On May 1, the Media Research Center continued its usual griping about public broadcasting failing to conform to right-wing ideology and that people would defend it:
- ‘PBS Really Helps Little Kids’: Tapper Tries To Shame GOP Rep. For Wanting To Defund
- SELF-LOVE: PBS News Hour Puts On PBS CEO for Softball Questions and Promotional Fluff
Then, on May 2, the MRC got the news for which it and its right-wing agenda had been agitating for years. Tim Graham wrote it up:
Late on Thursday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to cut taxpayer funds to PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The text was posted on the Trump team’s “Rapid Response 47” account on X.
It said: “@POTUS just signed an executive order ENDING the taxpayer subsidization of NPR and PBS — which receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”
[…]Since PBS and NPR are funded by all the American people, it should reflect the viewpoints of the people, and instead, after Trump was re-elected, both networks have doubled down in their anti-Trump animus.
Graham didn’t explain why PBS needed to turn itself into an MRC-esque pro-Trump shill, let alone provide any actual examples of the “radical, woke propaganda” his side claims exist. Instead, he was giddy that Trump finally did the deed:
The Trump administration has been working to defund the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which were founded to provide unbiased broadcast news coverage for people inside totalitarian regimes, but now sound more like NPR. You can tell, because liberal media outlets have presented them as journalistic heroes. Federal judges have ruled against some of these efforts, finding that funds were already appropriated by Congress.
The White House was expected to send a request to Congress this week that they rescind forward funding for the CPB, which has been given $535 million a year to provide a taxpayer-funded TV and radio equivalent to MSNBC.
The order demands an end of their taxpayer funding not just through CPB, but through “all executive departments and agencies,” since public broadcasting entities have received grants through the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other federal sources.
The MRC spent the rest of the day hyping and celebrating this news. A post by Curtis Houck whined that non-right-networks didn’t cover the news, inaccurately describing PBS and NPR as “far-left.” Nicholas Fondacaro served up some Brian Stelter derangement:
Despite repeatedly calling Fox News “state TV” during President Trump’s first term (when he still had his show, so-called Reliable Sources), CNN’s Brian Stelter decried Trump’s executive order defunding the actual state-media outlets of PBS and NPR. In his appearance on Friday’s Inside Politics, Stelter argued that Trump didn’t have the authority to strip funding but he ignored the literal tower of evidence to show public broadcasting was not following their mandate to be neutral.
“Today, America’s two biggest public broadcasters are facing a possible halt in federal funding after an overnight executive order by President Donald Trump,” fretted host Dana Bash near the end of the show. “But there is a sticking point: the corporation is a private entity that is supposed to be protected from government interference. That would include executive orders.”
Waving around a stack of papers, Stelter touted his “prop.” “I went ahead and read the entire law for you. The 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. There is nothing in this law that gives any president the ability to strip away the funding for PBS and NPR,” he proclaimed.
Instead of proving Stelter wrong, Fondacaro proclaimed that “The White House cited three NewsBusters studies (among other evidence) to prove” public broadcasting’s non-right-wing bias, then groused that “Stelter had previously claimed Trump wanted to defund NPR and PBS for ‘simply covering the news,’ and described the desire to defund them as part of Trump’s ‘autocratic playbook’ without proving either statement false.
Alex Christy complained that the former head of NPR had something to say about Trump’s defunding efforts:
Former scandal-plagued NPR CEO Vivian Schiller joined CNN News Central guest host Erica Hill on Friday to freak out over President Donald Trump’s Thursday executive order that ceased taxpayer money from going to NPR and PBS. According to Schiller, the move is just another example of Trump “attacking a free press” for reporting on things he does not like.
A worried Hill wrapped up their interview by wondering, “We’re really tight on time, but I’m just curious, your take. I mean, this is whether or not this goes through, right? What it does is it creates a narrative. It creates a narrative, multiple narratives. But the president has long pushed back against NPR, against PBS. What does that do overall in terms of the credibility of these organizations? How harmful is this?”
Schiller replied that, “I don’t think the government’s, sorry, the White House’s attack, will particularly harm people who have been reliant on NPR or PBS programming for a long time, but this is part of an overall narrative of attacking a free press, an independent free press that reports on things that maybe the president doesn’t like.”
It is impossible to take such comments seriously. For years, the media has attacked the Republican Party for being enthralled with Trumpism, but Republicans they now claim to like also once favored defunding public broadcasting, and they freaked out then too.
[…]NPR has had twelve-and-a-half years since Mitt Romney brought up defunding PBS at a debate with Barack Obama, and it has nothing since then to show that they have become less left-wing. If anything, they have become more progressive. Trying to make Trump the main character in this story won’t work.
Christy didn’t explain why failing to be right-wing made NPR ‘left-wing.” Clay Waters huffed that PBS did what it usually does, beg viewers for money:
The fundraising arms of PBS and NPR were already on the defensive over challenges to their overwhelmingly biased reporting on the taxpayers’ dime. Now comes President Trump’s executive order Thursday night cutting taxpayer funding of PBS and NPR. The text of the order was posted on the Trump team’s “Rapid Response 47” account on X.
Before that storm broke, both outlets took advantage of the latest “Public Media Giving Days” (they need two?) to release pleading emails on early Thursday afternoon, stressing different angles while asking the public to give generously. As if the public doesn’t do that already, to the tune of over half a billion dollars a year to PBS and NPR via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, at least for now.
The PBS email subject line fostered a sense of panic: “Urgent: PBS funding threats,” was signed by Alyson Brokenshire, identified as “PBS News Hour Principal and Major Gifts.”
Fondacaro spent that day’s edition of the MRC podcast gushing further over the defunding decision:
It was Christmas in May for the Media Research Center and NewsBusters after President Trump signed an executive order defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On this episode of the NewsBusters Podcast, Curtis Houck and I fill in and discuss the EO and the necessity of defunding state-sponsored media like PBS and NPR. And since the EO was such a major event, usual host Tim Graham called in to share his decades of wisdom and insights.
After decades of working toward the divesting American tax-dollars from the liberal state-media outlets of NPR and PBS, we were surprised and excited to see major progress happen literally overnight.
We reviewed the text of the executive order, which accurately noted that, “Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.”
[…]Finally, we also looked to the future and note that the fight is not over, seeing as an executive order could be undone by a Democratic president.
Enjoy!
Yes, Fondacaro really called it “Christmas in May.” It’s clear that he, Graham and the rest of the MRC were very much enjoying this.