Early Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the $9 billion rescission bill, bringing the country one step closer to ending the most egregious and indefensible federal spending in the modern era.
Public broadcasting.
The $500 million a year that taxpayers are forced to fork over for government radio and TV is such a small slice of the $7 trillion spending total, it’s more like a spending “scrape” than a cut. But what these federal funds lack in volume, they make up in stupidity.
Whatever the merits of a government-funded radio and TV network in the era of AM radios and VCRs, spending even a single dollar on broadcasting in the America of 2025 is beyond insane. There are literally more Americans who own cellphones than can receive an NPR radio signal.
The average American can watch competitive nude curling from Canada on his phone — in French, and with subtitles! — and Democrats are demanding we dump tax dollars into government TV.
The fact that this media includes news from overtly political outlets with a partisan agenda doesn’t help.
But finally, it appears the jig is up. And the old White people clinging to their NPR and PBS know it.
Which is why, having failed to stop the oncoming spending cuts with preening puffery and shameless dishonesty, defenders of taxpayer dollars for public media have pulled out the last tool out of their political toolbox.
Sheer stupidity.
How else to describe the Democrats’ new argument that the real reason for the millions in tax money isn’t the arts or education, but emergency response and public safety?
“Large rural communities… don’t have a lot of other options” for media contact except PBS and NPR, said NPR CEO Katherine Maher this week. “Broadband service is not universal, and heck, even cell phone service is not universal. There’s a real understanding of the need there as well as for emergency alerting, in which public media plays an extraordinarily important role.”
“Emergency alerting?” What happened to “Bert and Ernie?”
I grew up in one of those underserved, rural communities in South Carolina. And I know that when the tornado sirens went off, the first thing my parents did was rush to the TV and turn on reruns of Downton Abbey.
“Simon — they say a flood’s a-comin,” my mother would cry out. “We better get that Ira Flatow fella on the radio!”
And I love the argument that the key demographic for public radio is rural America. It’s PBS and Pick ‘Em Up Trucks, baby!
I’ve been suffering through pledge drives and radio thons my entire life, and I’ve heard plenty of pitches for Morning Edition and Masterpiece Theater. But I’ve never had anyone in public broadcasting ask me to kick in $50 for a “Nina Toten-Bag” to make sure survival camps in the mountains of Idaho can still get radio access to Amanpour & Co.
This is all a silly smoke screen. Nobody believes it, because everybody has wifi or broadband or Starlink or something. Keeping a radio and TV station fully staffed and operational (as opposed to finally building out the rural broadband that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen promised and has failed to deliver) is just a jobs program for leftwing journalism majors.
If taxpayers really feel the need to subsidize radio — the cutting-edge technology of the Coolidge administration — why don’t we give the money to the private radio stations that have gone out of business in the past decade?
About 400 AM stations have gone dark over the past 15 years, and 150 FM stations have done the same since the COVID pandemic. Why aren’t those stations “pillars of our democracy and way of life,” as Rep. Maggie Goodlander said when she voted to keep giving money to NPR and PBS?
Supporters like Rep. Chris Pappas claim that, without NHPR and PBS, you won’t get the local news you need, leaving you tragically uninformed about life in your community.
But as the Media Research Center has shown, and listeners/viewers of NHPR and local PBS can attest, public radio and TV provide very little local news. A review of content found just 5.4 percent of daily programming is “locally produced news,” and a significant part of that is reading the national news off the NPR wire.
So what’s the point? Why do Democrats fight so hard over a few bucks for a network that can’t even cry “They’re killing Big Bird!” anymore? (Sesame Street was sold to HBO and is now on Netflix.)
Privilege.
What do the liberal elites have left? School choice is letting commoners like us send our kids to private schools based on (oh, the horror!) merit. College degrees are both commonplace and economically inconsequential. If you’re a dad trying to impress co-workers today, you don’t brag, “My son’s going to Harvard! (especially around your Jewish friends.) You say, “My daughter’s learning to HVAC!”
The one thing the suburban liberals can still foist on their fellow Americans is to make us pick up the tab for Antiques Roadshow and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”
What are PBS and NPR other than a leftwing streaming service for affluent, middle-aged White ladies?
And when the rescission bill passes, they won’t be able to use the taxpayers’ password to pay for it.
