, let them stand on their own merit.
There is no constitutional authority for any spending on public broadcasting – period. Any questions: See Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Trump’s executive order rightfully ends taxpayer subsidies to public broadcasting.
The crux of the problem is how the federal government is involved in plenty of things it has no business in. A publicly funded broadcast network is just one example and is the low hanging fruit for DOGE like when it revealed that 12.3 million deceased people were collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security benefits with many listed as over 120 years old.
My friend was going to join the protest over Trump’s executive order that cut all federal CPB funding, but instead he had to cash his dead cat’s Social Security check.
Truthful and impartial broadcast media can not only survive but thrive when done properly.
Will public broadcasting possess the moxie to answer to viewers like you?
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