Summary
The Republican-led push to defund public broadcasters like NPR and PBS has gained new momentum with Sen. John Kennedy’s proposed “No Propaganda Act,” echoing longstanding conservative critiques of media bias and fiscal waste.
The effort is bolstered by changing media consumption habits, a weakened public radio audience, and competition from digital platforms like Spotify and The New York Times.
NPR faces challenges in adapting to a digital future, while internal divisions and declining funding threaten its sustainability.
Advocates warn this campaign may succeed where past efforts have failed.
https://www.npr.org/donations/support
https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/support-pbs/
Grew up watching Carmen SanDiego, Mr. Rogers, Ghostwriter, etc on PBS and turned into an adult listening to NPR radio on my commute. Both have been huge parts of my life, and I cannot imagine I’m alone. Hitting the donate button seems like the least I (we) can do.
Edit: Putting my money where my mouth is
Donated to my local affiliate since they probably need the money more than the national organization.
Thx bruh. Been meaning to donate to my stations. Just did.
Fuck. I didn’t even think about the end of public radio and TV because of everything else.
They go way to far doing the “both sides” thing, but they’re one of the last U.S. news outlets that try to not be beholden to corporations. They certainly have no problem reporting negative news about their corporate sponsors. I’ve even heard them report negative news about public media.
PBS gets about 15% of their funding from the feds. They’ll probably be fine.
Do you think you’d make it if you lost 15% of your paycheck from now on?
Besides a one time donation y’all might also consider cancelling your Spotify and NYT and WashPo subs and putting those monthly payments to NPR/PBS/other great independant or local news sources.
I did exactly that.
Donated my car to my local NPR station when it started dying. It was better for my peace-of-mind since I didn’t have to haggle with people (and I’ll get $500 when I file my 2025 taxes). I hope whatever they got for the sale of my car goes a decent ways because I listen to them all the time on my way to work.
“The only information and viewpoints that should be available to people in the US are those given by the rich and powerful.”
I stopped listening to NPR when they couldn’t bring themselves to call “enhanced interrogation” what it was. There are plenty of other examples, that’s just one that seems most to the point.
Lots of NPR affiliate stations air great shows, but their nationally syndicated programming rigorously fellates the wealthy, and staunchly defends the status quo.
“Enhanced interrogation” is when I went over and out, too, and NPR has only gotten worse. I never listen any more, but occasionally read their news coverage online. It’s adequate, by the current awful standards of mainstream journalism. No worse than my local paper, but also no better.
Might be the best news coverage on the radio, though, and I’d oppose bludgeoning the NPR budget, same as I’ll oppose everything Trump and his maniacs do.
Doesn’t NPR have a huge endowment from Ray Krok’s wife (McDonalds restaurants founder)?
Bad organizations get what they earn. NPR has been a voice for the owner class for too long.
The problem is that the Republicans are going after them because they aren’t conservative enough. This isn’t a broken clock scenario, they’re just flat-out wrong. You bet your ass they aren’t going to be trying to find ways to shut down the Daily Wire or anything.
Yeah keep advocating for the voice of our rulers. The Daily Wire is biased as fuck but they’re not getting tax dollars.
This isn’t going to be a win. You can prance around on your high horse all you want, but this is going to be a bad thing for everyone.
No, I couldn’t disagree more but cool. Nobody is being well informed by government media. I’ll agree media is the wild west right now but taking out one bad actor won’t make it worse. Free dialog is a better answer but speech is being controlled everywhere.
This isn’t going to be the last thing they do. The entire thing would set a precedent that they’re ok to destroy things that even might disagree with them. And because their reason is based in hating anything not far-right they’re not going to anything about the fact that any vacuum left will taken over by more and more far-right media.
I also don’t have many nice things to say when media outlets go soft at times when they should just do their damn jobs but this isn’t the time. This is your government trying to censure any ideas that disagree with them. Here in Canada the Conservatives are equally trying to defund the CBC, and not terribly left-leaning outlet but one that isn’t terribly right-leaning either, just kinda frustratingly neutral when bad people do shitty things.
This isn’t going to be a win. This isn’t a rare moment where values are aligning.
I see the same thing except I think it happened years ago and maybe you didn’t realize.
I’m sorry, are you taking the piss mate?
I was born in the US and I’ve been to London and a bunch of other European places, lived there a couple of years . But I don’t really share your language. What are you asking me? I don’t give a fuck if people don’t like what I say. We actually have free speech here, mostly. For now. Hopefully guns don’t get involved in that because we have a lot of people who won’t be told what to say. The 2nd supports the 1st as we say.
2nd supports the 1st? So where’s all that when SWAT and the riot police show up? When the FBI brings a tank to your compound? When they use a helicopter to drop bombs on your apartment?
Is the US government often dropping bombs on apartments? I would hope the working class would investigate that if it happened. If all out war has been declared - I will support the working class people who come into contact with my life. Also, helicopters have to refuel somewhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
Not nearly frequent, but it has happened. The working class can investigate all they want, but when they bring their findings to those with the power or ability to do anything, they’ll be met with “and?”
Oh you’re assuming we’re waiting for courts at that point. When the government is bombing apartments the courts won’t matter much at that point.
Sorry, it probably isn’t common knowledge, I was referring specifically to Waco (M1A1 Abrams tank and several Bradley armored vehicles against civilians inside the continental US, in a 51-day siege that resulted in the deaths of 82 civilians, 28 of whom were children) and the MOVE bombings (dropping bombs on apartment complexes, after which Philadelphia Police Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring homes over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless. Six adults and five children were killed in the attack, with one adult and one child surviving).
Nothing of significance, of course, happened to the people who did these things.
