TGIT! Here's the latest on Rupert Murdoch, Gillian Turner, Katherine Maher, Adam O'Neal, CPJ, Midjourney, "Superman," and much more... |
Richard Nixon tried. Ronald Reagan tried. President Trump tried during his first term in office. All three Republican presidents wanted to strip taxpayer support for PBS and NPR stations. But all three men were stymied by Congress.
This time, however, might be different. The House is expected to vote on Trump's "rescissions" package this afternoon, including a zeroing out of future public media funding.
This is the closest NPR and PBS have ever come to a complete loss of taxpayer support. For local stations it's a worst-case scenario... and for conservative activists, it is a welcome change and the culmination of a very long campaign.
"We are thrilled to finally get to this point," NewsBusters exec editor Tim Graham told me. "I've been documenting their taxpayer-funded tilt at MRC for 36 years."
It's true. Groups like MRC, short for Media Research Center, have been arguing against PBS and NPR's "liberal bias" for decades, asserting that the taxpayer funding is unnecessary and unfair. Public media officials reject those charges, of course. But as MRC's call-your-congressman website says, this summer "could be our last, best chance to win the battle once and for all."
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How the debate has changed |
Republicans have been trying to take the "public" out of public broadcasting for almost as long as the system has existed. But as I wrote in this trip down memory lane for CNN.com, the past proposals always ran into congressional opposition, including from fellow Republicans who strongly believed in the system's mission.
Graham's group says those arguments are out of date now. And Trump has changed the contours of the debate by trying to zero out the CPB budget altogether and by taking other steps to punish the system.
Graham says Republicans "should vote on a party line" to defund what he called "Democrat-run" broadcasting. "It's not state-run, because it sounds like the very opposite of state-run when Republicans are in power. It's Democrat-run at all times, and has been since Jim Lehrer gushed over the twice-a-day coverage of the Watergate hearings: 'As justice, it was pure delicious!'" Here's the context of what Lehrer said...
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"We have audiences from across the political spectrum," NPR CEO Katherine Maher told CNN's Max Foster in a recent interview. And they tune in for more than just news. Music programming is also "a big part of what we do," she pointed out, supporting "extraordinary diversity that reflects the culture of the country." Those are the sorts of details that are lost amid all the "bias" arguments.
Maher reiterated that rural stations will feel the effects of a funding cut most severely. "Our commitment is to serving everyone, it's universal access," she said, "and if parts of the country go dark, how are we supposed to reflect them in our reporting?"
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Today's vote will be close. Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three Republican votes. In interviews several GOP lawmakers have raised concerns about the proposed spending cuts. On the other hand, the rescissions are being branded as "DOGE" cuts, upping the pressure on fence-sitters.
GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told CNN's Manu Raju yesterday that she "met with a bunch of constituents who all say they want PBS to be continued to be funded." And "these are Republicans," she said. "These are not left-leaning voters in my district."
It sounds like PBS and NPR's lobbying effort has had some effect. But we've seen time and time again how hesitant House members ultimately fall in line with Trump's wishes. There is no reason to think this time is any different. If it passes the House, it will move to the Senate for consideration. The Senate will have five weeks to ratify or ignore it.
Stations are still mobilizing; last night, for example, WOUB radio in Athens, Ohio told listeners, "If you have not already communicated to your lawmaker what the impact of rescission would be to your community, please do so immediately so that they can understand how their vote will affect you and their constituents' access to trusted, local news, educational programming, lifesaving emergency alerts, and noncommercial music that brings people together."
Now to some of today's other stories...
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Sometimes Trump doesn't want to believe even Fox News. I thought this was a really telling exchange on the Kennedy Center red carpet last night. Fox's Gillian Turner asked Trump about the prospect of another "summer of unrest" and cited the indisputable fact that anti-ICE protests have been spreading. Trump disputed it anyway:
Turner: "The protests have spread now to 16 cities across the US —"
Trump: "Well I don't know, that's what you're saying. Do I believe you? I don't think so."
Turner: "Well I got that from the Fox News Brain Room."
That's a nickname for Fox's research department. If anything 16 cities is an undercount, but let's go with it. Is Trump in denial about the expanding protests and the looming "No Kings" day on Saturday?
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Trump's 'hierarchy of interest' |
The NYT's David Sanger nailed it at yesterday's WH press briefing: "I'm struck by the fact that the president has not at any point said, 'The most important thing here is to protect the First Amendment rights of peaceful protesters.' So I'm wondering where in his hierarchy of interest does he place that? Is the First Amendment protection the most important? Is stopping violence most important? Why is he not out saying all peaceful protesters will be protected?" Here's what Karoline Leavitt said in response.
>> "More than two dozen journalists have been injured or roughed up" in L.A. since Friday, "leading press freedom groups to question whether law enforcement has been deliberately targeting reporters on the story," the AP's David Bauder reports.
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Tuned in — and turned off |
A Washington Post-Schar School poll of 1,015 US adults, including 217 California residents, finds all the predictable divides about the protests and the president's reaction. But this part stands out: "The more people are paying attention to the protests in L.A., the more likely they are to oppose Trump sending in the National Guard and Marines to respond to the protests," The Post says. "This is partly due to Democrats following the protests more closely, although independents who are paying more attention are also more critical of Trump's decision."
>> CNN's Jennifer Agiesta notes that polls like this one, conducted in a single day, "can be subject to larger potential errors than those fielded over multiple days."
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Residents of Butte, Montana, were surprised to see Air Force Two on Tuesday. The AP's Michelle L. Price figured out what VP JD Vance was doing on the unannounced trip: He was meeting with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and "a group of other Fox News executives" at the Murdoch family ranch.
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Last night at the Kennedy Center... |
There were shouts of both "felon" and "we love you" at opening night of "Les Misérables." CNN's Kit Maher was there, and she notes that not all the protests against Trump's presence were vocal: "Four drag queens sat below the presidential box, a visual pushback against Trump's vow that there would be no more 'woke' performances or drag shows at the Kennedy Center." Read Maher's full story here.
>> Still unknown: How many cast members ultimately sat out last night due to Trump's attendance.
>> BTW, if all this "Les Mis" talk makes you want to watch an epic six-part theatrical adaption of the novel, you can stream it on... wait for it... PBS.
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NYT restaurant critics show their faces |
Part of the mystique of The New York Times' restaurant critic job, aside from the expense account, has been the anonymity. But it's always been hard to maintain the veil of secrecy, and it makes less and less sense in the vertical video age. So the NYT's two (!) new chief critics, Tejal Rao and Ligaya Mishan, "will no longer hide their faces publicly," the Times revealed yesterday.
The pair will still try to "eat at restaurants undetected," but because they won't be hiding their faces, they'll be able to "appear in videos in our app and on our off-platform channels," bringing "a whole new level of transparency and humanity to our criticism." Another big change: Rao will be based in California.
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WaPo finds an Opinion editor |
Adam O'Neal, who currently serves as The Economist's DC correspondent, is taking over The Washington Post's troubled Opinion section. In an intro video, O'Neal showed that he is speaking Jeff Bezos' language, repeating the Post owner's lines about championing "free markets and personal liberties" word for word. Liam Reilly has details here.
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CPJ's British backup plan |
The Committee to Protect Journalists has been based in the US for decades, but it has "directed a British law firm to set up a legal entity in the UK, in part as a precautionary measure against potential Trump administration executive orders targeting American nonprofits." It's part of a broader trend, as Prashant Rao reports for Semafor.
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>> New this morning: After four years at NBC, Carrie Budoff Brown is returning to Politico as exec editor and exec VP in Brussels. (Politico)
>> "Independence Day": On his first day outside ABC, Terry Moran signed up for Substack and said he'll be publishing there. (Substack)
>> MLB "has acquired an undisclosed minority stake in Jomboy Media, a fast-growing and often irreverent digital media company." (FOS)
>> CBS trying to trim: Some unionized employees at CBS News and its local stations received buyout offers earlier this week. (Crossing Broad)
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Taking Midjourney to court |
"Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism," Disney and Universal said as they filed suit against the AI image generation startup, "marking the first major legal showdown between Hollywood studios and an artificial intelligence company," Clare Duffy reports.
>> "We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity," Disney's legal boss Horacio Gutierrez said, "but piracy is piracy..."
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>> "WhatsApp has joined a legal challenge against the UK government’s demand to force Apple to create a 'back door' in its security systems." (FT)
>> Former OpenAI research leader Steven Adler has published a new study "claiming that, in certain scenarios, his former employer’s AI models will go to great lengths to try to avoid being shut down." (TechCrunch)
>> The Wikimedia Foundation "has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community." (404 Media)
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Entertainment odds and ends |
>> Universal and DreamWorks' live-action "How to Train Your Dragon" remake is eyeing more than $75 million at the box office this weekend. (TheWrap)
>> "The Amazon Prime Early Access Screening for this July's 'Superman' has become Fandango's best first-day ticket pre-seller of 2025." (Boxoffice)
>> Speaking of... DC has released the final "Superman" trailer. (YouTube)
>> Saving the best for last: "Sometimes there are strange symmetries in death, as in life," David Bauder observes. "The twin passings of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson this week brought that into sharp relief." (AP)
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