Project 2025: Defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Project 2025: Defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Because NPR and PBS are woke outlets liberals rely on for accurate, truthful information. And Christo-fascists can't have that. (Scroll to the end to listen)
Democracies rely on truthful information. Whether delivered by media outlets, freelance journalists, or even Substackers, truthful information acts as an important democratic guardrail.
Conservatives recognized this decades ago. Billionaires like Rupert Murdoch used their bottomless well of money to create a conservative media ecosystem where the “truth” equalled the message of self-interested power brokers coupled with what viewers wanted to hear. The devaluation of information and the blurring of truth began.
The advent of social media further degraded information. Users could read, share, and consume free information, often without considering how it was created or whether anyone was compensated for their work. “Surely somebody is paying for this, right? But since it’s free, I don’t have to.” Americans bought the lie that a free press = free information.
Tech-bro capitalism had a solution for struggling media outlets and their writers: Report to the internet casino every day with a Big-Gulp plastic cup full of tokens. These tokens represent an outlet’s reputation and exposure, and its writers’ investment in education, experience, trauma, therapy, talent, accomplishments, failures and successes.
Creators of good information have to pull up a stool to the algorithmic slot machine and feed it their tokens. Maybe if they use all their tokens and yank the handle enough times, they’ll hit the jackpot: A larger audience for their work; internet fame/virility; a book deal; credibility; a big investor; an influx of paid subscriptions or advertising revenue.
Many Americans participated in destroying healthy and robust journalism in the name of mainlining information without paying for it.
So it’s no surprise that Project 2025 calls for defunding one of America’s last bastions of truthful information: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Every Republican President since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corpora-tion for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding…All Republican Presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake.
Public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism. Not only is the federal government trillions of dollars in debt and unable to afford the more than half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year, but the government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagations of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. All of which means that the next conservative President must finally get this done and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary.
Project 2025, page 246
Republicans and their billionaire puppet masters know that Americans are loathe to pay for information when they can consume information for free. If they pull federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it is highly likely that NPR and PBS will go out of business.
Or the CPB may have to compromise their journalistic integrity and ideals to pay the bills. Maybe billionaires or a hedge fund will swoop in to save the day only to change the editorial direction of NPR and PBS, just as they used their stratospheric wealth to take over regional media and infiltrate organizations like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, all outlets that were failing due to advertisers fleeing to social media, tanking viewership, and readers refusing to pay for information social media moguls offered for free.
Exerting an iron grip on the conservative and far-right news landscape, combined with social media mis-and-disinformation, didn’t control the overall message. Far-right Republicans and their billionaire backers believe the American public should not have access to any truth that might make us question Christo-fascist authority and billionaire power. Enter Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter.
I think it does make a good case for some form of public funding for information. When access to information depends on ability to pay, that's a different problem. In ancient :) times the solution was public libraries, but with all information moving online that's not quite the solution yet.
It would be great if nonprofits could fill in the gap, but ultimately it's problematic when the solution to every social problem is a nonprofit, essentially depending on charity to provide every vital social service. And information is a vital social service.
AI is equally concerning. I'm lucky to have found substack. I've learned so much. I have not watched MSM in years.....mistrust it.