6/20/25

DOES NO NEWS SIGNAL BAD NEWS
IN THE FIGHT TO SAVE NPR & PBS?

CLICK ON the above image to go to the "Protect My Public Media" campaign to save NPR and PBS

WITH TIME RUNNING OUT to protect two of the nation’s most important journalism powerhouses, there’s an alarming lack of news about any meaningful rescue effort.
     On June 12, the House moved to take back federal support for NPR (National Public Radio) and TV’s PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), sending the defunding question to the Senate.
     The Senate has until July 18 to act, and you’d expect a fierce battle by public broadcasting advocates to convince the Republican-dominated chamber to reverse the House vote.
      But since the House voted – it was close, just a two-vote margin – I haven’t seen any news stories about what’s being done to save the $1.1 billion needed to help fund NPR and PBS.
      Now, maybe there’s a fierce lobbying effort aimed at the Republican-controlled Senate, a masterful behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at friendly legislators who will save the day.
     But it doesn’t feel like it.
     I’m sure broadcasting officials ARE lobbying senators.
     And there is an organized campaign – “Protect My Public Media”  which urges viewers, listeners and grassroots advocates to contact legislators.
     But what’s missing is passion, imagination, urgency and grit.
     Every day, I search the Internet for stories about the “battle,” and the silence is chilling, especially given the enormous stakes.
     No calls for demonstrations; no sloganeering; no questioning by news outlets – commercial and public – of what Republicans are up to as to when they’ll take up the measure and how.
     It’s all too polite. too bloodless and too courteous.

GRANTED, THIS ISN’T AN EASY LIFT, especially for the more than 1,000 NPR affiliated stations and the 330 PBS outlets.
     On the one hand, they have a powerful megaphone to raise alarms and rally supporters. But they can’t use the systems to influence a political campaign. I’m sure there are a slew of legal reasons for that. And it’s just plain unfair for them to use their nationwide reach to promote their self interest.
     Meanwhile,  other news outlets have dropped the ball. How many stories about funds for NPR  and PBS can readers of the New York Times or the Washington Post tolerate, when they are wondering whether Donald Trump is going to bomb the bejeezus out of Iran or whether Homeland Security thugs are going to arm wrestle yet another Democratic lawmaker to the floor of a federal building?
     Day in and day out, there are a lot more compelling heart-wrenching, life-and-death and an occasional good news yarns for any news organization to serve up, rather than inflicting listeners and viewers with yet another boring battle-of-the-budget snoozer.
     Also, federal funds are hardly the only source of support for public broadcasters: the systems are already master fundraisers, extracting donations through periodic, insufferably pompous on-air campaigns pleading for donations.
     So, NPR and PBS and its excellent PBS News Hour newscast won’t necessarily go silent immediately if the $1.1 billion for the next two years is lost. But many small stations, especially in rural areas,  may go out of business, and the overall public broadcasting effort will be terribly weakened.

AND WHY GAMBLE?
     NPR and PBS are high quality, professional, seasoned journalistic operations – among the few surviving sources of credible information at a time when the Internet is a cesspool of misinformation, fed by the Trump government's sewer of lies.
      Further, the news ecosystem remains weakened. There’s no guarantee that the Washington Post will survive as a robust source of hard-hitting  political coverage as readership slumps because of self-inflicted restrictions on its opinion pages.
      There’s simply no reason to allow NPR and PBS to be weakened and left to die.
     This is the second time I’ve written about this – I had a long-winded post May 3. Which should alert you to the fact that I don’t have the solutions.
     But I can imagine a hard-hitting advertising campaign, grassroots-protests, organized phone banking, email and text campaigns, SAVE NPR and PROTECT OUR PUBLIC TV signs at anti-Trump rallies.
   Still, the Senate effort is really one in which residents of Republican states will be the most effective boosters. I’m sure that no GOP Senator wants to hear from a Rhode Island/ Blue State resident like me. And I don’t personally  know many individuals in Red States I could persuade to take up the cause.
     One of the exasperating  aspects of the Trump and GOP drive to cripple NPR and PBS is that the lawmakers – from personal experience – know better.
     "Don't spend money on stupid things and don't subsidize biased media," Rep. Jim Jordan, a Ohio Republican said during the House debate to kill the funding.
     But I’m guessing that Jordan and fellow lawmakers are only too happy to be interviewed by NPR and PBS News Hour reporters, who are invariably civil, fair and certainly not “stupid.”
     As to the charge that the public broadcasters are biased, that’s not necessarily the judgement of news consumers.
     A YouGov poll earlier this year asked Americans which of 52 news “sources” they considered the most trusted. 
     PBS came in  3rd in the most-trusted list, and NPR ranked 9th.
     Admittedly, surveys like this are problematic. Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with their media outlets. And reporters, especially in fiction, are portrayed as a suspect cast – sneaky, troublesome, opportunistic and unheroic.
     So “trust” in media is hard to measure.
     In the YouGov poll itself the Number 1 most trusted news “source” was … The Weather Channel!
     The Number 2 spot went to the BBC, the British broadcasting  behemoth, generally available in the U.S. on NPR and PBS stations, which use BBC segments to fill out their programming schedules.
     (If you’re curious, Fox News was the most-watched outlet; but it ranked 39th on the trust list).
     I’d like to think this poll does reflect generally high regard that millions of Americans have for their public broadcasters, which are available in every nook and corner of the country.
     You’d think politicians would care, if for no more patriotic motives than public stations are credible platforms for themselves, and that they’re popular with their constituents.
     But as of today, no news about the crisis facing NPR and PBS means that America is in danger of losing two of its best sources of news and information simply because we didn’t try hard enough.
     What I do know is if NPR and PBS disappear, the larger fight to save democracy will be far more difficult: how do we fight Trump hooligans if if we don’t know what they’re doing? 
      Give it a try. Declare tomorrow your personal No News Day.
     No media, period. No social media. No streaming your favorite commentators. No New York Times, No Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian. No Associated Press. 
      Hands off the remote!
      No PBS.
      No NPR.