PBS News Hour West to go dark after ASU discontinues contract
32 comments
·December 19, 2025mikeyouse
codeddesign
Don’t make this political. It’s on a university campus and run by the university as part of their journalism program that they are making cuts to.
Their statement: Michael Rancilio, the general manager of News Hour Productions and WETA's executive vice president and chief content officer, said in an email to PBS News supporters that the decision was "based on Arizona State University's revised priorities,"
ch2026
President Trump explicitly signed an Executive Order to defund public media: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/endi...
trial3
what are the revised priorities? what revised the priorities? maybe consider doing just the teensiest bit of journalism of your own
bc3
This is inherently political. The "revised priorities" are clearly because of our current economic and political climate. Your comment is intentionally obtuse or malicious.
slantedview
It's no coincidence that at a time of eroding democracy, public journalism is being cut.
codeddesign
Last time I checked, none of your democratic (voting) rights have been eroded. What you are trying to refer to is the Legislative branch which appears that you just don’t like that voting rather than actual erosion.
Regardless, this is a university cutting back on that expenditure as it is less/not profitable for them compared to other programs.
However, absolutely nothing is stopping you from buying that air time! Anyone can buy airtime.
Unless your intention was that everyone else should cover that cost from their hard earned paychecks..
user3939382
ASU accepted $20M in criminal gains IMHO AFAICT. I have receipts
junkypuppet
The article doesn’t mention it, but I wonder if this has anything to do with ASU’s President trying to cozy up with the Trump administration [0]. Trump has already at least tried to cut federal funding for PBS [1]. I’m not sure where that’s at now.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/arizona-state-universi...
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5384790/trump-orders-en...
slicedice
It got cut.
DrewADesign
People shouting about PBS news being horribly biased are just flat-out wrong. Obviously their viewership leans centrist liberal, but no other news program in recent times approached their level of nonpartisanship when dealing with national politics. Regardless of their affiliation, they’d ask most interviewees a couple of pointed questions but always let them explain themselves uninterrupted, and let them have the last word unless it was blatantly false. In the Obama era they regularly had top Republican leadership on from that era and years past— Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell were on there all the time. I’ve seen Steve Bannon respectfully (actually rather warmly) interviewed within the past year, as well as people from the heritage foundation, Manhattan institute, Cato institute, and other people from across the right-wing spectrum.
David Brooks isn’t representative of the Republican mainstream at the moment, but they’ve started getting more representative Republican counterpoints on their panels over the past few months, even after the republicans cut their funding.
They present a more reasonable, tempered, and charitable perspective on both political parties than any other major news outlet.
Culture war bullshit.
wyldfire
> People shouting about PBS news being horribly biased are just flat-out wrong.
"Truth is treason in an empire of lies" - George Orwell
Forgeties79
After I heard someone call McConnell a RINO I knew that no amount of concessions would make them feel coverage was “fair.” It’s Trump’s way or the highway.
RickJWagner
I’m glad Walter Cronkite is remembered through that school. In my mind, he was one of the last great journalists from an era that wasn’t strongly politically biased.
lettergram
When I read that I'm always personally confused. He had a commanding voice and had an aurora of being above it all. But when you listened and watched what he actually did, he seemed very political in my mind, though perhaps more of a moderate(?).
He even advocated for world government, endorsed politicians, etc.
themafia
Uncritically accepted the Warren Report.
askh4
[dead]
djaouen
[flagged]
JoshTriplett
The article has ads in it?
(uBlock Origin successfully blocks all of them.)
t0lo
Sign of the times
alephnerd
Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription?
Good, freely accessible, and ad-free press. You can only choose 2.
The economics of journalism are tough.
golem14
I wonder if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is actually a good media diet. I mean, I wonder if I will be OK just reading this (and maybe HN) and not suffer irreparable harm :)
Wowfunhappy
PBS News Hour is all three.
:(
dingnuts
the reason they got defunded is because many people do not agree
SoftTalker
Strangely we used to think nothing of paying for a daily newspaper (which also contained ads) and many people subscribed to news magazines as well.
ipaddr
Have you tried going back 80% ap articles, some opinion columns, classifieds and sports with a lifestyle section.
We are living in an era of more news, different formats more in depth. I think our expectations are misaligned we expect everything to be one click away and social media to present it to us in a doom scroll. The articles shared just here on hn you would never find in a newspaper. If you are lucky you discover a zine like phrack or 2600 and wait months for the next issue.
DrewADesign
Yeah. This is the tech world making everything better. Sure the news is biased, poorly-written garbage, but you can have a lot of it, instantly, for like no money!
lynndotpy
The economics are rough, but there are many which offer all three. E.g.: NPR's text site: https://text.npr.org/
ViscountPenguin
Public funding is kind of a cheat, but if we're gonna include them, I'd like to spruik that the ABC still technically has functional rss feeds: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-...
They're no longer officially supported though.
bhasi
Wow, this is great. It's like Hacker News/Old Reddit for news.
djaouen
> Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription?
I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol
mystraline
> I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol
You misspelled capitalists. They are the ones who are fucking you, me, and anyone with money.
Of course it’s due to the federal funding cuts. At least DHS got 2,000x more than these cuts saved from PBS as our deficit continues to explode.
https://current.org/2025/11/weta-to-cut-staff-cancel-pbs-new...