It is official. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting finally accepted death over balance.
This week, the CPB announced that, with the withdrawal of federal funding, it would cease operations by September 30, 2025: “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations.”
The autopsy for the CPB, however, will put this cause of death as a self-inflicted blow.
For almost 60 years, Republican Presidents and conservative politicians have complained about the overwhelming liberal bias at the CPB and its supported programs, particularly National Public Radio (NPR). For most of those years, the CPB could shrug off the complaints. The Democrats controlled one or both houses (or at least the White House). With the political left solidly behind the CPB, the corporation refused to carry out even modest reforms. It simply gave the stiff arm to every conservative effort to bring its programming back to the middle of the political spectrum.
Even in the face of a GOP-controlled Congress and a Republican president, the CPB was defiant in denying any bias. It suggested that decades of complaints from the right were nothing more than the fevered imagination of far-right activists.
For the record, I was not calling for the termination of funding of the CPB, which I thought could still be forced to reform itself. What I opposed was the continuation of funding for NPR as a state-subsidized media outlet. It was not the pronounced bias of NPR that I felt justified termination. This country should preserve a wall of separation between the government and the media, a view that even a former NPR CEO acknowledged recently as legitimate.
CPB is different. It funded a broader array of programming and could easily correct its course. For decades, all the CPB had to do is refocus on programming to appeal to the greatest cross section of the population and to decline to fund media programs like NPR that became more strident and partisan by the year. It seemed that the CPB was trapped within its own echo chambered existence.
On the left, the CPB was the hero institution standing up to social and political reactionaries. That is what CPB officials heard at cocktail parties and conferences. They heard little from the public outside of their core, narrow constituency. For individual administrators and board members, their status and success were tied to the very bias that was alienating most of America.
For them, the choice was clear between neutrality and nonexistence: they grabbed a hemlock-filled, NPR pledge mug and drank deeply.
They are not the only figures choosing death over social dishonor. Efforts to restore balance and neutrality at the Washington Post has led to a virtual revolt. Even after CEO William Lewis told staff that the newspaper was gushing readers and revenue, the staff refused to yield. He could not have put it more bluntly, telling them, “People are not reading your stuff.” In other words, they were writing for each other as readers were fleeing to other sources of news.
You would think that Washington Post writers would recognize that, if they wanted to be journalists, they would have to return to more neutral and objective reporting. It does not work that way. Many of these editors and writers had secured their very positions in rejecting neutrality and embracing advocacy journalism. By their own previously stated standards, a return to traditional journalism would be capitulation and cowardice. Thus, they would rather see the Post go insolvent than independent.
That takes us back to the CPB. The announcement of cessation was met with a chorus of wails and laments on the left. Yet, these are the same people who preferred this option to reforming the CPB to serve the greatest number of Americans.
NPR made the same choice. A few years ago, it was given the opportunity to select a new CEO who would represent a serious, centrist leadership for the failing news organization. Instead, the board doubled down on that very bias and selected Katherine Maher, who had a long history of inflammatory political attacks on conservatives and was the very embodiment of activism.
As late as a few months ago, CPB could have come forward with real reforms. Instead, PBS President Paula Kerger threatened legal action if Congress had the temerity to refuse to fund her organization. At the same time, she did nothing to distance herself from NPR, which was dragging down CPB like an anchor. Even as NPR’s Katherine Maher imploded before Congress, Kerger refused to budge.
The irony is that NPR is likely to survive in reduced form, appealing to a shrinking audience of predominantly white, affluent, liberal listeners in major cities.
Conversely, CPB is laying off its entire staff in a righteous, indignant huff. None of these people needed to lose their jobs if their leadership served their organization by listening to views beyond their own insular circle of enablers. The demise of the CPB now stands as the most impressive and unnecessary act of self-termination since the appearance of Judean People’s Front Crack Suicide Squad:
The success of Trump in getting rid of the CPB shames those Republicans in Congress who have again and again failed to cut off funding. They were afraid to make enemies, and thus permitted one of our greatest enemies go on pushing Democratic propaganda. Hurrah for Trump and shame on Bush I, Bush II, Paul Ryan, et al.
So you think Trump did it all by himself?? Last I checked, CONGRESS controls the purse. If CONGRESS had passed a bill defunding this garbage, Reagan, Bush, 1, & Bush 2, would have happily signed it!.
We can not know that.
What we do know is that most prior republicans paid lip service to cutting government.
Mere words do not reduce government spending.
Success reuires leadership that delivers on promises made.
Read Trump’s Platforms. Every bullet point is either delivered or is something Trump has gone to the mat fighting to deliver.
No other president ever has kept campaign promises in the way Trump has.
The left is so virulently pissed at him – not because of what he says – but because when he says he will gore their sacred cows – unlike prior republicans he actually does it.
I was a big supporter of public radio and public TV from the 1970s as a teen until the late 1990s when it became clear they were becoming politically polarized and favoring the left at the expense of the right.
I do not weep for you, CFPB. You lost sight of your mission and turned against well over half of American by pandering to the just one-third of us — the hard left — while centrists like me, or conservatives, were driven out by your biases.
Most any govenrment entity will transform in the way that CPB has. It is just natural.
The entire reason – and the core problem with limited govenrment is that power demands to be used and to expand.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. ”
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0199
Market forces work. The right-leaning NY Post is now financially healthy enough without any government support that they’re expanding to the west coast and will be starting the California Post.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/04/media/start-the-presses-new-york-post-will-expand-to-la-with-launch-of-the-california-post/
…Three Cheers for the Vision of Alexander Hamilton!
Yeah, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep. On sites like The Hill, leftists are vowing to bleed cash from every pore to save NPR and PBS.
@Anonymous
Yeah, but they live to overreact and virtue signal. We’ll see if any of them actually step up. I’m not betting on it, their pledge drives etc. couldn’t have been going great with the teeth gnashing they’ve all done over government funding. Some of these orgs have been strictly gov supported for some time, methinks.
During the Biden years I’d listen to NPR on the car radio and 9 times out of 10 when I’d turn it on they’re talking about race. They were so obsessed with race it was insane.
before I stopped listened it had become trans-gender radio…. all day, all the time…
“trans-gender radio”
Huge audience there. You can tell that they don’t know jack about competing in a free, open market.
…and another one gone, and another one gone. Another one bites the dust.
Sooo, it turns out that the Brits are not too thrilled with their illegal, legal, and quasi-legal colonial alien invasion either. Though in their case it’s perhaps more difficult to find the appropriate definition of, or pronoun for, who is, and who is not, permanently welcomed in merry ole England.
Anyway, no matter. It would appear, they ain’t buying it. And in the process, the BBC has followed the suicide route of the American propaganda legacy media now overtaken by a conservative upstart named GB News.
Looks to be a twofer! The end of the CPB and the BBC leftist diatribes. Sayonara.
“CONSERVATIVES RULE: GB News Overtakes the BBC and Becomes UK’s Most Watched News Channel”
by Paul Serran Aug. 3, 2025 3:30 pm
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/08/conservatives-rule-gb-news-overtakes-bbc-becomes-uks/
https://www.gbnews.com/
And right on the front page is the French Farmers solution to the Cincinnati’s Police Department’s problem.
When it hits the fan…!
——————————————————
-Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people got sensitive feelings.”
In one of the most stunning political comebacks in American history, on Monday Donald J. Trump picked the disgraced former congressman George Santos to lead the Department of Labor Statistics.
“This is such an honor,” Santos told reporters. “I really didn’t think I’d get pardoned before Ghislaine.”
The new DLS chief hit the ground running, revising upward the job figures from every month of Trump’s presidency.
“The American economy added a million new jobs in May and a billion new jobs in June,” Santos declared. “President Trump is creating jobs like crazy—he even gave one to Pete Hegseth.”
The unprecedented job growth has boosted Trump’s approval rating, which Santos said currently stands at 500 bazillion percent.
This isn’t even funny from any perspective. It’s just lame. Please tell me that you copied this from another site, because I really hope for your sake that you didn’t waste even a few minutes of your pathetic life coming up with this slop on your own. You need help.
This Santos contrivance sounds like something The Onion would come up with.
Is it really any surprise that leftist media is dying, since leftists like this one copy and paste content without any attribution or ability to give ad revenue to the original source?
Satire is not your forte. Though, on further consideration, expect NOTHING is your forte.
This is an excellent article. In this case it is telling the difference between the tenor of the debate prior to the rescission vote and the actions after a vote. It began with a roar and went out in a whimper. It will be interesting to see what happens to NPR. During the mid to late 60’s, I enjoyed listening to NPR. But in the past two decades when ever I happen to tune in to NPR I came away two observations: 1) the news was getting shriller and quite partisan and 2) the staffing of NPR was significantly changing and it turns out by design. Unfortunately for NPR, although the staff demographics were drastically changed the listener demographics did not – still predominately white, well off, liberal, women. NPR seemed to take pride that only 2% of its funding came from the government but I would venture to say that is not nearly the dependency whole story. It will be interesting to see if their listeners and corporate sponsors will cover the funding gap in the long term.
Article 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to tax for and fund ONLY debt, defense, and “general Welfare,” and Congress has no power to regulate broadcasting.
CPB does not constitute debt, defense, or “general Welfare,” and no power to regulate broadcasting is enumerated.
Congress cannot tax for or fund CPB or otherwise regulate the industry.
It’s easy to give someone free stuff. Try taking it away.
When someone receives something for free, it’s because someone else received nothing for something seized.
Right here, is the quintessential culprit of our woes.
“16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Federal Income Tax (1913)”
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/16th-amendment
———————————————–
-Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people got sensitive feelings.”
“THEY MAY TAX BUT THEY MAY NOT TAX AD LIBITUM”
“Taxation”
“To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, “to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.” For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.”
“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
– Thomas Jefferson
The Federal donation is not a large part of the budgets of either NPR or CPB – most of the funding is from “our owners” – the banks that want specific outcomes and societal effects. There is no point in the banks and the 1% ers named as donors on air if they are not buying the effect they want. So funding neutral programming or programming that reflects the nation as a whole does not benefit them. It only benefits us. I was thinking that I would miss the Masterpiece period pieces. Then I remembered that they cast a black woman as Sophie in Tom Jones – set in 17rh century England. Now they have a Hindu man from India playing a British vicar in 1950. That sort of ludicrous casting is so insulting I couldn’t be bothered with it any longer regardless.
I used to love “Masterpiece”. Alas, ’tis true…the thrill is gone.
Some people think they have a claim on other people’s money. That is the premise from which they start. But do they ever bother to explain how that claim came about?
As ever old man .. . the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
“As ever old man .. . the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Non-reply, not even remotely related to what he said. I’m just going to assume this clown is a bot from here on out.
#X
Not to mention that cable, internet and media disintegration has made all centralized network broadcasting irrelevant. YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram and TikTok provide more free educational media in each hour than “Public Television” and NPR have provided in their 60+ years of broadcasting. NBC, CBS and ABC are in need of similar hills to die on.
I canceled my cable subscription some time ago, mostly because I came to resent the Big Pharma ads telling me that their drugs may cause hideous side effects and/or death but hey, we’re here to help you…😁
@Anonymous
Yes, and I suspect it was eating their lunch much harder than they’d admit. Their audiences are teeny.
The only use I ever had for PBS was some of their documentaries on old Earth geology and some of the astronomy docu’s they’d run. Even then one had to hold their nose to get past the climate alarmist yelping, “oh no, “the sky is falling” which their producers shoveled into every aspect of the documentaries.
“Look there little one’s, at that supernova 100 million light years away. See, that’s what happens when aliens build televisions that don’t automatically turn themselves off unless you press a dead mans switch to acknowledge you’re still alive.
Yeah lots and lots of “scientific”, information there.
——————————————————————
-Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people got sensitive feelings.”
Dear Prof Turley,
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.
In that spirit, The Corporation of Public Broadcasting has been duly Fired. .. and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is hanging on by a thread.
Also, the Epstein Files are a hoax.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Trump
CEO, CFO, Truth Social
Next time, just give us the link to the crap that you copy and paste, the original site deserves the ad revenue that you’re stealing from them.
Ah, it’s good to meet an educated person here in the wilderness.
“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “intelligence” Agents, “LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more?”
Trump,
Truth Social
Go screw yourself loser. Nobody cares about your weak left-wing copy and paste jobs. You’re not funny, you’re not incisive, you’re just boring.
DG
Also, the Epstein Files are a hoax.
____________________
So after all these years, why didn’t Biden release them?
Hmm. mr smart guy.
You’re ruining his lame “funny” by pointing out pertinent facts that show him to be a purveyor of propaganda.
And why didn’t the media hound Biden to release them?
It doesn’t take a genius, Dustoff, to know Biden wouldn’t know if he released Epstein Files Hoax or not. .. again, Biden doesn’t know what day it is.
Personally, I believe Epstein was clearly working with ‘foreign and domestic intelligence services’ .. . and he had more money than God.
AG Blondi said would get back to us on that . .. but don’t hold your breath.
*hope this helps.
“I believe Epstein was clearly working”
Nobody cares what you believe. Take your lame copy-and-paste-ola elsewhere. You’re boring.
Poor answer DG.
You are just a lame as george.
Pretty sure it’s just a bot
But I believe DG is correct when he stated that Epstein was working with various intelligence agencies around the world. Why else would Trump’s first Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, refused to prosecute Epstein? Because he was ordered to by someone in the Bush Administration when Acosta was the U.S. attorney for Southern District of Florida. Someone above Acosta’s pay grade.
This is related to yesterday’s article, where the European Union is so determined to commit civilizational suicide that it tries to coerce a member such as Italy to go along when that member balks. What is it about the left, where they’d rather die than admit that people who disagree with them are sane? I believe it is a form of mental illness.
“What is it about the left, where they’d rather die than admit that people who disagree with them are sane? I believe it is a form of mental illness.”
Michael Savage literally wrote a book called “Liberalism is a Mental Illness” and I haven’t seen much lately to refute that premise.
“Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder”
https://michaelsavage.com/original-show-liberalism-is-a-mental-disorder/
It is just self-hatred. The left hates the west, the same west that gave them the greatest lives ever provided to the most people in history.
It is so odd, but it isn’t new. I have been amazed at the anti-west hatred since probably the 1970s and definitely the 80s. In the 80s the left wanted to ban nuclear power in AMERICA and Europe and wanted to ban US nuclear weapons without saying a word about Soviet weapons. Today the left wants to ban all forms of non-renewable energy, you know, real energy, FOR ONLY THE WEST. Have you ever seen a march in front of the Chinese Embassy or the Indian Embassy, the 2 biggest polluters on the planet? If not, why not.
They hate America as a racist country that treats “people of color” badly and yet demand that we allow “people of color” to come here, stay here and not be removed from her???
I think you’re onto something. The West by and large rejected Communism, which they find to be its fundamental sin and makes it not worth saving. I say that Communism was a great darkness, similar to the jihadism sweeping Europe right now. The West resisted that darkness, but they are so mentally ill they see Communism as light and the West’s resistance as sin.
Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. The consequence is that every generation must fight for it.
*. Sweetie hullbobby, Adolph lost the war. He’s a loser. They hate that Adolph lost the war. They’re losers. It’s that simple. They’re losers.
It truly is amazing how rather then do some internal reforms, self reflection, getting out of their echo chamber, they would rather run the whole ship into the rocks, then come about to a new tack. Takes some real denial, or serious zealotry to die on those rocks.
If trumps abuse of women wouldn’t convince you he is an idiot, how about firing the woman that collected labor statistic? Dumb move?
This is what idiot despots do. Tell me good news or off with your head.
What will it take for you to realize you are in a cult if you support trump. He is a disaster.
“If trumps abuse of women wouldn’t convince you he is an idiot, how about firing the woman that collected labor statistic?”
What abuse of women? Regarding the former government employee, I’m really sure that she was fired because she was a woman. There’s no way that she was fired because she was incompetent at her job, right? I mean, even Biden bemoaned her lousy performance, but that doesn’t count for you.
Only in your cult does every piece of news immediately get twisted into an anti-Trump narrative. Frankly, you’re boring.
Anon-11:24am Very well said !!!
😂, anon, watch the movie The Red Lantern. Read 1001 Arabian Nights ( exact title escapes me) . The stories about Sinbad are part of it.
I rejoice in the firing of the BLS head. During the entire Biden Administration the agency had large adjustments to its employment statistics. It continued this year. I think it is wonderful that a governmental official is subject to accountability for a bad job.
But firing incompetent women for their incompetence is “abuse”, don’t you know. What a maroon.
I learned something about the employment numbers during the Obama era. The unemployment rate would fall even when the labor participation rate declined. I learned that when people leave the workforce and give up looking for work, as they were being encouraged to at that time, they were no longer counted in the unemployment rate. I am reminded of the so called analysis that comes from the CBO. There’s an old adage that goes something like this. “Figures don’t like, but liars figure.”
She faked the numbers… So she was fired.
Did you pay any attention during Biden’s time. They would say the job numbers are great, them slowly lower the numbers a few weak later.
DustOff,
That is correct. The initial jobs reports looked great, according to the headlines. But if anyone looked past the headlines and drilled down into the actual data, there was a much different story.
Then, a month later, the next jobs report came out and the previous month, sometimes two, were revised downward and sometimes by no small amount. For that alone, she should of been fired.
The BLS, like all other government agencies, should be looked at for fraud, waste and abuse.
I think they need to re-evaluate how the come up with their economic numbers, not just the BLS. For example, they strip out energy and groceries of the the CPI as they claim it violentile. Try cutting energy and groceries out for a month in your household.
Pres. Nixon did the same thing. Unemployment was getting up around 6% so he shot the messenger and numbers went back down to the 4-5% range. One difference is, Pres. Trump isn’t trying to get re-elected.
I love the reference to Life of Brian. JPF was a fearsome group.
Your analysis reminds me of the years when so many union workers in Michigan voted themselves out of jobs, when their employers were faced with lower-cost competition from other countries or non-union plants in the U.S. Just as I believed it would be better to keep your job while you looked for another, it would seem that the CPB could try some self reflection and a new strategy before giving up.
“Your analysis reminds me of the years when so many union workers in Michigan voted themselves out of jobs, when their employers were faced with lower-cost competition from other countries or non-union plants in the U.S.”
Same with domestic steel companies.
Good riddance.