The Media Research Center’s agitation for defunding public broadcasting continued in the safe space of a right-wing radio show, as described in a June 28 post:
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider appeared Thursday on the hot morning D.C. talk show O’Connor & Co. on WMAL-FM to discuss the potential clawback of $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds the PBS and NPR networks. It passed the House, and needs to pass the Senate soon.
Schneider reported that no Democrat would vote against PBS and NPR money, and several centrist Republicans – Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski – have already declared they won’t vote for a cut. So it’s about getting to 50 Republicans, which would allow Vice President Vance to break the tie. “I think it passes,” Schneider said after witnessing the Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Talk show host Larry O’Connor kindly noted how we’ve been working on this issue since the MRC started in 1987:
O’Connor was in suck-up mode, saying to Schneider, “I want to congratulate you on even getting us this far,” helpfully ranting that “NPR and PBS are absolute disasters and do not deserve tax dollars.”
Clay Waters spent a June 30 post being aghast that a Republican might deviate from the Trump defunding mandate:
As a vote on rescissions (clawing back already approved funding) in the Senate looms that may decide the fate of federal funding for PBS and NPR, the public-media lobby has depended heavily on pushing Alaska as their first talking point. So of course, PBS’s Firing Line invited a timely guest onto Friday’s show: liberal Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a self-described “unabashed supporter of public broadcasting in my state” and author of a new autobiography Far From Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C.
PBS host Margaret Hoover commiserated with Murkowski about the need for continued funding of PBS (on PBS!) especially for Alaska, which has received more than its share of attention in the media debate over PBS as a vast, rural, rugged state in particular need of emergency warnings that apparently only public broadcasting can provide.
Waters then launched a personal attack on Hoover:
The first thing Republicans understand is that Hoover’s husband John Avlon just ran (and lost) as a Democrat candidate for Congress in New York. Hoover is pretending that PBS isn’t funding vicious anti-Republican news and documentaries. No, it’s all Sesame Street and emergency alerts — that’s the propaganda push.
[…]Hoover of course has a clear personal interest when it comes to taxpayer support for funding PBS. Is this PBS’s idea of fair and balanced? When do the conservatives advocating for defunding get equal time? Let’s guess never. They tout Hoover as hosting “a smart, civil, and engaging contest of ideas,” but there can’t be a contest when PBS has money on the line.
When does the MRC give supporters of public broadcasting equal time to make a case to their readers? never — the MRC loves censorship after all.
The MRC’s propaganda mill kept going with a July 3 post by Schneider claiming to offer “Top Ten Myths About PBS and NPR.” It was mostly a vehicle for more right-wing talking points, such as whing that NPR and PBS “operate a legalized ‘kick-back’ scheme, taking federal and state tax dollars from local affiliates for programming” and insisting that “YouTube provides a library of hundreds of thousands of hours of content for kids of all ages, with new content added daily. It also empowers parents to avoid concerns about their kids encountering content such as Drag Queen Story Hour.” Schneider offered no evidence that PBS’ children’s programming is solely about drag queens as he implies. He also didn’t mention that the MRC has freaked out over YouTube children’s video maker Ms. Rachel for failing to hate gay people like it does.
Alex Christy used a July 5 post to be mad at PBS for failing to be good little Trump-bots:
Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour attempted to use the 4th of July holiday to denounce President Trump’s immigrant enforcement efforts and portray them as contrary to the spirit of America, with Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart going so far as to claim that his side represents the Statue of Liberty.
Host John Yang began, “We had a PBS News/NPR/Marist College poll out this week. And on this Fourth of July, it’s sort of time to reflect on our nation and democracy. They asked Americans—about Americans’ openness to people from around the world; 64 percent said it’s essential to national identity; 35 percent says it risks the national identity.”
It’s a bad question. It says nothing about legal versus illegal immigration, nor does it define “people from around the world.” Are we talking about people fleeing dictatorships or people who want to “globalize the Intifada”?
Nevertheless, Yang continued, “How does this square with what President Trump is doing on immigration and mass deportations?”
[…]Biden’s inability to control the border out of a desire to be Trump’s opposite is part of the reason why Trump is president again. Vaguely worded polls do not prove that the public has moved on from a desire for an orderly immigration system.
Christy obviously wants this viewpoint to be censored, but he doesn’t explain why. That desire for censorship is why the MRC wants to defund PBS and NPR.