Senate votes to kill entire public broadcasting budget in blow to NPR and PBS
Senate votes to kill entire public broadcasting budget in blow to NPR and PBS
They’re just straight up evil.
How long before user-generated content and alternative forms of social media like this site or like Matrix, PeerSuite, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and etc. are next in the crosshairs?
How would they take out a federated network? That's kinda the whole point.
Force ISPs to block it or even go over the ISPs' heads and block it at the national level? Hypothetically, if a fascist state wants any form of resistance wiped from the web, forcing ISPs to block it or blocking it at the national level would be a good way to go about that.
I just hope that doesn't actually happen and it stays purely as a hypothetical in the US, but blocking at the ISP level or even at the national level is one way to take something out, that's how dictatorships like North Korea censor their media, for example.
Dear Congress:
You're not being the people Mr. Rogers thought you could be.
And fhere are so many great educational YouTube channels that are partly funded by PBS, that's awful..
Ex:
Space Time is fucking amazing.
If anyone reading this is even remotely interested in science, watch that channel. Absorb it. It speaks truth.
PBS Eons
Crash Course is also filmed at the PBS affiliate station in Indianapolis.
*you're
They see this as a point of pride.
Knowledge is power and they want the public to have none of it
What's really insane is they don't even want the knowledge. They just want knowledge in any capacity to go away.
No, they want the knowledge but only for themselves, after all during the guilded age, the educated where the rich and the rest where ignorant so they couldn't push back and be controlled. PBS and NPR spread knowledge for the masses and THAT is what they want to stop
That's reasonable if they intend to hoard other sources of power
It’s not even September and they’ve dismantled like 80% of the shit that makes being alive worthwhile
dismantled
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/13/1250902337/npr-cpb-public-radio-funding-101
Today, NPR receives only about 1% of its operating budget directly from the federal government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/business/media/npr-pbs-funding-cuts.html
Will NPR and PBS survive?
Yes. NPR gets about 2 percent of its annual budget directly from federal grants, including from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; for PBS, that amount is about 15 percent.
It'll be a hit for PBS in particular, but it's not gonna end NPR or PBS.
NPR as a national organization might be fine, but regional stations have smaller operating budgets and also get funding, and their programming gets picked up. Member stations will suffer or fail under this update, and that will feed back to national programming when something like WAMC's On the Media or WBEZ's Wait Wait gets axed.
If anything it might spark fundraising
its still not great. if the feds wont even provide a percentage of funding, what else wont they do?
Most of the funding goes to member stations for upkeep. Don't wait for the next pledge drive. Donate tomorrow.
It's going to be devastating for rural communities.
makes being
aliveAmerican worthwhile
FTFY.
We deliberately don't get news about it, but China is making entire cities for the well-educated looking to return to China from the US. They are "taking the solar system" right now according to some experts, and are on their third space station among multiple lunar missions. ESA and other countries have also taken grand steps into space. International science and medical research forges ahead without us. There are countries effectively expanding their social safety nets and other than US involvement in Israel/the Middle East broadly, the world is at an all-time peak of peace and personal safety.
You are being fed a cultivated image. This entire "free speech" catchphrase that we've been taught to scream at any offence is an illusion, a lie reinforced by every branch of media, which are in turn branches of the corporations that have long since nailed the coffin closed on actual democracy.
Remember Dead Internet Theory? Dead America Theory. We died around Reagan, the country has been running on momentum and money. We won't feel it until the money runs out and that's why this current administration is a pile of bottom-feeding bilge rats scraping off whatever they can from taxpayers. They know the value of the American dollar is about to start plummeting, and climate change and other technological changes to the global stage will be the final flush of this toilet we've been trying to pretend we're not spinning around.
Our progress and species will go on, just not without America leading the way. Even if we got a "perfect" president and administration tomorrow they wouldn't be able to undo this reverse-snowball that's currently evaporating out of control.
When fascism works it makes everything boring and bland as fuck.
And you’re letting them.
So, that means you are too, right?
The White House called for an end to federal funding for NPR and PBS in April, claiming that they "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" Trump also fired the CPB's three Democratic board members, who refused to leave their posts. Trump sued them this week in an attempt to force them out.
Translation: they don't regurgitate right wing talking points.
These people are disgusting.
They also educate and inform people. That's a problem for the GOP. They don't want the American people, ESPECIALLY low income people, to have access to free education and information that PBS and NPR provides. They need to ensure the population is stupid thus easier to control.
So America they've taken your medicade, they've taken the ability of a good portion of your country to be able to eat, they're taking immigrants, tourists, or people that they don't agree with to camps, they're taking your education, they're taxing you with tariffs, they have a gestapo, and they'll be taking away more rights from Women and POC. I have to ask...how much longer until you start to get a little bit violent?
They also educate and inform people.
Eh. They are increasingly polluted by their private sponsors and corporate partners. I've given up on listening to NPR in the mornings because so much of it is very obviously native advertisement or propaganda (particularly bad in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th, with broadcasters uncritically repeating IDF hoaxes like the "40 decapitated babies" line).
So America they’ve taken your medicade, they’ve taken the ability of a good portion of your country to be able to eat, they’re taking immigrants, tourists, or people that they don’t agree with to camps, they’re taking your education, they’re taxing you with tariffs, they have a gestapo, and they’ll be taking away more rights from Women and POC. I have to ask…how much longer until you start to get a little bit violent?
I got a "Blue Alert" on my phone not two days ago, thanks to a vigilante attacking an ICE agent. Dozens of armed cops were all over the Mayor's Office yesterday because of a rumor of a Palestinian protest that never materialized. FFS, three different people tried to shoot the President in a two month span.
I don't think the problem is a lack of violence. What Americans largely lack is coordination and institutional support. A thousand little lone wolves don't a revolution make.
Elmo's attempt to appeal to their base failed.
Wrong Elmo, they'd probably do better with this shotgun-wielding version:
Elmo's original voice actor had a bunch of sexual allegations against him. Republicans love that.
They've had a hardon for public broadcasting for thirty years, which is why NPR and PBS have been preparing for this and why their funding largely doesn't come from the feds anymore. It's a hollow victory, it's just depressing because anymore, it seems the right gets everything they want. They get it all. All of it. And we get nothing.
What's sick is that they are a fraction of this country. But thanks to their money and their platforms, they can constantly repeat the lie that "most people are conservatives".
No, the kind of weird perverted freaks that dream of killing funding to NPR and PBS are definitely not normal and not the majority. But yeah, thanks to a lot of various things, they get what they want....it's sickening.
So are these channels likely to stay afloat then? This is really fucking sad if not.
Hypothetically if you wanted your country to become impoverished within the next five decades, what sort of things would you do that are different to what the current administration is doing?
They don't want the country to be impoverished, and it's ridiculous to suggest that.
They just want the bottom 99.9% of the population to be impoverished. They're already most of the way there.
looks at mississippi and alabama
it appears to work too
The only differences I can think of is not chickening out on the tariffs and forcing the interest rate lower to kick off runaway inflation.
I mean, technically there would be more direct measures, like using artillery to blow up infrastructure or destroying crop with flamethrowers.
Fuck this administration, I hope they burn in the hell they believe in. I hope they all get cancer.
I try my best to find redeeming qualities in everyone, but there is none to be found in them.
These people are a cancer, and the world will be better when they are dead and forgotten.
100%.
Many of them are old and unhealthy, chief amongst them, Trump.
Go on, centrists. Why was there no filibuster this time?
Democrat answer: Filibusters are 'not a good look'. We want to be seen as the party of reasonable adults who honestly want to work across party lines to help our constituents. We won't vote to end the practice as it has a long history and tradition blah blah blah
Honest answer: We don't give a single fuck about our constituents, the only people we are beholden to are the lobbyists who line our pocketbooks. It's easier to control the narrative when all of the media corporations are owned by billionaires.
Rescission packages aren't subject to the filibuster, only a simple majority is needed. Expect more of this.
Sounds like something democrats could have used during the biden administration. Did they?
Frankly, it's starting to look like democrats always have an excuse. Have a majority? Oh shucky dern, we can't pass what we ran on but never intended to pass because of the filibuster! WOOHOO! I mean, it really is unfortunate that we can't do anything.
Don't have a majority? There is always some reason you can't filibuster! WOOHOO! I mean, it really is unfortunate that we can't do anything. Donate to put us back into power that we will refuse to use!
You can filibuster anything if you have the will. The Democrats just don't have any care to fight for anything but their pathetic jobs.
Education is nearly dead. Just the way these shitbags want it.
It's just all vengeance and spite for decades of having to "tolerate" even a modicum of liberalism in their lives.
The War On Acceptance
I really hate this administration.
strange, I assumed they get their budget raised after Elmo came out as a nazi
Who needs public broadcasting anyway, when you have Faux News and Sky.
She shouldn't have said this, it sealed the deal "Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives."
She should have said: "Millions of Americans will lose access to information about how great Trump is and how to report who to deport next."
Jokes aside, the emergency broadcast system makes so much sense as a function of public broadcasting. I have been to several countries that explicitly subsidize radio and tv channels for this purpose. You can have public programming 99% of the time, and a way to get information out in an emergency all ready to go.
In Spain, while we had the black out, the only thing working to give info was the radio.
I donate to NPR/PBS annually; probably will need to double my donation.
This is the one and only time that I'm hoping that someone on Lemmy is a billionaire.
I hope you are in the top 5% of income earners because otherwise you probably won't get a tax break from the money the government "saved" and rather probably pay more in taxes.
I don't care about the write off. I care because public radio is something I worked in for a half decade and well afterwards it gave me a connection to my community and the world at large. I'll give more money to spite them. Fuck their right off. I donate because it is good and true. And fuck anyone that says otherwise.
Haven't they already used up their spending budget reconciliation bill for the year passing the BBB? Hopefully this will be filibustered to death then.
Edit: Nevermind, apparently rescission bills also bypass the filibuster.
If they just voted to kill it, there was no filibuster.
Pbs bye bye now. Me smarter now though. Me teacher reached me about god and told me that as long as I pray to my god I will be happy and that got tells us it’s okay because we are his chosen once and no one else matters and. We need to show them god too so we will make big holy weapons in factories when we grow up. Also I am so glad stients were deleted. Stients reached us false messages and that god was not real and stients caused people to live a part from god. I always sayed that oh wow it sounds good to be a part from god like god made the trees and the dogs but they told me it’s bad.
What did people expect. Trump and his largest donor both own social media sites and these are competitors eyeball time for ads
Every single jackal that voted for this should be primaried into oblivion
Dear Freeloaders, It's time to start donating to your local stations.
I've finally found you, Adam Homonym, and find you lacking. You should consider Act don't Preach supplements to become less hollow. 💜
How else are you going to fund Elmo's tax cut?
The Mr Rogers presentation that makes me want to cry. What a hero.
So sad... This also eliminates public weather alerts in rural areas.
something tells me that AntiZionist Elmo has surprisingly less opinions about this
They want to curry favour with Donald Grump.
​
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQyTpPu0gvc
11:35
Why do I feel like the Elmo Twitter hack was orchestrated by the Trump dictatorship to further sow hatred against public media and give another reason to defund it?