Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

Because RFK Jr is considered sufficiently loyal that they are willing to follow Trump's directives without question. This is the only qualification that truly matters to Trump.

This qualification is particularly important for a role you want to use to arbitrarily punish people who aren't loyal enough.

They hand out responsibilities to whomever is most likely to agree and follow through with whatever Trump says.

Education to the uneducated (or those who would prefer we remain uneducated in the face of power) can easily cast any education as "biased" against their purposes. Most people see through that for what it is, but an increasing population of Americans don't.

NOVA regularly acknowledges the existence of climate change.

Some episodes even have the audacity to claim that humans evolved from apes and that the earth is billions of years old!

The republicans are intent on gutting education. Having an electorate fluent in science, the ability to test if statements are true or false, etc., are all in direct opposition to their agenda.

They don't know what bias is or they wouldn't watch Fox News and they don't know anything about the orgs they pile on. For example- I read New Yorker (a liberal "rag" I'm told) yet I've read lovely profiles of Amy Coney Barrett and John Thune.

You must understand, the culture war types are so absurdly radical that BEN SHAPIRO's adult cartoon was considered "woke" because it had a gay character who was the butt of every joke, and that was not harsh enough to satisfy them.

They do not want LGBTQ people to be acknowledged in any way, or be allowed to exist.

They would ban the Golden Girls if they could. They WILL try.

One thing I've noticed is this administration is very online and this is likely a response to conservatives crying that NPR and CPB are biased, which they are to an extent (just listen to the NPR politics podcast for example).

The obvious problem is they are conflating one or two programs with _the entire organization_. I grew up on PBS watching Arthur and Clifford and I'm sure they put out tons of quality content to this day. It's just when Trump thinks of that org he just thinks of the politically biased parts (ie a couple of shows and podcasts that cover Washington politics) and not the massive other parts that provide quality content.

To these people educational is a synonym for biased. They depend on uneducated people and they have a chip on their shoulder from being between somewhat and extremely dumb themselves.

Ask the nih how that’s going.

--doesn't-- -> shouldn't

no one will stop him.

thousands of people have been laid off due to similarly "toothless" orders

Have you not been paying attention to what is happening? Republicans do not care and will not stop Trump from doing what he wants.

Everybody loves communism except those who've actually experienced it.

My wife and I were visiting a Western European country and watching the street from our balcony. Outside there was a parade of communists rallying for an upcoming vote. Well, my wife is from an actually communist country, and wanted to warn all those people that they would not have been allowed to parade or demonstrate in the country she's from. And would probably be a lot hungrier.

Reality skews heavily left. Should the news be about reality or ideology?

Perhaps a relevant context is that the 44% is highest of any UK media.

As for other public broadcasters, in e.g. Finland Yle is trusted by 82%, by far the highest for any media.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45744-which-media-out...

I'm not sure public trust really matters. A lot of times people distrust what they just don't like to hear.

What profound moral problem are you talking about? If you take your point even further, you could argue there’s a moral problem with forcing people who are distrusting of or despise the government to pay taxes at all, but it’s generally agreed that the health of a country in part does depend on revenues generated by taxes (since you need money to pay for things that benefit many people, like roads, public transit, etc.).

Wait until you hear about Fox News which is funded by advertisers who make money from people's pockets.

In the US the 'press' / media is supposed to be a quasi 4th branch of government (society by the people, for the people).

Such organizations are important for the voting public to remain informed and thus elect with an informed choice.

... It would also not surprise me if ~25-35% of the US population 'did not trust PBS / NPR' because they didn't like what they heard and thus preferred to disbelieve the sources.

But outside donations do also have potential strings. Think how much strings mozilla has been having with the money google gives them. Of course, there's no strings attached from a legal perspective. But i dont think anyone is kidding themselves that it's not strings attached money.

Hopefully, the public broadcasting donations are from various small amounts from many viewers, and collectively they are less corrupting. But this isn't guaranteed, and during economic recessions, these sorts of sources tend to dry up (and get replaced with big money sources, and thus their agendas).

Same for PBS and its member stations.

The only truly worrying part of the EO for me is the "The heads of all agencies shall identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS."

Some of the most interesting work we've done has been almost completely funded by the Department of Education.

The station I work for has many sources of revenue but I suspect this will harm some smaller stations.

The largest item on their revenue chart seems to be "corporate sponsorships." You know, the companies in all those totally-not-commercials you hear on your local non-commercial stations.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

Earlier today, I mentioned what you commented in another forum, and wise person pointed out to me that that it's the rural stations that will be affected most by this.

When you consider the rural media options, this will be a huge shift in those markets if the funding is not replaced.

This is simply not true, at all, and NPR themselves deliberately try to obfuscate the truth.

"NPR's two largest revenue sources are corporate sponsorships and fees paid by NPR Member organizations"

NPR member organizations are government funded, and then that government funding rolls back up to NPR. So, they're mostly funded by ads and the government. Source in other comment.

There are also plenty that make their programming available online and which is of general interest. It's quite fun, engaging and informative to dip into stations in places you've never been or places you remember fondly. One of my kids recently got a globe and that led to us trying to find Antarctica's ICE 104.5 FM AFAN online last night -- without success, sadly.

The elephant in the room is that these stations must be supported. I've been donating to a few stations for many years and have recently donated to others and will continue to do so as long as I'm able. If I somehow wind up with an estate worth anything, I'd also love to be able to will something to one or more stations.

That is my point. They do not care about bias in media just like they don't care about government inefficiency or illegal immigration. There are easy wins you could make towards fixing all of these things if you wanted to but they choose not to because they don't care. They want fear, authority, and control.

Alas, I'm confident that, if they had reinstated it, it would have been struck down by the Supreme Court by now for violating the First Amendment.

all benefitted, dem aligned media benefitted even more in crusading against Trump as it brought headlines and attention to opinion pieces. Ironically this reinforced Trump and allowed him to present himself as a victim of a witch hunt

The things is that when "news" is compared, the divisions tend to be much smaller (but still definitely there).

But people don't think of NPR news and Fox News news. They think of (and what they actually pay attention to) are the opinion shows that dominate the ratings. That is where the gulf is huge and things are totally out of control.

It's much more tame in the 10 minute segments of running down headlines for the day, but people don't engage much with that anymore. Not as exciting as being told how right you are.

I will give you that, sometimes fox news is like a ChatGPT hallucination. And the ads are unbearable - my pillow and vegetable pills.

This is more than made for by the interviews - Trump, Vance, Harris, Zelensky, the doge team, etc.

Speaking of unbearable, NPR's "soft stories" are invariably about someone's sob story. Ok, I get it, there are a lot of hard luck stories out there, but they seem to relish in misery.

All in all, neither are great, but none of the mainstream media are. I do like "All in" podcasts :-)

During the campaign for the 2016 Republican nomination for President they actually dropped several negative stories that their reporters assigned to the Trump campaign submitted, because their reporters assigned to the Cruz, Rubio, etc. campaigns were submitting a much lower percentage of negative stories and they assume the difference must be due to some flaw in their reporting.

You won’t hear that on NPR and this is why the ‘both sides’ argument has been so detrimental to American’s perception of their media.

I agree that NPR is "trustworthy" in the sense that what they directly say is usually reliable, what I have a huge problem with is what they leave out or how they redirect.

A perfect example of this is in my previous post. I was listening to their "interview" with their CEO, and the interview was put into context of her recent senate hearing (which I knew nothing about). She sounded like a reasonably well informed CEO with good intentions, doing what is best for the public.

I decided to listen to her senate hearing (which I would not have even thought of doing because I did not even know she did this), and came out with the opposite impression - someone who obfuscates, lies, and should not be responsible for the public good.

Was there anything said in the NPR issue that was incorrect or a lie ? No. They are a lot smarter than that. They are clever people who think they are smarter than everyone else, but are not to be trusted.

I agree there was always bias in the media. I think that back in the day, when things were not as polarized and not everything was corrupted by politics, the biases were not as large or as important - there was a lot more common ground.

Today, there is extreme polarization, and it is probably impossible to provide a single news source that is "objective" or "unbiased".

I am not making an ethnic or political judgement here. And, yes, I know there will be those who say you have to make a judgment because there is only one viewpoint today that is correct, that the other side is just lying and distorting. And which direction this goes depends on who you speak with.

For me, the only way to maximize what little understanding I have of the world is to go to various news sources. And I am not talking about understanding in the sense of listening to different viewpoints (which is part of it), but actually getting all the "facts", and by "facts" I mean actual events/stories. What people leave out is as important as what they put in.

I am well aware of Fox's issues. And NPR seems like the "nice guys". And I learn things from both that I could not get from one alone. And maybe Fox has more sinister lies and misrepresentations than NPR, and it is my job to sort through that. But for me, I feel Fox is pretty far to the right for me, and NPR is very far to the left for me in their viewpoints and in what they choose to present. So, for me, they are similar, for others, maybe not.

I don't care if the CEO is left leaning or right leaning. But both Fox and NPR conveniently leave out a lot of the story that does not align with their views.

And I do not believe either should get government funding. When we had a society with more homogeneous views, maybe it was ok for the government to fund news sources that provided something that fit within the views of the majority of the population. That is no longer possible.

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Well, she had plenty of time to reflect on what she did not remember and had a perfect opportunity in the NPR interview to address that.

Watch the Senate hearing. This was not a person that did not want to make an offhand statement. This was a person who clearly did not feel comfortable with what she knew she said to "her audience" but not comfortable when it came to a public audience. Many, many times. She sounded like someone repeatedly pleading the fifth.

My opinion, of course.

I am simply comparing them on a political spectrum of progressive, left, right, etc.

This is independent of lawsuits. There are a number of news outlets that have settled lawsuits - ABC, CNN, CBS (imminent), Newsmax, to name a few. Yes, Dominion was a large one. None of these change where these news outlets sit on the political spectrum.

The original discussion has to do with political bias and whether the government should be funding politically biased news organizations. NPR is a politically biased news organization. So is FOX. So are all of these organizations. Only NPR gets government funding.

I'm not sure how important that is to remember. The president is issuing the orders. The president is chief executive of the country.

The president can't pawn off responsibility to some White House staffer or think tank. An executive order is the president's order.

Is it useful to look at the people who wrote or lobbied for the order? Perhaps if you want to want to understand the context of an order. But none of that context mitigates the president's responsibility for any order. At the end of the day, it is a single person exercising their sole authority to issue executive orders.

I'm pretty sure with Trump this time around it is much less the case. In his first admin there are endless stories of the "Adults" in the room keeping him in check.

This time around he was sure to only fill his cabinet with yes men, so no one could keep him reigned in.

"It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes."

All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had people like Himmler and Speer, Stalin had Beriya and many others (don't know names). The interesting thing is that these people will also do well in democracies. A lot of ex-nazis in Germany turned into good democratic people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger). You also have these people in companies where for example layoffs are done in the most humiliating way.

I've seen many people draw a comparison between Trump and Hitler (because of course - people compare everybody to Hitler).

But what I don't think people remember is that a guy like Hitler didn't just show up and "make a dictatorship". He was an opportunistic guy who showed up when Germany's democratic, constitutional republic was weakened by a poorly-functioning congress, and most of the actual power was concentrated in the executive branch. When the time came, Hitler wasn't the one who passed the Reichstag Fire Decree allowing him to suspend the freedom of the press and jail his political opposition. That law was passed by president Hindenburg.

Hitler didn't create a dictatorship. He was handed one on a silver platter - by an ailing 85 year old man with too much power.

Can you explain and reference sources? Otherwise it is a pretty vague comment.

The Attorney General went out of her way to assure Cabinet members that the US Marshals would not be arresting them. So, well, that's great.

Congress needs to transition the US Marshals to the judiciary or expressly codify that the AG has no authority to direct their actions. Won't happen, but it's what Congress needs to do.

SCOTUS (and other courts) can deputize whoever they want pretty much. And this is what the states' National Guards are for (very scary thought)

I think the guardrails were designed to hold someone like Trump once; and then afterwards he was supposed to be convicted of his crimes, or at least never elected again. The guardrails are fundamentally held in place by hundreds of thousands of individuals making individual decisions. People who are asked to break the law can expect that in a few years they'll be vindicated, or at least fear that in a few years they would be punished for going along with the illegal orders.

I'm much more worried about the guardrails when people like that get re-elected: suddenly going along with the illegal action is by far the safest thing to do.

Indeed. There are dozens of other moments through the past ten years of Trumpism that the supposed guardrails were to prevent and did not, and in the wake of each one the custodians of those guardrails shrugged and went "oh well... I guess that's Trump."

Emoluments, tax returns, the porn star, lying under oath, J6, "fake news", losers and suckers, bone spurs, snubbing Carter, crowd size bullshit, grab em by the pussy, obvious nepotism, lock her up, separating families at the border, "very fine people on both sides", "stand back and stand by", sparring with Fauci, now jailing judges, deporting people off street corners, letting Musk gut government agencies, etc etc.

And that's just off the top of my head; I'm such others have catalogued many, many more of these that I'm forgetting, but yeah... good luck to anyone who can look at a list of these things and be like "ah yes but that was all in the comfortable past, surely the guardrails that failed on every one of those previous instances will somehow hold now. Hooray!"

SCOTUS' ruling on Trump's presidential immunity blew a massive hole in the guardrails.

Not just one person, congress and a lot of the judicial system. This isn't a one person problem. Not even close. Same way Nazis werent just a "one person" problem.

The funny thing is, that the GOP is not "conservative," in any way, whatsoever. They are extreme.

The definition of "conservative" means "not-extreme." It is not just "not-liberal." It means being thoughtful, cautious, sticking with the mainstream, learning from the past, not discarding learned wisdom, etc.

Things like anti-abortion, hate-brown-people, put-women-back-in-the-kitchen-or-the-bedroom etc. stuff is often described as "conservative," because so much old culture had it, but these days, they are no longer "mainstream" principles.

I tend to be somewhat "centrist." Some of my own personal values could be construed as "conservative" (like personal Discipline and Integrity, insisting on writing very good-Quality code, or not spending money that I don't have), but I also have values that lean left (like an expansive worldview, not insisting on taking away the Agency of others, etc.).

The wrecking ball that DOGE is running through our government, right now, is not "conservative," at all.

The courts have so far been exceptionally weak.

Hey, you're not allowed to send those people on the plane! The plane already left even though I told you not to send it? Well, you gotta get them back! You're not sending them back? I'll just keep telling you that you have to do it, that'll really show you!

Oh, pretty please, would you return that man you illegally sent to that torture prison? No? Oh, ok, well would you at least just talk to me about it in daily reports? No? Oh, ok. I guess he'll just die there. Oh well.

Could you share what the courts have done? What I’ve witnessed is cowardice to hold officials accountable or in contempt for unconstitutional acts.

> Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned in tightly and then Congressional power needs to reigned in as well. We need to push for Federalism.

Sensible people will realize that separation of powers means nothing when the same party holds both powers. R House + R senate + R SCOTUS + R executive => unlimited executive power.

"conservative voters who are speaking out to their conservative representatives."

They could have done a bit better with their voting decisions, though.

I would argue that Trump only exists as President because Congress has abdicated its lawmaking powers for the past twenty years (give or take). With a functional legislative branch it's not nearly as problematic to have an extremely liberal or conservative president, or textualist Supreme Court justices. We need a refresh of rules governing congress (age & term limits, better pay, disallowing equity trading, elimination of gerrymandering at the state level, and perhaps nationwide adoption of ranked choice voting, which would open the door to viable third parties & ruling by coalition).

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> The weirdness started in 90s.

I think this is mostly just an artifact of when you starting paying attention in your life, discounting what happened before, you are likely around 50 years old.

Remember there was the Vietnam war casus belli that was faked, the student protests and shootings, and Nixon spying on his opponents and before that there was the red scare, the Hollywood black list and segregation in the South.

I think weaving together complex set of events like this is too much like the mistake people make in a lot of "evolutionary just so" stories. The degrees of freedom are too large and it is hard to establish true causality in a realm of potentially infinite causal links just by conjecture.

I think it is easier and more productive frankly to see what levers and pressures one had right now on the government and then try to influence those.

I think government is always in tension between opposing forces and you'll align with some and against others depending on your background, disposition, position in society and your particular perspective of kinship.

I speculate it started in the 1950s.

There was a move to make Business about numbers over People, per my Grandpa's "Back In My Day" speeches he used to give me. He blamed the MBA (no offense to MBAs) for encouraging money-over-people thinking.

This then leads to GOP appearing to value winning political power for itself over building a healthy society, in my view.

It's happened before, both recently (since 2001), but Executive Order 9066 happened over 80 years ago, in the 19th century the US literally passed a Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

America puts too much faith in its courts and constitution.

I have been saying for decades that the most active terrorist organization in the United States is… the US government.

I don't think bias is the right word. It's more that a station not bound by corporate sponsors better has the ability to reflect the voice of the people, and Americans generally lean progressive when you ask them directly about policy.

Most Americans wanting to tax the rich/large corporations: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/19/most-amer...

Wanting to legalize marijuana: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/03/26/most-america...

The government should supply universal healthcare to Americans: https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-...

It’s utterly mind blowing how facts and the truth are now labeled a “progressive bias” in the US.

It’s like you have to cover stuff up, deny and lie to be a conservative.

> their progressive bias

Is this what we're calling "truth" now?

> I'm a big supporter of NPR but you don't need to look hard to see their progressive bias.

"Reality has a well known liberal bias." — Stephen Colbert, 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-a2KeyCAY&t=4m11s

I listen to planet money and a few other podcasts. They seem pretty fair to me. The only way I could maybe see a progressive bias is that they have representation in their staff of racial and sexual minorities. I see no issue with that.

Honest question, does NPR have any token conservative pundits or voices on their broadcasts or shows? I know they have a lot of minority representation. As usual, Trumps proposed solution is idiotic. But maybe there could be an unofficial settlement to make sure all perspectives are heard?

Assuming this is even a problem…

The attack on PBS seems ridiculous.

While I don't watch NBC or CNN (they talk about 5 minute topics for 2 weeks), I notice often that a progressive bias, as far as I understand, is not immediately bending the knee to any rightwing pushback. It shouldn't be biased to say climate change is real, for instance, but that has been politicized so much that it's seen as a progressive bias. It's only in recent years that Republicans have switched from "It's not real" to "well doing something about it is too hard."

A better example of a bias would be texts from Fox news anchors privately trashing Sidney Powell as a lying hack while they, simultaneously, plan to boost her appearances to make election interference seem more plausible [1]. Or saying they can't fact check Trump anymore [2].

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/all-the-texts-fox-ne... [2] https://www.mediaite.com/news/this-has-to-stop-now-new-bombs...

What in the world are you on about? They published an interview with an author who had - admittedly - controversial takes looting. You make it sound like they were telling people to go smash windows.

It's telling that you chose not to link the actual piece: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...

Was it this? On August 27, 2020, Natalie Escobar for Code Switch interviewed Vicky Osterweil about her book In Defense Of Looting. The segment was titled "One Author's Argument 'In Defense Of Looting'", and was subsequently retitled "One Author's Controversial View: 'In Defense Of Looting'".

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vicky-osterweil/in-...

Are you sure that article wasn't an interview with an author who wrote a book that took that stance? Having a conversation with someone who has arguably extremist views is very different from holding that extremist view.

If true, that is insane and if presented as factual those involved should be fired. But throwing the baby out with the bath water is not sensible.

Oh and to my original point, why is this not cited or linked to in the executive order? I think it would strengthen it if anything.

That was not the official position of NPR the organization or even an opinion piece by an NPR employee, it was an interview with an author.

You don’t have to agree with this take, but it has historical precedent and merits discussion. In popular culture, “Do The Right Thing” (controversially?) posed the question back in 1989. And Black leaders have been talking about it since the 60s: https://jacobin.com/2020/09/martin-luther-king-riots-looting...

Ah yes, one piece of free speech justifies deleting the entire station.

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