Well, now he’s gone and done it. Not his worse EO to date, but if he intended to break my heart, lol….
Seriously, if Trump could control what we think, he would. If he had a technology that detected “wrong thinking”, and who was “thinking wrong”, he’d be all over it. At the least, maybe we should expect a social credit system, he would love the degree of control enjoyed by authorities in China. It’s superb programming like Frontline that Trump is aiming at with this EO. I’m sure NOVA doesn’t anger MAGA, but it’s quality, educational TV, so it will be sacrificed.
This guy sucks. I thought the second season of Wolf Hall, the story of Henry VIII and his minister Thomas Cromwell, was one of the very best Masterpiece productions ever.
Likely going to be tough for PBS to survive this. Seems like they do “fundraising weeks” every other week, lately, just to keep themselves above water…
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that seeks to restrict public funds to NPR and PBS, two independent public news organizations that have faced Republicans’ ire for reporting they claim is biased.
The extraordinary order, which the president signed behind closed doors aboard Air Force One and the White House announced around midnight, is the biggest escalation yet in the Trump administration’s assault on the media.
The order claims that NPR and PBS produce “biased and partisan news coverage” and calls for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation to which
Congress appropriates more than $500 million annually, to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and … decline to provide future funding” to the news organizations.
“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” the order says. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Federal funding accounts for about
15 percent of PBS’s annual revenue and 1 percent of
NPR’s annual budget. PBS produces both news and non-news content.
The order is all but certain to be challenged in court.
Trump and congressional Republicans have for months
threatened to cut funding to the organizations. In March, the leaders of PBS and NPR
testified before the House DOGE panel to defend their federal funding.
Spokespeople for NPR and PBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a
statement to the panel in March, Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, stressed the organization’s independence and asked Congress to “give us the opportunity to continue to serve the American people with this unique and vital resource.”
PBS CEO Paula Kerger
said Tuesday on the network that many local stations “would not exist” without federal funding. “This is really a resource that the communities treasure and would not exist were there not federal dollars to help,” she added.
Trump in March wrote an executive order
seeking to hollow out Voice of America, another independent, government-funded media organization the president has long accused of bias. A judge has since
blocked that order.
The White House announcement:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose.
www.whitehouse.gov
The CEO of PBS responds:
The Trump administration is expected to ask Congress to rescind more than $1 billion of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally-created body through which NPR and PBS get federal funding, including for this program. The CPB is also suing the administration...
www.pbs.org
