AI
Sunday, May 11, 2025 8:55:07 PM
Trump’s Assault on PBS and NPR Chooses Oligarchy Over Press Freedom and Democracy
"Republicans will do anything to ban books, even saying they cause porn addiction
"ATT; B402, The Republican Party has become the very cancel culture it pretends to rail against""
----
See also:
*The United States is in a free fall
"A free fall not seen in modern history": 100 days of destruction
Trump has been more aggressive in his efforts to destroy democracy than any other autocrat in recent decades
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176156267
* Trump's fondest wish: Cleansing the USA of democracy: Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for Trump's second term ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175818228 .
All in line with the Yarvin/Musk "unitary executive" dream .. The Memo: Trump ratchets up confrontation with judiciary ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175940253 .. of course.
All that aside one of Trump's most important policies is his love for distraction ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175993537
* Media capture is no joke
For the past week, Elon Musk has repeatedly commented about buying MSNBC. At the same time, Musk accused the news outlet of peddling "puerile propaganda" and derided MSNBC's ratings, which have—as might be expected—dropped since the election. The result has been a string of comments on Twitter and Fox News in which Trump supporters chortle over the thought of replacing Rachel Maddow with Joe Rogan and exult in the distress they believe Musk's comments must be generating on the left.
P - Many of Musk's "jokes," and those of toadies like Rogan, have been accompanied by the kind of homophobic, racist, or misogynist memes that have come to dominate Twitter since Musk laid down $44 billion to destroy that platform. But even as Musk and his social media pals laugh, no one should consider this a farce. It's a threat. And it's not just a threat against MSNBC.
P - Musk is signaling that he has the limitless resources and unchecked power to purchase and shutter any outlet he believes represents a threat to Donald Trump or the incoming array of kleptocrats. He can not only silence perceived critics, he can do it on a whim.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175459688
----
As the supporters of speaking truth to power celebrate World Press Freedom Day,
Trump seeks to defund public media in the United States.
John Nichols
A $50 bill is seen in US President Donald Trump’s back pocket as he boards Air Force One prior to departing from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, on May 1, 2025. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s Thursday-night order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS…to the maximum extent allowed by law” came just hours before advocates for democracy-sustaining media mark World Press Freedom Day on Saturday. It was no coincidence.
This 47th president has made no secret of his disdain for the sort of robust independent media that World Press Freedom Day .. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/press-freedom .. celebrates—print, broadcast, and digital media, both public and private, that speaks truth to political and economic power and serves as a bulwark for democracy.
Trump and his oligarchic allies have long bristled .. https://www.nprillinois.org/2025-03-25/republican-lawmakers-seek-to-put-pbs-and-npr-in-the-hot-seat .. at even the most modest efforts of public broadcasting outlets and community media to hold the billionaire class, multinational corporations, and their congressional retainers to account. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 outline .. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/project-2025-democracy-fcc-fec/?nc=1 .. for how a Republican White House would deliver politically for the right and its corporate donors declared last year that “all Republican Presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake.”
“To stop public funding is good policy and good politics,” the Project 2025 agenda explains. “The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become ‘a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,’ but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.”
Of course, the idea that public broadcasting “immediately became a liberal forum” is a conservative myth.
After all, one of the first, longest-running, and most prominent public TV programs was Firing Line, a broadcasting project initiated by William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley founded National Review magazine, counseled figures on the right such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and in 1965 mounted a nationally noted bid for mayor of New York on the ballot line of the Conservative Party—which warned that the Republican Party of the 1960s was too liberal. Added to the lineup of many public TV stations in the late 1960s, Firing Line was from 1971 onward distributed nationally by PBS and produced by the noncommercial Southern Educational Communications Association. It would continue to be one of PBS’s premier programs until 1999, when Buckley stood down.
A next-gen version of Firing Line continues to appear on PBS stations to this day, hosted by Margaret Hoover—the great-granddaughter of Republican President Herbert Hoover, a veteran of the George Bush administration, and the author of the book American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party. While Hoover has been prepared to criticize Trump’s misdeeds, she’s more than willing to call out liberals.
But Trump’s executive order failed to mention Buckley, Hoover, Firing Line, or the fact that PBS and NPR regularly feature conservative members of Congress and authors. Nor was note taken of the fact that both networks have over the years faced thoughtful critiques from the left regarding their coverage of Middle East affairs and a host of other issues. Instead, the “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” executive order and associated paperwork repeated a standard litany of conservative complaints about “the taxpayer subsidization of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—entities that receive tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”
Nor did the White House mention that, even as they have been criticized by GOP presidents, NPR and PBS have historically continued to receive federal funding at least in part because a group of House and Senate Republicans—some of them stalwart conservatives—have recognized the service those networks provide to the news deserts of rural America.
Most funding of public and community broadcasting these days comes from listeners and private donors, not the government. And the cuts Trump proposed will certainly be challenged ..
But Trump’s assault on NPR and PBS still sends an awful signal.
“Attacking journalists and the media is on page one of the authoritarian playbook. This is why everyone who cares about accountability and democracy should be deeply concerned about public media’s future,” says Craig Aaron, the president and co-CEO of the media reform group Free Press (an organization I helped to found). “The current system is far from perfect, and for too long public broadcasting’s leaders have cowered and conceded when they should have been pushing back. But all of us who care about an independent press, an informed populace, a responsive government, and a thriving democracy have a stake in the outcome of this fight. If we unite to defend public media—and I believe we can and will prevail—then we might just save our democracy, too.”
Submit a correction Send a letter to the editor Reprints & permissions
John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-npr-pbs-threat/
"Republicans will do anything to ban books, even saying they cause porn addiction
"ATT; B402, The Republican Party has become the very cancel culture it pretends to rail against""
----
See also:
*The United States is in a free fall
"A free fall not seen in modern history": 100 days of destruction
Trump has been more aggressive in his efforts to destroy democracy than any other autocrat in recent decades
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176156267
* Trump's fondest wish: Cleansing the USA of democracy: Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for Trump's second term ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175818228 .
All in line with the Yarvin/Musk "unitary executive" dream .. The Memo: Trump ratchets up confrontation with judiciary ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175940253 .. of course.
All that aside one of Trump's most important policies is his love for distraction ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175993537
* Media capture is no joke
For the past week, Elon Musk has repeatedly commented about buying MSNBC. At the same time, Musk accused the news outlet of peddling "puerile propaganda" and derided MSNBC's ratings, which have—as might be expected—dropped since the election. The result has been a string of comments on Twitter and Fox News in which Trump supporters chortle over the thought of replacing Rachel Maddow with Joe Rogan and exult in the distress they believe Musk's comments must be generating on the left.
P - Many of Musk's "jokes," and those of toadies like Rogan, have been accompanied by the kind of homophobic, racist, or misogynist memes that have come to dominate Twitter since Musk laid down $44 billion to destroy that platform. But even as Musk and his social media pals laugh, no one should consider this a farce. It's a threat. And it's not just a threat against MSNBC.
P - Musk is signaling that he has the limitless resources and unchecked power to purchase and shutter any outlet he believes represents a threat to Donald Trump or the incoming array of kleptocrats. He can not only silence perceived critics, he can do it on a whim.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175459688
----
As the supporters of speaking truth to power celebrate World Press Freedom Day,
Trump seeks to defund public media in the United States.
John Nichols
A $50 bill is seen in US President Donald Trump’s back pocket as he boards Air Force One prior to departing from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, on May 1, 2025. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s Thursday-night order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS…to the maximum extent allowed by law” came just hours before advocates for democracy-sustaining media mark World Press Freedom Day on Saturday. It was no coincidence.
This 47th president has made no secret of his disdain for the sort of robust independent media that World Press Freedom Day .. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/press-freedom .. celebrates—print, broadcast, and digital media, both public and private, that speaks truth to political and economic power and serves as a bulwark for democracy.
Trump and his oligarchic allies have long bristled .. https://www.nprillinois.org/2025-03-25/republican-lawmakers-seek-to-put-pbs-and-npr-in-the-hot-seat .. at even the most modest efforts of public broadcasting outlets and community media to hold the billionaire class, multinational corporations, and their congressional retainers to account. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 outline .. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/project-2025-democracy-fcc-fec/?nc=1 .. for how a Republican White House would deliver politically for the right and its corporate donors declared last year that “all Republican Presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake.”
“To stop public funding is good policy and good politics,” the Project 2025 agenda explains. “The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become ‘a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,’ but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.”
Of course, the idea that public broadcasting “immediately became a liberal forum” is a conservative myth.
After all, one of the first, longest-running, and most prominent public TV programs was Firing Line, a broadcasting project initiated by William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley founded National Review magazine, counseled figures on the right such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and in 1965 mounted a nationally noted bid for mayor of New York on the ballot line of the Conservative Party—which warned that the Republican Party of the 1960s was too liberal. Added to the lineup of many public TV stations in the late 1960s, Firing Line was from 1971 onward distributed nationally by PBS and produced by the noncommercial Southern Educational Communications Association. It would continue to be one of PBS’s premier programs until 1999, when Buckley stood down.
A next-gen version of Firing Line continues to appear on PBS stations to this day, hosted by Margaret Hoover—the great-granddaughter of Republican President Herbert Hoover, a veteran of the George Bush administration, and the author of the book American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party. While Hoover has been prepared to criticize Trump’s misdeeds, she’s more than willing to call out liberals.
But Trump’s executive order failed to mention Buckley, Hoover, Firing Line, or the fact that PBS and NPR regularly feature conservative members of Congress and authors. Nor was note taken of the fact that both networks have over the years faced thoughtful critiques from the left regarding their coverage of Middle East affairs and a host of other issues. Instead, the “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” executive order and associated paperwork repeated a standard litany of conservative complaints about “the taxpayer subsidization of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—entities that receive tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”
Nor did the White House mention that, even as they have been criticized by GOP presidents, NPR and PBS have historically continued to receive federal funding at least in part because a group of House and Senate Republicans—some of them stalwart conservatives—have recognized the service those networks provide to the news deserts of rural America.
Most funding of public and community broadcasting these days comes from listeners and private donors, not the government. And the cuts Trump proposed will certainly be challenged ..
. As media commentator Brian Stelter notes ..PBS is out with a very strong statement: "The President’s blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years. We are currently exploring all…
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 2, 2025
, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “is supposed to be protected from executive orders and other political pressure.”Last night Trump signed an exec order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. But the corp is a private entity that is supposed to be protected from executive orders and other political pressure.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 2, 2025
But Trump’s assault on NPR and PBS still sends an awful signal.
“Attacking journalists and the media is on page one of the authoritarian playbook. This is why everyone who cares about accountability and democracy should be deeply concerned about public media’s future,” says Craig Aaron, the president and co-CEO of the media reform group Free Press (an organization I helped to found). “The current system is far from perfect, and for too long public broadcasting’s leaders have cowered and conceded when they should have been pushing back. But all of us who care about an independent press, an informed populace, a responsive government, and a thriving democracy have a stake in the outcome of this fight. If we unite to defend public media—and I believe we can and will prevail—then we might just save our democracy, too.”
Submit a correction Send a letter to the editor Reprints & permissions
John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-npr-pbs-threat/
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Discover What Traders Are Watching
Explore small cap ideas before they hit the headlines.
