This week, just because everybody else left of center is taking the opportunity to pile on Trump after 100 days, we here at YSDA, given our contrary nature, have decided to scour the record to find things we actually agree with him on.
Make no mistake, we think this guy is a disaster. But we like three BROAD things that he’s done. The details of these policies have been a mess, but the general change in policy has been welcome. The last two days we wrote about what we like in Trump’s changes on student debt and DEI. Today we’ll write about what we like — and don’t like — about defunding public media.
We’ve long felt that NPR and PBS have been biased, but in the last decade or so that bias has gotten out of hand. It’s not just that they’re liberal. They’ve taken on that specific kind of academic, identity-obsessed point of view that has been the main thing that has driven voters away from the Democrats.
I challenge anyone to listen to a single hour of NPR news programing — or much of the rest of their programs, for that matter — that does not include at least one (usually more) of the following:
- A story on transgender issues portraying them as victims and told from the point of view of rights activists.
- A story on immigration told from the point of view of immigrants as victims while being dismissive (if even mentioning) their legal status.
- A story on climate change told in a breathless — and sometimes ludicrously reaching — fashion. How is climate change impacting transgender immigrants?!
I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that at production meetings the first agenda item is: what’s our climate change story today, our transgender story and our migrant story? Sometimes, NPR and PBS will “balance” these stories by throwing in a quote from somebody right of center, but it’s an afterthought as in, “Yeah, we’ll touch that base so when we get accused of bias we can wave it around.”
I get more push back from my liberal friends about this than anything else. Either they just don’t hear the bias or they do and they defend it with something like, “but Fox News…”
There are two issues here. First, obviously, Fox News doesn’t get public funding. And second, one thing liberals used to stand for was unbiased reporting. They didn’t want to be told what they already believed. They wanted solid information that even ran the risk of changing their minds. They didn’t want to be told what to think. They wanted to do that for themselves. But recently, since the whole country has fallen into a fierce tribalism, too many liberals have abandoned their principles. If the other side does it, they want to do it too. They don’t want to be informed, they want to be armed to do (usually imagined) intellectual battle with the enemy.
So, as a matter of principle, I think NPR and PBS should lose DIRECT public funding. They long ago lost any claim to being objective news outlets.
But it’s that qualifier — direct — that I want to focus on here. NPR gets only 1% of its budget from the Feds and PBS gets a more significant 15%. They’d survive losing that money as corporate funders and affluent liberals would step up and fill the gap.
What I’d like to see preserved is the public money that goes to the local stations. They provide valuable local news coverage and local cultural programming. Yes, they’ve followed NPR and PBS in going left, but it’s not nearly as extreme.
And, in fact, their funding could actually be improved by removing a current requirement that some of that taxpayer money be used for national — read “NPR” — programming. I don’t need NPR for national news in any event. I need WXPR and WPR for local and state news.
So, that would be a compromise that would work. Taxpayers would no longer be forced to fund elite liberal bias at NPR and PBS, but those entities would survive just fine anyway. Meanwhile, local stations, which actually need more resources to cover local news, would end up with increased funds.
Because Trump goes at everything with a chain saw and because this is all about his personal grievances as opposed to serious public policy making, I fear this won’t happen. Trump’s compliant Congressional Republicans will likely just go along with whatever he wants.
And the irony will be that the entities that really are biased — NPR and PBS — will go on without missing a step while our local stations will be caught in the crossfire. The valuable local entities will pay the price for the bias at the national level.
That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll get back to beating up on the convicted felon Donald Trump. I promise. Have a good weekend.
Postscript… or maybe not. There was a glimmer of hope in a New York Times story this morning that Trump might be doing just what we suggest here. To quote the Times story: “Mr. Trump ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and all federal agencies to also cut indirect funding by forbidding public radio and television broadcasters that receive federal funds from using that money for PBS or NPR programs.” That suggests that funding for local stations would continue.
On this website we believe in:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
You see a big distinction between WPR and NPR?
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Taxpayers are not subsidizing liberal bias at NPR, they get 1% of funding from Federal Govt. Perhaps any editorial bias is the result of the 99% of individual and philanthropic donors? You keep mixing together NPR and the rest of CPB mission and operations.
PBS does not produce anything they distribute shows produced independently. And, their educational programming was born at a time of upswing in commercial TV aimed at kids. The entire purpose of creating CPB was to add private investment to meager public dollars and not become socialist media.
And, you are incorrect about FOX News doesn’t receive anything from taxpayers. Baloney! They get TEMPORARY license approvals from the FCC and those licenses have a monetary value in the broadcasting marketplace. While not a line item in budget, it is a form of public subsidy and trust.
If there was a viable NPR audience seeking right wing views, that show can be produced and funded just like Morning Edition. There is no one stopping them. But history tells us, that ain’t gonna happen. And why is that Dave?
Because right wing programs CAN MAKE BIG MONEY from commercial airwaves which are OWNED BY TAXPAYERS. With no FCC Fairness Doctrine in place, liberals are justifiable in defending the small cost and footprint of NPR
PBS runs conservative programs, honestly how you squeeze PBS TV with NPR is sloppy at best, disingenuous. Very little of PBS programming is political, and when so, its produced and funded locally not from Federal budget. We watch PBS all the time. Mostly BBC mysteries, Nature, NOVA,…hardly the stuff for radical politics, although that Poirot is a bit odd.
And none of this discussion factors in the more recent trend of watching, listening to media via Internet sources. Also lacking in any meaningful public oversight, so we all get spied on by bots created by for profit entities and outright lies, meaningless social media garbage. And this affects EVERYONE in America…shit, if I’m for family values the Internet with no leash is the last thing I want to see expanded.
I’ve got a project for you: Help the conservatives cut taxpayer waste at a larger scale and call for slashing USDOT, return highways to States, give them authority to do electronic tolling to replace gas tax, and get rid of this silly notion that, like HUD, we need the Feds to build cities, housing and transportation infrastructure for 21st century. We do not! Let Wisconsin decide where to put roads, sidewalks, transit, pedestrian and bicycle safety, etc. Nearly every DOT project takes longer, costs more because of the heavy hand of Federal govt. Or, propose a “Reagan” swap for Medicaid funding and release states on other safety net spending. I’d rather have the WI Legislature develop a new approach to housing vouchers or food share stipends and get taken out of Medicaid business. In a heartbeat.
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I do not watch, nor do I listen to public TV or radio, nor do I care about either of them. But TV as a whole, has gone into the sewer.
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