Mid-July votes by Congress slashed $535 million in funding for this year and next for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a significant source of funding for public radio and television stations throughout the country. By the early August, CPB announced that it would be shuttering its operations.
The July action was a rescission vote, demanded by President Donald Trump, to take back funding that Congress had already approved. Along mainly party lines, Republicans demonstrated their limp noodle backbones to vote against what they had already approved – because they fear the wrath of the increasingly unstable Trump. He threatens to find GOP candidates to oppose any Republicans who defy him.
Trump hates CPB and National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, which it funded, because the latter report facts and not his Trumped-up propaganda.
The biggest liar to ever hold office in this country calls anything that proves him wrong – and there’s a whole of that – “fake news.” He had already issued an(other) executive order on May 1 to forbid CPB from funding those organizations because, “neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Harming two legitimate news sources is a big win for Trump and those colluding with him. But collateral damage affects the cultural well-being of the entire country – though Trumpers are probably OK with that, too, since cultural explorations infer the diversity and equality of artistic viewpoints in a world that, by definition, includes everyone – the good DEI, not Trump’s Divisiveness, Elitism and Ignorance.
Cutting CPB funding means the loss of funds to public radio stations in Oklahoma as well as OETA, our PBS outlet.
KFOR reported that KOSU radio, based at Oklahoma State, has lost $300,000 or about 10% of its operating budget. The University of Oklahoma’s KGOU is down about $215,000, or 8-10% of its budget.
“It’s not something in the future,” Rachel Hubbard, executive director of KOSU Radio, told KFOR’s John Hayes. “This is for our budget year that started 23 days ago. So, it’s a real and immediate impact that has an effect on our ability to deliver local news and information. Specifically reporting about state government, mental health and addiction, indigenous affairs, water and natural resources, and to support local Oklahoma musicians along with our ability to maintain equipment for emergency alerting.”
KGOU development director Jolly Brown told KFOR that station was in uncharted territory, expressing concern as well for more rural areas of the state.
These stations carry news from NPR refuting Trump’s lies along with a myriad of cultural programing. Down in my neck of the woods, KCCU, based at Lawton’s Cameron University, is running announcements seeking $100,000 to offset its losses.
Its website proclaims: “Public media’s federal funding is gone. Our commitment to you isn’t going anywhere.”
KCCU provides classical music most mornings and evenings – and jazz on weekend nights – along with informative afternoon shows like Science Friday, which deals with real scientific issues and not the conspiracy theory nonsense and anti-science lies that Trump promotes to line the pockets of his Big Oil donor/owners.
Even KUCO, based with the University of Central Oklahoma has lost some of its funding. Jeff Hagy, KUCO general manager affirmed “the consequences for non-news stations that do not carry NPR programming and offer no national political coverage. We exist solely to serve our metro and rural communities through music, cultural programming and education.”
In a July 25 KOCO editorial, Brent Hensley, president and general manager, expressed support for the news provided by his competitors:
“This is a time when trusted news sources are dwindling, and it concerns us that a cut in federal funding for public broadcasting threatens to reduce those trusted sources even more.”
He encouraged viewers to contribute to the stations’ fund drives “if you are able,” after pointing out, “We are in a time when misinformation, AI-doctored video and social media chatter are taken as fact. The potential loss of trusted news sources like public television and radio is alarming.”
Prior to the Senate vote, I encouraged Sen. James Lankford to take a stand for the main sources of high culture in the state. He had voted to approve the spending initially, but, of course, caved to Trump.
Lankford’s reply – which I figure many others received as well – wasted space with the general background of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting before he got to a downright lie about OETA:
“Thirty years ago, the programming for public broadcasting was used primarily to finance college education distance learning. Today, most of the programming is for children’s education due to the growth of online education.”
OETA hosts four PBS outlets. Two, Create and World, feature no children’s programs. Another features only children programing. The primary station that carries the Sunday night dramas and the first airings of the other shows has a lineup that is about two-thirds in favor of adult programs, many of which are the kind of cultural offerings not available in most of this state.
Lankford even cited the $1.1 billion price tag for two years of CPB funding as reason to kowtow to Trump’s demand for the rescission:
“This is a moment when we should evaluate how to sustain PBS and NPR but also not spend almost half a billion dollars each year on publicly owned radio and television networks. With our crushing national debt surpassing $36 trillion, we must seriously look at all government expenses to determine its effectiveness and long-term purpose.”
This from the man gutting federal revenues with $3.75 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires and who has no problem increasing military spending by $156 billion to push the total investment past $1 trillion.
Heck, $1.1 billion [the two-year CPB rescission] is about the projected cost of refitting Trump’s grift gift Qatar airplane to serve as Air Force One before it is given to Trump.
If we can spend $45 billion to build concentration camps for brown-skinned people swept off the streets with no due process considerations, we should be able to find a half-billion for a primary art source for many Americans.
Prior to their own cowardly capitulations, Nevada Rep. Mark Amodel and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski both acknowledged the potential loss of good programing – and in red states.
Amodel said, “If you’re mad at the editorial people, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t be mad at the stations. And, oh, by the way, you ought to look at where those stations are, because it’s a lot of Trump country, and they’re not the problem. And so cutting them off of funds doesn’t seem very well thought out.”
How could it be well thought out when the “idea” originated with a guy whose mind wanders off subject at every appearance and who cannot string five coherent sentences together?
As Congress was preparing to rescind the funding, a Harris Poll found that 66% of Americans supported federal funding for public radio – the breakdown showing 58% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats in favor of the funding.
Lankford signed his email, “In God We Trust.” He should have written, “In Trump I Fear.”
