Senate votes to kill entire public broadcasting budget in blow to NPR and PBS
They’re just straight up evil.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/senate-votes-to-kill-entire-public-broadcasting-budget-in-blow-to-npr-and-pbs/Open linkView original on lemmy.sdf.org978
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Dear Congress:
You're not being the people Mr. Rogers thought you could be.
And fhere are so many great educational YouTube channels that are partly funded by PBS, that's awful..
Ex:
Space Time is fucking amazing.
If anyone reading this is even remotely interested in science, watch that channel. Absorb it. It speaks truth.
PBS Eons
Crash Course is also filmed at the PBS affiliate station in Indianapolis.
Oh fuck, one of my favorite channel..
*you're
https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA
Knowledge is power and they want the public to have none of it
What's really insane is they don't even want the knowledge. They just want knowledge in any capacity to go away.
No, they want the knowledge but only for themselves, after all during the guilded age, the educated where the rich and the rest where ignorant so they couldn't push back and be controlled. PBS and NPR spread knowledge for the masses and THAT is what they want to stop
I don't think you've seen who's doing all the destruction. These people do not care about gaining knowledge.
There are idiots out there, but these idiots are manipulated by others who do have the power... And money
Agreed. Heritage Fund can suck it.
A lot of them are ivy League educated and their rhetoric is performative. Yeah there's a few dummy true believers in the bunch (more than there used to be, as we shift into the second/third generation of people being raised hearing it, not realizing it was the cover story)
A lot of wealthy people who went to Ivy League schools are idiots who bought their degrees.
That's reasonable if they intend to hoard other sources of power
Carlin calling out the machine spirites 40k years before we forget how to use machines.
For the emperor, I guess .
A George Carlin inspired rant about life in Warhammer would be amazing
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/13/1250902337/npr-cpb-public-radio-funding-101
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/business/media/npr-pbs-funding-cuts.html
It'll be a hit for PBS in particular, but it's not gonna end NPR or PBS.
NPR as a national organization might be fine, but regional stations have smaller operating budgets and also get funding, and their programming gets picked up. Member stations will suffer or fail under this update, and that will feed back to national programming when something like WAMC's On the Media or WBEZ's Wait Wait gets axed.
and it's going to hurt rural areas the most. some of them could lose up to 50% their revenue overnight, which will almost certainly lead to them shutting down. and then what happens next time there's some disaster that knocks out the internet and there aren't any local radio stations left to inform the people when and where to take shelter?
https://www.ajc.com/life/radiotvtalk-blog/gpb-ousts-bill-nigut-cancels-political-rewind-show/EDXKRWJ3PFD3JMJSG3ZOVWHH2Y/
This is what they want
If anything it might spark fundraising
Do you know what's a real fundraising? Taxes that go where they have to go.
Yeah, but that's bullshit and it plays exactly into what these ghouls want: privatization of everything.
Without even realizing it, they've manufactured your consent to transition to relying entirely on (usually wealthy or corporate) donors.
Then we just have another propaganda outlet masquerading as news.
Most of the funding goes to member stations for upkeep. Don't wait for the next pledge drive. Donate tomorrow.
It's going to be devastating for rural communities.
Can you tell me where some of these are? Or give me any info to look them up?
When fascism works it makes everything boring and bland as fuck.
And you’re letting them.
NPR is the only news media that consistently tells me the core news, why it's important, and never "how I should feel about it".
What about AP?
Is always telling me to donate and get all the cookies in the world.
Thats a great idea! We should evangelize that. That woukd be a great movement. Cancel one od your streaming services to suppport seasame street
Only around 15% of the PBS budget comes from the federal treasury via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), thanks to decades of privatization. NPR's budget is as little as 1% from the CBP.
Consequently, both networks have suffered from a creeping enshittification, with a rising tide of advertisement and ad-supported content taking over both networks and the forced sale of some of its most valuable assets (PBS licensing Sesame Street to Warner Brothers, for instance) to finance continued operations.
Like, by all means. Cancel your Netflix. Cancel Disney. Support public broadcasting. But this isn't a solution in the long term, any more than cancelling Basic Cable for Netflix was a way to fix the fully privatized entertainment system. We're still surrendering our social capital to private interests, bit by bit (or in this case by massive chunk).
This is a stab wound. We can patch it, but we shouldn't mistake this as to anyone's material benefit.
Make sure to list that as reason. If enough people drop Disney to fund NPR, Disney might buy a politician to do something about it.
Translation: they don't regurgitate right wing talking points.
These people are disgusting.
They also educate and inform people. That's a problem for the GOP. They don't want the American people, ESPECIALLY low income people, to have access to free education and information that PBS and NPR provides. They need to ensure the population is stupid thus easier to control.
So America they've taken your medicade, they've taken the ability of a good portion of your country to be able to eat, they're taking immigrants, tourists, or people that they don't agree with to camps, they're taking your education, they're taxing you with tariffs, they have a gestapo, and they'll be taking away more rights from Women and POC. I have to ask...how much longer until you start to get a little bit violent?
Eh. They are increasingly polluted by their private sponsors and corporate partners. I've given up on listening to NPR in the mornings because so much of it is very obviously native advertisement or propaganda (particularly bad in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th, with broadcasters uncritically repeating IDF hoaxes like the "40 decapitated babies" line).
I got a "Blue Alert" on my phone not two days ago, thanks to a vigilante attacking an ICE agent. Dozens of armed cops were all over the Mayor's Office yesterday because of a rumor of a Palestinian protest that never materialized. FFS, three different people tried to shoot the President in a two month span.
I don't think the problem is a lack of violence. What Americans largely lack is coordination and institutional support. A thousand little lone wolves don't a revolution make.
Gee, I wonder why they have those. Could it be because of the extreme cuts to their budget by conservatives?
Your apathy is part of the problem.
Elmo's attempt to appeal to their base failed.
Wrong Elmo, they'd probably do better with this shotgun-wielding version:
Elmo's original voice actor had a bunch of sexual allegations against him. Republicans love that.
They've had a hardon for public broadcasting for thirty years, which is why NPR and PBS have been preparing for this and why their funding largely doesn't come from the feds anymore. It's a hollow victory, it's just depressing because anymore, it seems the right gets everything they want. They get it all. All of it. And we get nothing.
What's sick is that they are a fraction of this country. But thanks to their money and their platforms, they can constantly repeat the lie that "most people are conservatives".
No, the kind of weird perverted freaks that dream of killing funding to NPR and PBS are definitely not normal and not the majority. But yeah, thanks to a lot of various things, they get what they want....it's sickening.
What’s 2A?
Second Amendment of the American Constitution: "the right to keep and bear arms".
Yeah, when people post this it means, "shooting people will fix everything." It conveniently ignores that the government has control of the most powerful military in the world. Now, if the MILITARY were also in on the "2A" talk, it would be different, but I very much doubt they will be.
Pretty much. Americans are the most heavily armed civilian population in the world, hasn't prevented their slide into decay.
What event in recent history makes you think the US military is any good at dealing with insurgencies? In addition to the most powerful military, the US also has the most heavily armed populace in the entire world. Rebellion here would be a bloodbath of historical propprtions but the people would win. If you call that winning.
Military is irrelevant.
"The enforcement arm of the fascist government is irrelevant."
I don't see any way this can be true. How do you figure?
Because you think the 2A means "meet an entire military force on a battlefield". Nobody with actual thinking ability would jump to that conclusion, as you have done.
None of this has anything at all to do with the US military.
LOL, wut.
So are these channels likely to stay afloat then? This is really fucking sad if not.
Fuck this administration, I hope they burn in the hell they believe in. I hope they all get cancer.
I try my best to find redeeming qualities in everyone, but there is none to be found in them.
100%.
Many of them are old and unhealthy, chief amongst them, Trump.
Hypothetically if you wanted your country to become impoverished within the next five decades, what sort of things would you do that are different to what the current administration is doing?
They don't want the country to be impoverished, and it's ridiculous to suggest that.
They just want the bottom 99.9% of the population to be impoverished. They're already most of the way there.
looks at mississippi and alabama
it appears to work too
The only differences I can think of is not chickening out on the tariffs and forcing the interest rate lower to kick off runaway inflation.
I mean, technically there would be more direct measures, like using artillery to blow up infrastructure or destroying crop with flamethrowers.
Education is nearly dead. Just the way these shitbags want it.
Go on, centrists. Why was there no filibuster this time?
Democrat answer: Filibusters are 'not a good look'. We want to be seen as the party of reasonable adults who honestly want to work across party lines to help our constituents. We won't vote to end the practice as it has a long history and tradition blah blah blah
Honest answer: We don't give a single fuck about our constituents, the only people we are beholden to are the lobbyists who line our pocketbooks. It's easier to control the narrative when all of the media corporations are owned by billionaires.
Nah. You're not thinking like a politician. The real answer is, "this will be a PR disaster for them. LOL this is really goin to help my fundraising"
What if I'm unwilling to vote for a party willing to cooperate with nazis?
Then people who like the collaborationists will blame you when they lose and take it as a sign that they should collaborate even harder.
Of course, they take everything as a sign that they should collaborate even harder.
Rescission packages aren't subject to the filibuster, only a simple majority is needed. Expect more of this.
Sounds like something democrats could have used during the biden administration. Did they?
Frankly, it's starting to look like democrats always have an excuse. Have a majority? Oh shucky dern, we can't pass what we ran on but never intended to pass because of the filibuster! WOOHOO! I mean, it really is unfortunate that we can't do anything.
Don't have a majority? There is always some reason you can't filibuster! WOOHOO! I mean, it really is unfortunate that we can't do anything. Donate to put us back into power that we will refuse to use!
Well a rescission package can only be used to cut spending, so it couldn't have been used by the Democrats to pass new spending.
What do you think they should have used it to cut?
The military, the police, the prisons, ICE, TSA, DHS, CIA, NSA... any number of oppressive organizations that exist to protect the exalted status of capital.
I'm with you there but you could not have got even a simple majority of elected representatives to agree to that. It would have to be something that Democrats broadly support.
Isn't that the point of this thread? That Democrats don't support the working class?
I thought you were saying they were ineffective at enacting their agenda because they didn't use rescission packages.
If we're talking about what you just said I have no quarrel.
Why would democrats ever defund any of those? They don't even seriously dislike any of them.
That’s my point. Democrats don’t have the best interest of working people in their hearts.
The funding for trump's wall.
Yeah, they should have. Congress ended up doing the opposite, forcing him to continue funding. Democrats don't have nearly the party unity that Republicans do around immigration, I think that's why it keeps being leveraged as a wedge issue.
The main reason republicans are able to get better results from a filibuster than the democrats is republicans don't give a shit about the consequences.
When there is a lapse of government funding it causes chaos in a lot of programs that tens of millions of people depend on. Even if it's just a day, the government spends weeks preparing for it and when it's over it's not like flipping a switch and everything goes back to normal, there is a long recovery period. Even getting close to a lapse results in wasted effort preparing for the possibility which takes away from running the programs and harms people.
For republicans that's an added benefit to a point, not something to be avoided so they will hold out until they get a large portion of what they want. Democrats have to weigh the pain and suffering from a lapse against getting concessions so their thresholds are different.
But as absentbird said, that doesn't really apply here because rescission isn't something that democrats are going to use often.
The democrats get the results they want from the filibuster. It blocks progressive legislation and that's all it's for.
You can filibuster anything if you have the will. The Democrats just don't have any care to fight for anything but their pathetic jobs.
No, you can't. Debate time is limited in the senate for a rescission package. There is no filibuster, neither a traditional talking one nor one where they just say they're filibustering to prevent a vote.
I suppose someone could just talk and refuse to stop. They would be ruled out of order, and if they didn't stop the Senate Sergeant at Arms would have them removed. If every democrat did that I guess that would hold things up a bit, but it's not a filibuster and eventually the vote would proceed.
Better to be dragged out for standing up for what is right than to roll over and show your belly to the butcher.
Given who we're taking about, I won't hold my breath for it.
At this point I fear that it would be the best case scenario if all the Democrats were sniveling little controlled opposition weenies.
What if a lot of them are good people with the will, the energy, the means, and the awareness that now is their time to make history, and they are not because the writing on the wall (or the approaching shit tsunami, if you will) looks that much worse from the inside where they can see the machinations of this takeover in action long before it hits the news. And maybe they’ve heard some consistent believable inside rumors about the details of certain high profile suicides.
They sure seem to be the useless variety though.
It's just all vengeance and spite for decades of having to "tolerate" even a modicum of liberalism in their lives.
You spelled 'not having slaves' kinda funny there.
I disagree with the defunding, as many of the programs supported by NPR and PBS are pretty interesting / educational -- but to claim its just a 'modicum' of liberalism in regular media channels is a bit odd, especially if you look outside 'just' the 'news' (news sources are slanted towards right wing, definitely).
But if you look at things like netflix/most streaming services, or hollywood movies, or 'leisure' type shows in general, there's far more than a 'modicum' of liberalism.
Care to provide some examples?
She shouldn't have said this, it sealed the deal "Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives."
She should have said: "Millions of Americans will lose access to information about how great Trump is and how to report who to deport next."
Jokes aside, the emergency broadcast system makes so much sense as a function of public broadcasting. I have been to several countries that explicitly subsidize radio and tv channels for this purpose. You can have public programming 99% of the time, and a way to get information out in an emergency all ready to go.
In Spain, while we had the black out, the only thing working to give info was the radio.
The War On Acceptance
I really hate this administration.
strange, I assumed they get their budget raised after Elmo came out as a nazi
Who needs public broadcasting anyway, when you have Faux News and Sky.
I donate to NPR/PBS annually; probably will need to double my donation.
This is the one and only time that I'm hoping that someone on Lemmy is a billionaire.
I hope you are in the top 5% of income earners because otherwise you probably won't get a tax break from the money the government "saved" and rather probably pay more in taxes.
I don't care about the write off. I care because public radio is something I worked in for a half decade and well afterwards it gave me a connection to my community and the world at large. I'll give more money to spite them. Fuck their right off. I donate because it is good and true. And fuck anyone that says otherwise.
Cheers to that. Question for you. With no funding being allocated, do you think this will be the final break of any remaining influence the federal gov has over public radio? I don't know how much there was to begin with, but I imagine it is similar to infrastructure funding that came with stipulations.
The people that work in public radio are like career gov workers or direct care workers. I say that because I've been two of those three, and count some career beurocrats as good friends.
. The people that work in these industries will sell their souls to keep fighting the good fight. Underpaid and understaffed. But in this case, the economics will start to eat away at local stations and the people who truly believe will be forced to abandon it eventually.
Economics are economics.
At the end of the day, it's a public service. The federal government is a necessary part of how it continues to exist. Public services are not very viable through charity as a sole funding source. They aren't money makers. They provide a free service for the bare minimum.
The most insidious bit is that none of these stations will disappear tomorrow. They are filled with dedicated individuals that will fight tooth and nail to keep them running. And donors that will try their best to keep them afloat.
The true toll, like everything this administration is doing, will take years to unfold. One by one stations will drop out and close. And it will be with a whimper. A death by a thousand cuts. Exsanguinated to death drop by drop.
Many will drop out before this administration ends. And I have little faith in the compitence of their replacements to restore this funding. Even if "my side" wins.
There really isn't that much federal influence to the public broadcasting sector, other than providing funds and some regulations on what they can or can't say. And it's not a 'can or can't say' propaganda thing. It's a "don't put a dollar value to products in your underwriting", or " don't endorse and sell trump gold coins to the elderly" sort of restrictions. Public radio doesn't have advertisers. They have underwriters. They get their name out as a sponsor to the programming, not to sell a product. Those are the rules.
They are just stealing funds from nonprofits at this point.
Yeah, advertisers and corporate interests has already brought ruin to for profit news. I expect the passionate people will always exist and keep doing what they think is right. The cohesion will crumble before their spirit. Might be time to push local gov to help more with funding public stations.
Local government will do very little. Local businesses and individuals of a philanthropic mindset or personal will, that's what we've got. "Civic duty" keeps it afloat, and those sort of businesses and people become more rare by the day. In the places that need it the most, the political mindset is so corrupted, I fear we will never get it back.
If it existed, it's dead now. Our current situation is my only proof. But I would love for you to prove me wrong.
Pessimism or realism, I don't know what the difference is anymore tbh. I'm not stopping, but damn it it feels like a losing battle.
Local results are the only thing I have left to judge by. It has been a loosing battle for a long time, and they "patched" some of the last true communication and outreach available to indiviuals wanting to communicate nationally and worldwide. (The whole Twitter jounalist crackdown a while back comes to mind)
Everyone is getting too tired to put in effort for upholding values, but my stance is opposite that, I'm way more stubborn than people realize. I'm in the right place, and changed some things for the better at work. Might be time to switch my energy to my community. I want to transition from their Sysiphus to their fuckass-boulder.
The last step is finding out how to pit mega funding against eachother in a way that ultimately benefits locals.
With the current "government" I think that would only lead to the Orange Turd cutting money to local gov.
If they just voted to kill it, there was no filibuster.
What did people expect. Trump and his largest donor both own social media sites and these are competitors eyeball time for ads
Cool, so that pays for .001 of the national debt... Interest.
Every single jackal that voted for this should be primaried into oblivion
Pbs bye bye now. Me smarter now though. Me teacher reached me about god and told me that as long as I pray to my god I will be happy and that got tells us it’s okay because we are his chosen once and no one else matters and. We need to show them god too so we will make big holy weapons in factories when we grow up. Also I am so glad stients were deleted. Stients reached us false messages and that god was not real and stients caused people to live a part from god. I always sayed that oh wow it sounds good to be a part from god like god made the trees and the dogs but they told me it’s bad.
How else are you going to fund Elmo's tax cut?
So sad... This also eliminates public weather alerts in rural areas.
https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA
The Mr Rogers presentation that makes me want to cry. What a hero.
Why do I feel like the Elmo Twitter hack was orchestrated by the Trump dictatorship to further sow hatred against public media and give another reason to defund it?
They want to curry favour with Donald Grump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQyTpPu0gvc
11:35
something tells me that AntiZionist Elmo has surprisingly less opinions about this
How long before user-generated content and alternative forms of social media like this site or like Matrix, PeerSuite, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and etc. are next in the crosshairs?
How would they take out a federated network? That's kinda the whole point.
Force ISPs to block it or even go over the ISPs' heads and block it at the national level? Hypothetically, if a fascist state wants any form of resistance wiped from the web, forcing ISPs to block it or blocking it at the national level would be a good way to go about that.
I just hope that doesn't actually happen and it stays purely as a hypothetical in the US, but blocking at the ISP level or even at the national level is one way to take something out, that's how dictatorships like North Korea censor their media, for example.
Dear Freeloaders, It's time to start donating to your local stations.
I've finally found you, Adam Homonym, and find you lacking. You should consider Act don't Preach supplements to become less hollow. 💜