Clawback of $1.1B for PBS and NPR puts rural stations at risk
34 comments
·July 19, 2025null
jmclnx
I wonder when "Radio Free Europe (EU)" becomes a thing in the US :)
drewcoo
> I wonder when "Radio Free Europe (EU)" becomes a thing in the US
RFE is openly intended as propaganda. NPR does not claim that. They're not the same thing.
There used to be Radio Moscow which in the 1980s was repeated from Havana on AM 1040 for a while. This overpowered 50,000 watt WHO 1040 from Des Moines, Iowa for some folks in the southeastern US. It was an international incident and made the nightly news repeatedly.
jmclnx
Well with defunding of NPR/PBS, propaganda is the only news some areas in the US will now get once some stations close.
jauntywundrkind
The rural focus seems weird, a mis-direction. Sure yes, they'll feel a lot of damage from this, stations will close, but there's so many people everywhere going to be impacted by this.
What feels most notable to me is that there has been so much media consolidation already. David (son of Larry) Ellison's Skydance buying CBS removes on more not hard right/hard plutocrat aligned media empire. The ongoing Warner Brothers / Discovery mega-conglomrate (also encompassing HBO, DC, Turner) being run by plutocrat friendly David Zaslav. Rumbles of Bezos trying to buy Conde Master. LA Times, WaPo, NYT all having very plutocrat friendly operators now.
Having the government paying kind of regular boring human people to go make programs and radio is a threat to the consolidated media, a threat to the large sweeping faction of very rich people who've been gobbling up the press.
I care for sure about rural people & their access to media, their local stations. Local stations are amazing, local journalism is especially amazing & ghastly absent, super hard to fund today. The government de-participating in enriching democracy by supporting independent media, that's the incredibly woe begotten (for all) sadness I feel about this news.
hitekker
Other stations can get funding through private donors; rural stations cannot and they may actually die out.
I think the weirdness comes from NPR's previous PR strategy of denying they even needed government funding. At the time (2 years ago?) I recall NPR wanted to convey that defunding was useless, and that their (national) news was only state-affiliated or government funded by 1%. I think they also wanted to obscure how they use funding to influence ideological content on local public radio stations.
I agree with you on the consolidation of media; we need less rich kingpins deciding what's newsworthy. But I disagree on the appeal of local stations. Except in times of local crisis, I've found their programming to be inferior to the national brands. Too many boring podcasts, LLM-like articles and lazy fact-checking.
throwawaysleep
Rural services should be the first cut as they voted for this, so clearly don’t want them.
kacesensitive
Yeah, it’s grim irony. A lot of rural communities consistently vote for politicians who campaign on dismantling these very programs (public broadcasting, Medicaid, rural hospital funding, even USPS). Then act surprised when the services vanish.
paulwilsondev
As a person that lives in subrubia and has property in the sticks, I can assure you that NPR or PBS losing funding is no loss. I have a weather radio specifically for NOAA alerts. I could not care less about NPR and PBS losing any funding.
rovr138
‘In my sample size of one’
And that one, it doesn’t experience the ‘thing’ all the time, in every condition.
SonOfKyuss
But this is also what the folks behind this want. Rural America is easier to radicalize when they aren’t exposed to all that woke empathy crap on Sesame Street or facts-based reporting from NPR. If PBS news hour sounded like Fox News, they wouldn’t have cut their funding
kacesensitive
My grandparents think NPR is leftist propaganda and PBS has a "trans agenda" whatever that means. They're too far gone.
akudha
This is depressing. What is "trans agenda" and why do they think it affects them? Do they even know a single trans person in real life, assuming that is what they are scared of? I honestly do not understand any of this at all.
paulwilsondev
they're not wrong
jeffbee
PBS News Hour has, perversely, spent the last five years incinerating its credibility among thinking people in an attempt to curry favor with their enemies. This apparently did not work.
paulwilsondev
our elitist treasure...
throwawaysleep
They already vote that way, making it irrelevant. The play now is to make sure no young people continue to live in rural communities.
Have a bipartisan concensus that rural communities should largely be separated from services.
SonOfKyuss
You sort of touched on it, but yes this isn’t about changing the minds of adults, it’s about keeping the kids in those areas from questioning what they are being told by those around them
readthenotes1
Fact based reporting, like the Hunter Biden laptop story isn't a story, or Pres Biden is fully mentally competent, or firing a coworker for calling out a progressive bias in the newsroom?
We can do with less of that, I think.
orwin
I mean, from outside the US, the only thing I've learned from the hunter laptop leak is that he is a coke user, he fuck prostitutes and have a porn-sized penis, which frankly, is the only truly surprising thing and also knowledge I can do without. So unless 4chan became extremely less pro-trump than I remember, I do think it isn't a story.
guywithahat
I don't think they ever really did. I always understood it as a way to push left-wing politics on rural areas.
nolok
You equate rural news station to left wing politics ? Or you equal PBS/NPR with left wing politics ? In either case I find that humorous at best, but I do wonder
votepaunchy
So listen to NPR’s Senior Editor with 25 years company experience and wonder no more:
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
ryandvm
I think he equates facts with left wing politics.
paulwilsondev
good
dnemmers
You may want to review the guidelines for comments if you’d like them to stick around:
paulwilsondev
cry me a river when they get corporate money and have advertisements on NPR
tyronehed
So, you oppose their desire to diversify their funding? NPR gets 10% of their funding from tax dollars. Who you are harming is small rural public radio stations in red areas.