Why Cut Funds to Public Broadcasting?
On the Politics of Defunding Excellence
At the risk of sounding like an elitist, snobby, brie-eating, Volvo driving New York intellectual, allow me to robustly defend public broadcasting.
I get the culture war against Harvard, somewhat. America’s first University gets billions in tax payer funded R & D money, but seems wholly oblivious about publicizing what that citizens are actually getting in return for this public investment. Is this just a blind side of legacy institutions? Arrogance at having to explain itself to those unknowing of the discreet pleasure of Cale?
Whatever the case, the optics have always been poor. Harvard, it would appear, means never having to explain taxpayer ROI. That kind of obliviousness or whatever it is, ultimately creates its own populist pushback when, eventually, politics get radicalized. Which is what we are experiencing at present, under Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrat party, which lost voters making under $50k a year, is in the odd position of championing an elite school founded before the American republic was established, with an endowment larger than the GDP of Jordan …
I even (sort of) get the right-wing culture war against “the media,” which is an ancient adversarial relationship, one pitting outsiders against insiders. Urban news and culture pitted against rural realities — like the border, matters of faith and even agricultural reporting. The way the mainstream media covers every going on at elite colleges and universities is absurd, but understandable considering how many national media reporters are alums of those schools. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Every Republican Presidential candidate, for as long as I can remember, kicks things off with a resounding attack against the New York Times. Its is an American tradition; a well-choreographed bitchslap — quadrennially expected, quadrennially delivered. Nothing better concentrates the infantry resolve of Republicans than an attack against the paper of record, a source of near-infinite ressentiment to the right.
In 2008, then-Senator John McCain won the nomination by beating Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, largely because it was his turn. The Republican party back then was, above all, a hierarchical Daddy Party. McCain had lost the nomination to Bush in 2000, but swallowed his pride, put on his big-boy pants and endorsed Bush, despite the bitter circumstances surrounding his loss. And subsequently, Romney, four years later, would ascend to his own turn in the nomination gauntlet for the same reason. Silver medalists go on to get the Gold, if they are loyal. And so on and so on …
But back to 2008. John McCain, who was regarded as too centrist by the right, consolidated his base by simply attacking Elizabeth Bumiller of the Times. In that case, Republican animosity against the Gray Lady overruled right wing distrust of John McCain’s moderate voting record in the United States Senate and his coziness with mainstream media. After that, all doubts about McCain’s ideological faith simply evaporated into the ethers.
That was then; this is now. All talk of hierarchical structures of the party are at this point naught else but moot. Nobody is talking about Trump successors because nobody is sure Trump will actually relinquish the Presidency, as terrifying as that sounds. Or even acknowledge the established silver medalist, Nikki Haley. It is just not that kind of party anymore. The authoritarian creep and the accumulation of power at the top of the Executive pyramid are one.
And so begins the vilification of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Regarding the fourth estate, Trump has not only threatened to jail journalists on the campaign trail, but he plans to cut federal funding to both PBS and NPR. The White House plans to submit the cuts to Congress when lawmakers return from their Easter recess next week, on April 28. After that it will be up to the House and Senate to either approve the rescission or allow the money to be restored. Right now, less than 1% of NPR's funding comes from the federal government and PBS receives 16% of its budget from the same. But this may be an overreach on the part of the Trump administration, because unlike Harvard or The New York Times, citizens of the red states actually like and consume public broadcasting on a regular basis. NPR, for example, is a trusted news source in deep red areas of the country, like Southeastern Alabama (Troy Public Radio) and Fargo, North Dakota (KDSU). Even Reddit appears to take a rather benign view of NPR. I mean, who else broadcasts to Utqiaġvik, Alaska (KBRW-FM)?
The same goes for the populist right-wing culture war against public broadcasting, which is free, more than even-handed and widely distributed. Local PBS programming like “Main Street Wyoming” is popular in the Cowboy state and tailored to the specific needs of their citizens. And nationally, Antiques Road Show, for example, is probably more popular in red states than in blue. Trump Princess yacht memorabilia even made it onto the show a few years ago! How is that for cultural even-handedness? "You can hate us all on your own dime," warned cultural bomb-thrower Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, echoing Newt Gingrich three decades earlier. Taylor-Greene, we cannot fail to note, is the chair of the subcommittee that held hearings against public broadcasting just a few weeks ago. But what Taylor-Greene is showing here is a fundamental lack of understanding of public broadcasting schedules and how they address the needs of local constituents, particularly in an age of the collapse of for-profit newsrooms, news desertification and the rise of fake news.
Still, we simply won’t entertain the possibility that Trump’s demographic landslide in news deserts has any bearing on his personal aversion to public broadcasting. (Averted Gaze) Trump is, clearly, an authoritarian-manqué in the manner of Viktor Orban. And in order for Trump’s new state media to rise, Trump must contribute to break the already weakened media ecosystem.
What better way to start than by starving CPB of funds? “While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points,” write Paul Farhi and John Volk for the Local News Initiative. The findings were based on results from 193 of the 206 counties Medill identified as news deserts in the Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project. They write:
While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points, the analysis shows.
… In news deserts Trump’s biggest margin of victory, in percentage terms, was in tiny King County in north Texas, which he won by 91 points (123 votes). His biggest margin of victory by votes was in Boone, Ky., a suburb of Cincinnati, which he won by 25,000 votes (37 points). Harris’ biggest margin by percentage points was in Allendale, S.C., which she won by 45 points (1,352 votes). Allendale is 85 percent Black with a 27 percent poverty rate. Her biggest margin of victory by votes was in Chesterfield, Va., a suburb of Richmond, which she won by 19,000 votes (9 points).
I don’t quite get the ressentiment fully, as I noted at the outset of this Substack. I don't know entirely why, considering that Public television and NPR are free and, unlike Harvard, have a 100% acceptance rate. There are pretty conservative shows on the lineup, like Firing Line, This Old House, New Yankee Workshop and Antiques Roadshow. PBS Newshour — once a favorite of the late conservative writer Bill Buckley — is at the very least a scrupulously Centrist news analysis. Further, Secrets of the Dead has not been “woke” for several centuries.
Sunday night on PBS here in NYC we have Call the Midwife, Wolf Hall and Marie Antoinette. Three of the most Not-Woke shows on television, public or otherwise. There is no show on television more gently and unobtrusively pro-life than Call the Midwife. The Christianity that propels the narrative arc is of the fundamental dignity of the human being in relation to Christ. This is never obnoxiously labored, still it underlies every storyline since 2012. I just don't get the culture war attacks on PBS other than perhaps ignorance or the yawning chasm of Nietzschean ressentiment at “owning the libs.” Depriving the left and center-left and center of one of its favorite cultural institutions. But, at the expense of who?
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light returned recently for its second season. There is nothing — at least on the face of it — “liberal” about this program. Set in the Tudor period from 1500 to 1535, it is not a show amenable to DEI hires, to say the least. It is a dramatic tragedy with big historical players about the Machiavellian zeitgeist of the 16th century. Though it is based on a novel written by a woman — the late, great Hillary Mantel — it is told from the perspective of the English statesman and lawyer Thomas Cromwell, who, to borrow from culture wars past, was a “dwem,” or a dead, white European male. If Thomas Cromwell were alive today, he would probably be giving lectures at The Federalist Society! I say this because the show’s Henry VIII is drawing the inevitable comparisons to Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rule (although the shows creators are strategically remaining mum). “Big difference between the courts of Henry and Trump is that there is nobody in Trump's orbit as smart as Cromwell,” writes Michael Pascoe on Blue Sky. Or, it would appear, anyone in the administration smart enough to have read David Frum’s cautionary take on Trump appointees. Just saying.
I’d like to close on PBS. On a personal note. In 1970, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting formed a similar network of public radio stations, National Public Radio. When I arrived in NYC in the mid-1970s, it was actually a new concept. Newton Minnow’s speech to the FCC on public television was less than a decade old, but still reverberating in the noosphere. Kids who stayed home from school because they were ill watched commercial-free educational programming in the daytime, including shows like Sesame Street, Zoom and The Electric Company (A generation later, Reading Rainbow). And in the nighttime, shows like The French Chef with Julia Child and Masterpiece Theater, hosted by Alistair Cooke (gruesome end, notwithstanding) operated free of commercial considerations, a continuing education. It was a minor expense for the government, but created great cultural moments, like I, Claudius, which elevated the classics and Austin City Limits, which elevated the roots music from red states.
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates is my favorite show on TV. It is political in so far as it covers our common American history. But it strictly adheres to facts —often uncomfortable and inconvenient facts, but facts nonetheless. Of which I wrote:
Of course, the fierce forces that run through the blood that connect us to our ancestors are not binding. There is such a thing as Free Will, although it is not, as the Randians believe, unimpeded by History. We are not our fourth great-grandparents, nor are we culpable for their crimes, from the perspective of today, for committed in remote history. A perfect example is Larry David, who clings to his Jewishness, yet playfully pokes fun at it at the same time. He had a memorable appearance on the show. In all around 3,000 Jewish men served in the Confederacy during the Civil War, and one of Larry David’s relatives, unfortunately, served in the fight against the Union. “I hope no slaves show up on this,” said Larry David, echoing the thoughts and prayers of every person that appears on the show, in one of my favorite episodes. And, of course, they did. And Larry David, being Larry David, used comedy to diffuse a potentially awkward situation. “Oh, Professor,” Larry told a chuckling Henry Gates, with solemnity for the sins of his forefathers. “I’m sorry.”
It’s a wonderful show. I wish Trump and MAGA would actually watch it because they would find it informative. Particularly on the subject of Immigration, a subject that touches all of us save out Native American compatriots. I wish MAGA politicians and celebrities would appear on the show (imagine Trump on Finding Your Roots). There is nothing woke about DNA, or the historical records or the registry at Liberty Island. Ancestry is always a harrowing story filled sometimes with love, often with desperation and hope. Henry Louis Gates — of Harvard, by the way — is a wonderful teacher of American history, on immigration and on what can be gleaned from documents like newspapers (fast disappearing) and magazines and birth registries and — most depressingly — slave ownership rolls.
“Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates. Jr. is one of the hidden gems of television,” I wrote. “There are so many channels and streaming services that it is easy to overlook this not flashy, semi-precious stone in the multi-channel verse of content.” It is hard to imagine Netflix, or HBO taking such a risk on a non-commercial project such as this. It is precisely why the Corporation for Public Broadcasting exists. The same can be said about Wolf Hall, I, Claudius. American Experience.
Minnow, appointed to the FCC by Kennedy, called television at the time a “vast wasteland.” There were only a handful of channels, then. That is, of course, no longer the case. We live in the peak a golden age of television. But what comes after the peak? One should ask because we wont be at this place forever. What happens when Netflix is no longer giving out multi-million dollar contracts? “I urge you, I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom,” Minnow urged, back then. “You must help prepare a generation for great decisions. You must help a great nation fulfill its future.”
They did so for many decades. But the attention span shortens. Video games overtake Hollywood films at the forefront of the minds of the young. And then there is the threat of Trump and his penchant to leave nothing left standing. His myopic vision and his abject hostility to education. Who will help prepare a generation for great decisions after peak television? The Department of Education? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting?
Good luck on that.
“Elon Musk has solicited women to have his babies on X, shelled out millions of dollars to keep the mothers of his many kids quiet, and talked privately about wanting to sire ‘legion-level’ numbers of children ‘before the apocalypse.’ That’s according to an extensive new report from The Wall Street Journal, which details how the baby-making billionaire keeps his brood of (at least) 14 children and the women who birthed them in check. It’s a rare peek behind the curtain of what one woman Musk reportedly propositioned described as Musk’s ‘harem drama.’ It’s also a revealing look inside the paranoid mind of one of the world’s most powerful people, whose obsession with dwindling birth rates has contributed to his apparent belief that civilization is on the brink of collapse, necessitating a backup plan on Mars. The report leans heavily on the story of Ashley St. Clair, the conservative influencer who went public in February about having Musk’s child. As recently as last month, Musk said he wasn’t sure ‘if the child is mine or not.’ But the Journal’s report is loaded with receipts, including text messages between Musk and St. Clair illustrating their relationship, as well as a paternity test result from last week showing there is a ‘99.9999%’ chance that Musk is the father.” (Issie Lapowsky/Vanity Fair)
“Bill Maher was charmed by Trump, a disgusting oaf and abuser, who spent a full decade pal-ing around with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein per Michael Wolff’s tapes, competing for sexual access to pretty women before falling out, not over Epstein’s predations, as the deluded Q Anon cult believes, but a real estate deal. There’s a good reason why Maher is charm-able. Predations against women don’t trouble him too much. Like many left-ish cads, he’s not too bothered by ‘the woman stuff.’ In fact, as Sophie Gilbert writes in her essay on women and porn in the Atlantic today, liberal - libertine - men in entertainment always promoted the hard-core sexualization of women and girls that preceded this Trumpy-Tate bro era. Last week I heard Clara Bingham read from her best-selling new oral history, The Movement, on women behind the so-called ‘second wave’ of the fight for women’s equality in America between 1963 and 1973. The changes those women were able to effect are nothing short of epochal. In 1963, American women couldn’t open bank accounts or get credit cards without men, couldn't serve on juries, and were generally limited to work in nursing, teaching, or, until the wizened age of 32 or earlier if pregnant or married, flight attendants. Women earned 59 cents for every dollar men earned. Contraception was hard to get, limited to married women and secret terrifying back alley abortions were the norm. The women in that generation who fought for equality were subject to endless public ridicule - from men on the left and the right.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“Though conservative critics of higher education claim that universities indoctrinate students to adopt leftist attitudes, several presidents told me that students arrive on campus already formed. ‘They’re not tabula rasa,’ Rich Lyons, the chancellor of U.C. Berkeley, said. Young people who have faced economic hardship, he added, tend to ‘bring with them hardened perspectives, and a significant degree of anger.’ At Berkeley’s commencement last spring, pro-Palestine protesters disrupted the speakers—including the former chancellor Carol Christ, who said sadly from the podium, ‘We have lost the ability to talk with one another.’ Lyons and the presidents at the Penn Club were grappling with the same question: How could they reach a wildly diverse set of students and teach them to engage with people who think differently than they do?” (Emma Green/The New Yorker)
“House Democrats are still honing a message for next year’s midterms, but they appear to have found an early cudgel as they gear up to battle Republicans for the majority: congressional stock trading. The market turmoil surrounding President Donald Trump’s tariffs has supercharged Democratic attacks on politicians’ investment activity, with top lawmakers calling for investigations of White House officials and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries embracing a ban on trading of individual stocks. Their attacks crystallized this week after public disclosures revealed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had purchased stocks during a tariff-induced dip in the market earlier this month. Those securities quickly rose in value after Trump announced a partial reversal of his tariff plans.” (Nicholas Wu/Politico)