NPR pbs 3 state media BS

PRIMARY 525 XO DEFUND

THIS IS GENERIC 3

4 23 at last sep node, triggered by state media BS tucker twit

note big cut in post b3 recssion 7 25 // scalp

SEE MAIN AND 2

// anti-commie

TARGET

commons? mod?

note fox 3rd party BS TPPF

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Trump Dismantled climate.gov. This Former NOAA Employee Rebuilt It | Amanpour and Company

36,859 views Aug 14, 2026 #amanpourpbs

The U.K. Is experiencing yet another heatwave, the fifth of the season to hit Europe, and the world's oceans reached their highest temperatures ever recorded for July. Now more than ever, people need reliable information. In the United States, the federal government's climate.gov website was long considered one of the most trusted sources of climate information — until the Trump administration shut it down. The site's manager, Rebecca Lindsey, was laid off along with all of her colleagues. She joins the show to lay out the stakes.

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MMA

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PBS dominated broadcast TV news coverage of LGBTQ issues in 2025 | Media Matters for America

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AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, I want to turn to another piece of critical reporting you have been doing, tracking the money around the Trump administration, new reporting that

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energy companies are set to get nearly a billion dollars to not build offshore wind farms. I know the president has been critical of these projects in the past, but why that payout?

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LIZ LANDERS: Several large-scale wind energy projects on the East and West Coast of the U.S.

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have been canceled in the last few months. In March, the administration announced a nearly $1 billion payout to TotalEnergies, which is a French company, to abandon an offshore wind project.

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They had bought two leases in 2022, one off the coast of North Carolina. That was for more than

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$133 million, and then another off the coast of New York for $795 million. And then last week,

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more than $900 million in additional payouts were made for two more projects, Bluepoint Wind off of the coast of New York and New Jersey and Golden State Wind off of the coast of California.

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So between the last few months, there have been nearly $2 billion in these payments. The administration had initially tried to block some of these wind projects from going forward,

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citing national security concerns. That was batted down in several different courts.

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And the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told the Associated Press that these projects were only viable when they were propped up

by taxpayer subsidies under the Biden administration. We reached out to the Department of Interior to ask about this. We did not hear back from them in time.

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AMNA NAWAZ: Nearly $2 billion in payments. So does the administration have the spending authority to do that? LIZ LANDERS: There are serious questions about the legality of this.

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I spoke with Liz Klein earlier today. She was the former director under President Biden of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. And she does not think that it is legal

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for the administration to be taking these kinds of steps. Here's a little bit of what she had to say.

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ELIZABETH KLEIN, Former Director, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: Many of us believe they have gone outside of what is lawful, certainly outside of any appropriate process. They have

crafted these agreements, which really the best way to describe them are backdoor deals that lack transparency. They lack an appropriate process that you would normally follow.

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LIZ LANDERS: Klein says that the agency that she used to oversee does not have the statutory or regulatory authority to refund the monies to these companies after

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they paid for the lease. And, Amna, this is raising questions for members of Congress and also Republicans in New York state who are questioning the administration's moves here.

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AMNA NAWAZ: Liz Landers, great reporting, as always. Thank you so much. LIZ LANDERS: Of course.

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hcr npr picked up 13 yo trump rape missing docs

HILLARY EPSTEIN DEPOS ASKED ABOUT UFO AND PIZZAGATE

CALLS VILE; her written st rips new one; comer told up front this will not go well, we are better at it; see hcr

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we will have home agIN BY GOD PROUD BOY

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National Public Radio reported that an investigation uncovered President Donald Trump's efforts to eliminate all information and intelligence related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

According to the audio report by Tom Dreisbach and Ayesha Rascoe, they have responded by creating a public archiveof all videos, audio files, photos and other information available about the Jan. 6 attack, and they will make it searchable.

Dreisbach explained that the Trump administration is "actively trying to rewrite this history." He recalled that when it all unfolded a few years ago, the public, along with Republicans, agreed that Jan. 6 was illegal and reprehensible.

Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it "an act of domestic terrorism."

Five years later, everyone involved received a blanket pardon, including "great patriots" who attacked police. In a statement played by the reporters, Trump claimed they were not violent.

"The Justice Department has deleted records of those cases. It has scrubbed references to Jan. 6 as a riot. They fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on those cases. They even hired a former Jan. 6 defendant at the Justice Department, a guy who called cops Nazis and loudly yelled that the rioters should kill the cops," said Dreisbach.

Once the details began to disappear, Chief Justice James Boasberg of the D.C. district court ordered the government to stop any and all removal of court records related to Jan. 6. It's unclear whether that order has been followed, however.

"So, with all those actions to rewrite this history, we thought it was really important to just ground people in the facts," he continued.

The 1,500 court cases included photos, videos and information that Dreisbach said most Americans haven't seen. So, they took the "massive trove of evidence" to catalogue and ensure it is publicly available.

The full archive can be found here.

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Right-wing influencers shape nation and Trump’s understanding of Portland protests

By Erik Neumann (OPB)

:{Oct. 11, 2025

Social media personalities, conservative media outlets and the Trump administration itself are blending online content to serve the administration’s policies.

Trump supporters face off with protesters outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

Benny Johnson, a pro-Trump social media personality from Florida, announced to his followers on X that he had arrived.

“Yo, what’s up!” Johnson said Tuesday as he strolled into the airport. “We are on the ground in Portland, Oregon.”

Johnson was in town to meet with three other social media influencers and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to tour the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where protests had been taking place since June.

“The Trump administration is here today. Follow along. The Trump administration ain’t gonna have any of this,” Johnson said. “This is going to be a rowdy day.”

From there, the influencers packed into SUVs and followed Noem, passing through police lines that had been established around the ICE facility and eventually behind its gates.

Standing on the building’s rooftop, Johnson and the other influencers filmed Noem for their millions of followers online. But the day was less than rowdy.

On the street below, around 20 reporters from local and national outlets stood behind yellow caution tape, along with a handful of protesters. It was a sunny fall day in Portland, far from the burning hellscape portrayed online.

Still, influencer Nick Sortor warned Noem that she wasn’t seeing the real story.

“This is absolutely nothing as to what it is at night though. It’s really bad at night,” Sortor said. “That sun goes down and it gets totally lawless.”

Social media personalities like those who joined Noem are increasingly shaping the public’s understanding of events in Portland, where the Trump administration has been trying to deploy the National Guard in recent weeks.

While partisan online posting about protests in the Northwest is nothing new, right-wing media influencers are now being welcomed into the federal government to promote its messages. This kind of media access shows a deepening alliance between the administration and an online world willing to misrepresent facts if it means furthering political goals.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stands on the roof of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025.

*Eli Imadali / OPB

The influencers’ personal content is blended with interviews on Fox News, Newsmax and other outlets, and reposted by federal agencies at times. Sortor and another media personality on the ICE tour, Katie Daviscourt, appeared on a panel at the White House on Wednesday with President Trump, where clips were similarly repurposed and spun out to broader conservative media.

Local media like OPB and The Oregonian/OregonLive have not been given the same access to the ICE building when they requested it. In response to requests to tour the ICE building, DHS officials have asked OPB – a century-old media organization that has covered newsworthy events at the protests since their earliest days - to share links to OPB coverage of the protests before considering access.

‘Counter-protesters themselves’

The current Trump administration is working with these influencers to justify the president’s actions, according to A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor who studies media activism in the University of Alabama’s journalism department.

“The streamers are actually counter-protesters themselves who are going and documenting the protests that they disagree with. The government is actually working hand-in-glove with those folks in order to promote the government’s message,” Bauer said. “That is a new development.”

Masked-up federal agents confront the protesters outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 28, 2025.

*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

There are many examples over the years of mainstream journalists embedding with the government to cover major events, like during the Vietnam or Iraq wars. But those reporters were largely free to be critical of the government.

Bauer said right-wing influencers don’t follow the journalistic norms of balance, independence and not personally participating in stories. Instead, he said, they start out with an ideological vision of the world and then narrate what they see in a way that fits that vision.

“The consequences are that we have two competing visions of reality,” Bauer said.

There have been almost nightly protests outside of Portland’s ICE facility for months. Since June, the Portland Police Bureau has made at least 47 arrests, and federal officials have arrested dozens more, though not everyone has been charged with a crime.

Still, the protests span just one or two city blocks. Many nights, there are fewer than two dozen people. Dancing and whimsical costumes have been a frequent protest tactic since the Trump administration has expressed a desire to send in military troops to suppress the demonstrations.

Protesters recover after gas is deployed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, Portland, Ore., Oct. 4, 2025.

*Alejandro Figueroa / OPB

But these influencers tell a story that chaos is rampant. And now, they are having the biggest impact possible by shaping how President Trump views the protests. They repeated a vision of Portland to him at a White House roundtable on Wednesday that many residents wouldn’t recognize.

“The amazing thing is you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights. I mean, violence, it’s so crazy,” Trump said during the televised round table. “And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal. It’s almost like, are you waking up from a dream or something?”

A history of clashes

Right wing presence at protests in Portland is not a new phenomenon.

During the president’s first term, counter-protesters were a regular presence in the Rose City when residents and left-aligned demonstrators took to the streets. Provocateurs like Joey Gibson would frequently show up at protests between 2015 and 2020 to film and engage in conflicts with what they described as antifa mobs.

At times, those provocations turned violent, with people being shoved, maimed and even killed as dueling political factions took to the streets.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson directs people back to the west side of the Willamette River during demonstrations in Portland, Ore., Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019.

*Bradley W. Parks / OPB

Those protests also launched the careers of streamers and media personalities who focused on the conflict with a particular political view, such as Andy Ngo, a former Portland resident who now edits for the Canadian conservative outlet the Post Millennial.

With around 1.7 million X followers, Ngo is an influential voice on the right who appeared at Wednesday’s roundtable with President Trump. He also helped pave the way for the people aligning with the Trump administration against the current Portland protests. That includes Daviscourt, who brands herself on X as an investigative reporter for the Post Millennial.

While activists like Gibson have appeared at the protests outside the ICE building in recent days, the content being produced by the streamers is not restrained to their own feeds and fans, as it largely was during the first Trump administration.

On Thursday, Ngo made a post to his X account warning of an impending attack on federal law enforcement.

“Antifa in Portland have been plastering flyers around the city urging people to try and crash the DHS helicopter flying over ICE,” Ngo wrote just before 9 p.m., sharing an image of a flyer with lasers pointing at a helicopter.

Around three hours later, DHS posted a similar version of the flyer to its X account.

“Antifa domestic terrorists WILL NOT overrun our cities,” the post stated.

Facts on the ground

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and most other state officials have rejected the need for the Trump administration to send the National Guard to the city. But their views seem to have little influence on the White House’s stated plans and rhetoric.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson speaks with Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty at a press conference Monday, Sept. 29 in Portland Ore. Wilson and 10 Oregon mayors spoke against President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard in Portland.

*Saskia Hatvany / OPB

On a recent night outside the ICE facility, conservative podcaster Matt Tardio was live-streaming the Portland protests. Tardio said he’s trying to capture everything that’s going on, not just the clashes between protesters and police.

“I do know that I’ve caught some coming-up streamers or whatever they were, legitimately trying to start problems and having hidden cameramen off to the side trying to capture those problems starting so that they could have their viral clips,” Tardio said. “That’s messed up.”

Tardio, who is a veteran, agrees that the situation on the ground is being exaggerated online.

“I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve said I don’t think the National Guard needs to come out here. I feel that the Portland Police Bureau can handle it,” he said.

But that hasn’t stopped other influencers from repeating the story about a war-ravaged city that gets amplified by Trump officials and repackaged across the media ecosystem.

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rww 7 25

Mark Meckler celebrates Republicans defunding NPR and PBS because they are "anti-American, anti-conservative, anti-religious, anti-traditional values propaganda."

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Although Donald Trump vehemently denied knowing anything about Project 2025 during the 2024 presidential race, far-right Christian nationalist Russell Vought — a major architect of the Project 2025 agenda — now heads the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Project 2025 called for federal government employees to be fired in huge numbers and replaced with an army of MAGA loyalists, and Vought has been pushing Project 2025's recommendations at OMB.

On Thursday morning, June 17, Vought attended a Christian Science Monitor breakfast — where, according to Politico's Katherine Tully-McManus, he openly expressed his disdain for bipartisanship.

Vought told reporters, "The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan…. There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, 'I'm voting for a bipartisan appropriations process.' That may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain."

READ MORE: 'Didn’t you vote to pass this?' GOP rep stumps CNN host after blasting bill he voted for

The previous day, the U.S. Senate passed a rescissions package that includes major cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as well as to foreign aid. And Vought is hoping that more cuts will be forthcoming.

Vought told reporters, "We are willing to send up additional rescissions. I think if this continues to pass, we're likely to send up another rescissions package that would come soon, and we'll be working on that to try to get that across the finish line. We're not there yet."

Politico's Nicholas Wu posted Tully-McManus' reporting on X, formerly Twitter. And Vought's comments against bipartisanship are generating a lot of discussion on the social media platform.

X user Roger Dodger posted, "That is one of the more obscene things I have heard. Just terrible."

READ MORE:'Who in the world would be stupid enough to believe that?' Morning Joe torches Trump

Another X user, Catherine H., sarcastically wrote, "Yeah, because why would you want a unified country?"

X user Scott Plante commented, "Not how democracies work, Russ."

Another X user, Biscuit Salad, wrote, "He is old, and any pretense that the two term president with a decade-long death grip on his party isn't 'the establishment' gets more hilarious every day."

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pass 9b recission 2 gop defect? ! PBS

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U.S. President Donald **Trump on Thursday signed an executive order calling for an end to taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, an escalation of his assault on the media that could shutter hundreds of local stations across the country.

The president's order, which he signed behind closed doors, echoes a section of Project 2025, a far-right agenda that called for stripping public funding from NPR, PBS, and other broadcasters on the grounds that they "do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives."

Trump's order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—a private nonprofit corporation created and funded by Congress—to "cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my administration's policy to ensure that federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage."

The executive order, which is expected to face legal challenges, also directs all federal agencies to "identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS."

Trump's move was expected, and it came in the wake of reports that the administration intends to ask Congress to rescind previously approved funding for CPB, which is already engaged in a court fight with the president over his attempt to fire several of the organization's board members. The Associated Pressreported Thursday that the rescission request "has not yet been sent to Capitol Hill."

According to the organizations' estimates, federal funding accounts for roughly 1% of NPR's annual budget and 15% of PBS's yearly revenue.

In a letter to congressional leaders earlier this week, a coalition of civil society groups led by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that, if enacted, Trump's proposed funding cuts for public broadcasting "will result in the shutdown of dozens, if not hundreds, of local, independent radio and television stations serving Americans in every corner of the country."

"As it stands, public media journalists are often the only reporters attending a school board meeting, or a local zoning hearing, or at the scene of a crime," the groups wrote. "They are the journalists most likely to hold local public officials accountable and expose

corruption. Faraway digital media outlets will not replicate this coverage, and the American public will lose out."

Trump's attack on public broadcasters is part of his administration's broader effort to undermine journalism in the United States and around the world.

RSF said in a report published Friday that Trump's "early moves in his second mandate to politicize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ban The Associated Press from the White House, or dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for example, have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism."

"After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States," the group said, "the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and Donald Trump's return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation."

NOW READ:Trump's top spy chief blasted as her 'crazy' cash grab is exposed

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NOTUS

By Jose Pagliery

April 29, 2025

A federal judge in D.C. on Tuesday blocked the White House from immediately exerting control over NPR and PBS just a day after President Donald Trump claimed to have the authority to fire most of the directors overseeing their parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss forbade the Trump administration from replacing three board members without providing at least two days’ notice to give the court time to potentially step in....

//

The bipartisan Federal Election Commission has unanimously dismissed a complaint from conservative activists who alleged NPR is controlled by the Democratic Party and “clearly and unmistakably” advocated for 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The 4-0 ruling, released Monday evening, affirms what the FEC has previously established: that NPR is a legitimate news organization exempt from election laws governing political committees and candidates.

This victory comes at a critical juncture for NPR, as President Donald Trump wants...

FEC Unanimously Dismisses Conservative Complaint Against NPR

The ruling, which affirms that NPR is a news organization, comes as Trump pushes Congress to slash funding for the public broadcaster.

The victory comes at a critical juncture for NPR. Charles Dharapak/AP

By Dave Levinthal

April 22, 2025

The bipartisan Federal Election Commission has unanimously dismissed a complaint from conservative activists who alleged NPR is controlled by the Democratic Party and “clearly and unmistakably” advocated for 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The 4-0 ruling, released Monday evening, affirms what the FEC has previously established: that NPR is a legitimate news organization exempt from election laws governing political committees and candidates.

This victory comes at a critical juncture for NPR, as President Donald Trump wants Congress to slash more than $1 billion in federal support for public broadcasting. Trump this month accused NPR of publishing and broadcasting “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’” while harboring “zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.”

Much of the October complaint from two conservative organizations — the United States Justice Foundation and the Policy Issues Institute — centered on whether NPR is entitled to a federal “press exemption,” which shields news organizations with a track record of producing journalism from federal campaign finance law enforcement actions.

The conservative groups argued that NPR does not meet “press exemption” standards because it “does not operate like a typical news organization.” They cited criticism of NPR’s standards by former NPR business editor Uri Berliner and President and CEO Katherine Maher’s pre-NPR history of donating small amounts of money to Democrats before she took over the news organization. They also submitted a 53-page report entitled “NPR Exposes: Why NPR Fails FEC Press Exemption” that lists numerous examples of alleged coverage bias.

But the FEC’s general counsel concluded that NPR “appears to have been acting within its legitimate press function and thus its activities are protected by the press exemption.”

The FEC’s four commissioners — Republicans Trey Trainor and Allen Dickerson and Democrats Shana Broussard and Dara Lindenbaum — officially voted to dismiss the complaint on February 24.

NPR representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But NPR attorneys Michael Bopp and Matthew McGill argued in a November letter to the FEC that “NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization” and “is in no way controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate.”

The attorneys further asserted that it is “entirely incorrect” for the conservative activists to allege that the Democratic Party “exercises control” over NPR.

“Any further inquiry is not only unwarranted, but would also waste the Commission’s valuable resources and intrude on NPR’s own First Amendment rights,” Bopp and McGill wrote.

The FEC previously affirmed in a 2017 complaint against NPR and then-host Audie Cornish that NPR is a press entity entitled to the government’s press exemption.

United States Justice Foundation President Jim Lacy told NOTUS on Tuesday that his organization does not intend to drop the matter and will now look to sue NPR in federal court.

“Was the FEC ruling fair? No, but it was expected, and it does not preclude our continuing the case to get to the bottom of illegal coordination,” Lacy said. “So the case continues … our focus will be on the discovery tools the process offers to uncover the facts of illegal coordination between Democratic Party officials and NPR.”

*Dave Levinthalis a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist.

New on NOTUS

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Donald Trump: When DOGE Hits Red States: Republican Lawmakers Push Back on Trump’s NIH Cuts
Democrats: Democrats Name Their Battlegrounds for the Next Two Years of State-Level Races
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===

YMAIL DEMAND PROGRESS

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is dragging NPR and PBS in front of her Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee in a coordinated attack on the public broadcasters.¹

Elon Musk and Greene are accusing NPR and PBS of “biased” coverage and “propaganda.”² This comes just days after Trump’s FCC opened federal investigations into the broadcasters.³

This is all a targeted campaign to defund PBS and NPR, getting rid of reliable public media so Trump, Musk, and Greene’s network of right-wing disinformation can grow even more powerful. Congress must not allow the far-right to destroy public media.

Sign the petition: Save PBS and NPR from Trump, Musk, and Greene’s campaign to slash critical funding from public media.

When he opened the federal investigation into PBS and NPR, Trump’s FCC Chair, Brendan Carr wrote, “Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS”⁴ — a direct threat to funding that NPR and PBS need to survive.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote last week that she wanted PBS to explain “why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds.”⁵ This is straight from Trump’s media playbook: to accuse any and all trustworthy journalism as lying, propaganda, and biased against him.

It’s exactly how Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to destroy PBS and NPR. But we can’t let them crush public journalism.

Sign the petition: Save PBS and NPR from Musk, Trump, and Greene’s right-wing attacks!

Sources:

GOP Oversight on Twitter, “NPR & PBS CALLED TO TESTIFY,” February 3, 2025.
Elon Musk on Twitter, “Taxpayer money should not be used to fund propaganda,” January 12, 2025.
New York Times, “F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Stations,” January 30, 2025.
Ibid.
The New Republic, “MTG Threatens PBS for Accurately Describing Elon Musk’s Salute,” January 21, 2025.

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MMA

Trump is trying to throttle the free press — and U.S. moguls are going along with it

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 02/04/25

President Donald Trump is wasting no time in carrying out his goal of throttling the free press. Over the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency, his appointees have wielded federal regulatory authority to punish outlets the president dislikes — and American media moguls are responding with submission.

Trump has turned standard conservative attacks on journalists into one of the hallmarks of his political agenda.

He takes as his model Hungary’s autocrat Viktor Orban, who has “effectively dismantled the news media in his country” as “a central pillar of Orban’s broader project to remake his country as an ‘illiberal democracy,’” as New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger noted in an extraordinary warning last year.

During his first term in office, Trump repeatedly tried to leverage state power against his despised “fake news,” and together with his Project 2025 allies has developed a playbook to attack, defund, and delegitimize news outlets in his second.

Major media companies began signaling before Trump took office that they were willing to play ball with his administration in order to preserve their business interests. But since Inauguration Day, as Trump’s appointees have begun showing their intentions, executives at several news outlets have gone into full retreat.

CBS News preps for a Trump settlement

In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump denounced CBS News’ editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris as “the biggest scandal in broadcast history” and declared that CBS should be stripped of its broadcast license. But in addition to invective and threats, Trump also filed a lawsuit against the outlet for producing journalism which displeased him.

The suit, which alleged that CBS airing different portions of Harris’ answer to a question in different venues constituted “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference,” drew derision from First Amendment attorneys, who described its legal theory to CNN as “ridiculous junk” and “a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”

But over the past few weeks, reports have indicated that CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, may be preparing to settle the suit with Trump. Such a settlement would be “an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation,” as The New York Times put it.

But Paramount needs federal approval for its proposed merger with Skydance Media, the production company founded by filmmaker David Ellison, and apparently sees giving the president a payoff as a valid way to smooth the path. Pressure for the settlement is coming from top Paramount shareholder Shari Redstone, the Times reported, who “stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount.”

LA Times’ biotech industry owner goes all-in for RFK Jr.}:

Billionaire doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong once drew plaudits for using a small fraction of the vast fortune he made in the biotech industry to purchase and sustain his hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times.

But Soon-Shiong’s involvement in the paper’s operations has become more heavy-handed since the final months of the presidential campaign, with the owner repeatedly weighing in on Trump’s behalf. Over the past few weeks, Soon-Shiong, whose medical patents are subject to federal oversight, has begun cheerleading for the confirmation of the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services.

“‘I truly believe [Kennedy] has the American public's best interests at heart,’ Soon-Shiong tweeted Tuesday in a post he pinned to the top of his account on X, formerly Twitter, for much of last week,” NPR reported. “It was one of 18 messages promoting Kennedy that Soon-Shiong — a billionaire surgeon and medical inventor — posted over the course of four days, which included Kennedy's confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.”

Soon-Shiong’s support for Kennedy appears to have bled into his paper’s operations as well. On Friday, an op-ed contributor accused the paper of deceptively editing the piece he submitted in order to remove his criticisms of Kennedy’s nomination.

### CNN tries to move on

Journalists at CNN regularly drew vicious attacks from Trump and his supporters during the president’s first term. During a tone-setting press conference shortly before he took office, Trump lashed out at then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta as “fake news” and “terrible.” And Trump’s salvos at the network went beyond just words — his Justice Department tried to block a merger involving CNN’s then-parent company..

This time, CNN’s corporate leadership appears less willing to leave the network vulnerable to Trumpian retribution. Network chief Mark Thompson led an editorial meeting the day before Inauguration Day in which he instructed CNN talent “to be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump” and to avoid “expressing any outrage of their own” or “relitigat[ing] the past,” former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reported in his Status newsletter.

As for Acosta, he left CNN last week rather than accept Thompson’s offer to anchor the network’s coverage from midnight to 2 a.m. ET.

### Trump’s FCC targets ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS

The tip of the president’s anti-press spear is Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission whom Trump elevated to chair. Carr authored Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC and has notably refused to reject Trump’s repeated calls for the commission to yank the licenses of broadcast networks whose reporting he dislikes.

Following his promotion, Carr sent a letter to Bob Iger, the CEO of ABC parent company Disney, in which he denounced the network for having “contributed” to the “erosion in public trust” and pointedly referenced the FCC’s regulatory power.

Carr also restored a right-wing group’s bias complaints targeting NBC, CBS, and ABC for purportedly biased coverage of the presidential campaign, which his predecessor had dismissed. In response to the CBS complaint, the FCC demanded that CBS News provide the unedited transcript and tapes of Harris’ 60 Minutes interview, adding government pressure to the benefit of Trump’s private lawsuit. The network ultimately submitted to what one legal expert described as a “highly partisan intervention” with “no historical antecedent.”

And on Wednesday, Carr announced a new FCC probe of underwriting announcements produced by NPR and PBS, “with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.”

### Defense Department retaliates against news outlets

The Pentagon announced Friday night that the defense correspondents at NBC News, The New York Times, Politico, and National Public Radio are all required to vacate their dedicated workspaces. Their spots will instead go to the right-wing One America News Network, New York Post, and Breitbart — and theoretically to the progressive HuffPost, which does not have a Pentagon reporter and did not request space.

The move came a week after the Senate confirmed former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.

//

Take Trumpist threats to jail journalists seriously

:{09/23/24

Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term}:

:{10/29/24

“Fake News Networks”: Trump and Project 2025’s goal to attack, defund, and delegitimize the press}:

10/16/24

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"Trump's threat to defund all US public media has NPR and PBS on the back foot," The Guardian,December 28, 2024

https://act.moveon.org/go/201979?t=11&akid=423224%2E23137266%2EF-eWqS

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nyt

no lnx nyt

F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Sponsorships

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said the inquiry could help Congress decide whether to continue funding local stations.

“I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials,” said Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, who was appointed by President Trump.

Benjamin MullinDavid McCabe

By Benjamin Mullin and David McCabe

Jan. 30, 2025

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has waded into the politicized debate over NPR and PBS, ordering up an investigation that he said could be relevant in lawmakers’ decision about whether to continue funding the public news organizations.

Brendan Carr, the chairman, said in a letter to NPR and PBS on Wednesday that the inquiry would focus on whether the news organizations’ member stations violated government rules by recognizing financial sponsors on the air.

Mr. Carr said that NPR and PBS stations operate as noncommercial broadcast organizations, but that they may be airing “announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”

“To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for-profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements,” Mr. Carr wrote, “then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars.”

The letter is the latest action from President Trump’s allies to target NPR and PBS stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-funded organization that backs them. Executives at NPR and PBS stations have been bracing for a potential battle over government funding, gaming out financial worst-case scenarios.

Mr. Carr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, said he did not see a reason for lawmakers to continue funding the organizations. He said that he planned to notify members of Congress about his investigation.

Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, said in a statement that the organization’s practice of using sponsorships, also known as underwriting, “complies with federal regulations.”

“We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR’s adherence to these rules,” Ms. Maher said. “We have worked for decades with the F.C.C. in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States.”

PBS said in a statement that it was proud of “noncommercial educational programming,” and worked “diligently to comply with the F.C.C.’s underwriting regulations.”

Two F.C.C. commissioners released statements taking issue with Mr. Carr’s investigation. Anna Gomez, a Democrat, said that the investigation appeared to be an attempt to “weaponize the power of the F.C.C.” Geoffrey Starks, also a Democrat, said that Mr. Carr’s statement gave him “serious concern.”

NPR and PBS have for decades aired sponsorships under rules set forth by the government. While public broadcasters are restricted by law from accepting traditional commercials, the F.C.C. has become more permissive over the years about what public stations are allowed to air. The F.C.C.’s evolving stance on the issue has gradually allowed public radio stations to become less dependent on government funding.

Eric Nuzum, a former NPR executive and co-founder of the audio consulting and production company Magnificent Noise, said that sponsorships and underwriting differ sharply from advertising on commercial TV and radio in several respects.

“The difference is, in a commercial, the sponsor can say anything they want — it’s their time,” Mr. Nuzum said. “In an underwriting situation, the station provides an acknowledgment of who’s providing the funding, along with basic information about the underwriter.”

Earlier this week, NPR executives told staff members that a memo issued by Mr. Trump’s administration imperiled two grant programs benefiting local stations, citing guidance from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mr. Trump’s administration rescinded that memo after it was blocked by a judge.

Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said he believed Mr. Carr seemed to be setting up a legal pretext for interfering with public media.

“The end of Mr. Carr’s letter tellingly goes far beyond underwriting and talks about his thoughts on whether public media should be funded at all and notes that this underwriting issue might be relevant to a broader legislative debate,” Mr. Stern said. “That was troubling to read.”

A correction was made on Jan. 31, 2025: An earlier version of this article misstated the status of legislation that would defund public media. There is no legislation pending before Congress.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at benjamin.mullin@nytimes.com. More about Benjamin Mullin

David McCabe is a Times reporter who covers the complex legal and policy issues created by the digital economy and new technologies. More about David McCabe

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 31, 2025, Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: New F.C.C. Chair Questions PBS and NPR Sponsorships. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Federal Communications Commission, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Service

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see agno ignorance trollery defund

an 1 25

It seems absurd that Gov. Kristi Noem would harm the U.S. Department of Homeland Security just before she is expected to be confirmed as its leader.

But that is what she is doing with her ill-advised plan to destroy South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Noem launched her surprise attack on SDPB in her Dec. 3 budget address, proposing to cut slightly more than $3.6 million of its $5.6 million in state funding.

“If it goes though as proposed,” said SeVern Ashes, SDPB’s director of engineering and operations, “there is not enough funding left to support the infrastructure, engineering salaries, buildings, power or service contracts for the equipment.”

It costs $4.8 million annually to “cover engineering expenses for the networks, studio engineering, and 24-7 coverage,” he said.

SDPB’s system is on 45 towers, and 17 of those co-host public safety communication equipment. The network is critical “to all emergency communication from the SD Division of Criminal Investigation on down to county-level emergency management systems such as ambulance, fire and local police departments such as Sioux Falls and Rapid City,” Ashes said.

Additionally, Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T wireless systems lease space on SDPB towers.

One federal Homeland Security agency using the tower network for communications is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ashes said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S Forest Service and Federal Aviation Administration also use the system, as does the Civil Air Patrol.

Fighting fires in the Black Hills will be difficult without radio communication. County sheriffs, the state Highway Patrol, city and tribal police departments and ambulance systems will all be seeking alternatives.

The potential loss of that emergency communication system is unacceptable to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.

“Law enforcement relies heavily on public broadcasting,” he said in a Monday interview. “We rely on it to a great degree for public safety from weather conditions to missing children and endangered individuals. I mean, that is who we go to for our Amber Alert.”

The public best understands the tower system as the way SDPB transmits its programming, which is the real target of Noem’s ire. Conservatives tend to dislike National Public Radio, which is only one part of SDPB’s programming and is funded by private donations and the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The state’s money primarily is used to maintain SDPB’s transmission system.

Ashes oversees seven SDPB-employed engineers, three in Rapid City, three in Sioux Falls and one in Pierre.

They maintain about 30% of South Dakota’s communication network, with the State Radio System under the Bureau of Information and Technology maintaining the rest.

Ashes said in addition to the towers, SDPB buildings house the state’s radio equipment as well as backup generators. Federal law requires 72 hours of backup power, but SDPB’s sites have seven days of capability.

The sharing of tower space with the State Radio System allows the two organizations to ensure coverage to about 98% of the state.

SDPB is the state’s connection to the federal Emergency Alert System, Ashes said. “We cover every county in the state. Any statewide alert system — Amber Alert, Blue Alert, endangered persons — those are activated out of our facilities in Vermillion.’’

If there is a national emergency, something involving the Homeland Security Department soon to be led by Noem, “Our infrastructure is taken over by the federal government for those alerts.”

If $3.6 million is cut and SDPB is unable to maintain the system, the state radio communications system likely would have to find money to maintain it, or SDPB’s portion goes dark.

At risk would be the state’s television and radio broadcast licenses. Incoming Gov. Larry Rhoden would have to be involved in relinquishing those vital assets.

Noem’s actions basically are those of a person showing malice against NPR, which explores ideas that differ with her worldview.

She never asked anyone at SDPB what might happen if they lost funding, and it’s clear Noem had no understanding of what would happen.

“The first thing we heard was when the governor made the speech,” said Ryan Howlett, CEO of Friends of South Dakota Public Broadcasting. “We weren’t asked about the implication of a cut.”

The bottom line, Howlett said, is that Noem’s proposed cut will “compromise the safety of about 1 million people.”

That’s something Jackley said is unacceptable. “That infrastructure is very significant and important.”

*EDITOR’S NOTE: Brad Johnson is married to a retired former employee of the nonprofit Friends of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

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MMA

November 25, 2024, edition of Newsmax's *Chris Plante: The Right Squad

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): I've been a champion of getting rid of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for way more than a decade. You know, in the media universe that is an ever expanding universe that's exploding before our very eyes, I don't think we need to spend half a billion dollars or more to fund, let's face it, the NPR network is a total — it is a saturation propaganda network, 100% dedicated to the Democrat Party. It's like a foreign entity invaded the United States and set up this radio network.

MICHAEL FOLDI (CO-HOST): And you have a successful radio show with no support from the corporation.

PLANTE: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

FOLDI: Because people actually want to listen to it.

PLANTE: I could use $535 million dollars for my show.

...

PLANTE: All right. Also, you know, Sesame Street is a multi-billion dollar corporation, one of the most profitable outfits in the history of the world. And I think we're still funding them, too. You know, Big Bird can earn his own paycheck.

MERCEDES SCHLAPP (CO-HOST): And they've gone a bit woke, too.

MATT SCHLAPP (CO-HOST): Elmo.

===

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no lnx 11 24

alternet-

The end of left-leaning news?

'Maximum chaos and upset': Rachel Maddow describes nightmare election scenario

Thom Hartmann

November 23, 2024

Have you heard that Comcast is planning to sell MSNBC? Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy it? Will America’s media landscape soon resemble those of Hungary and Russia?

Without the rightwing media juggernaut, Donald Trump probably wouldn’t be president next year and wouldn’t have won in 2016. That said, the progressive media landscape looks like it might be about to get a whole lot worse.

Comcast, which owns NBC and its subsidiaries CNBC and MSNBC (among other media outlets) announced this week that they’ll be spinning off MSNBC (among others) next year.

And the consequences are already showing up. It was reported this week that Rachel Maddow just took a substantial annual pay-cut because of the uncertain future of the network.

In part, this probably reflects a belt-tightening at Comcast, but is also an indication of how legacy media — which now includes cable properties — are taking a hit from newer digital media, from social media to podcasts to web-based networks and programs.

The principal analyst and VP of content for the market research company eMarketer, Paul Verna, told the AP that:

“The writing is on the wall that the cable TV business is a dwindling business,” and, the AP noted, is “predicting future consolidation of the networks or acquisitions through private equity.”

Private equity (like Bain Capital) and large media operation acquisitions have a long history of gutting media properties to increase their profitability; often this includes what a study by Stanford University researchers described as a trend to “substitute coverage of local politics for coverage of national politics, and use more conservative framing.”

Air America radio (for which I wrote the original business plan and which carried my program) was on the air in virtually every major market in the United States, having leased over 50 major, high-powered radio stations from Clear Channel.

My program regularly beat Rush Limbaugh in the ratings: When I was invited to the Obama White House following that election, one person associated with the campaign noted to me privately that they believed Air America had played a meaningful role in Obama’s 2008 election.

That same year, Mitt Romney’s private equity company, Bain Capital, acquired Clear Channel and, in 2009, began reclaiming their stations, replacing Air America content with mostly sports. By coincidence, around that same time it appears Romney decided he’d run against Obama in the next election.

As Air America lost station after station, its ability to earn revenue through selling advertising collapsed. By 2010, the entire network was bankrupt just in time for Romney to run for president.

Will the same thing happen to MSNBC? Stay tuned.

Similarly, Republicans in Congress are salivating over Elon Musk’s rhetorical war with NPR after the network stopped using Xitter when Musk labeled the news network as “state-affiliated” media.

As the headline on Fox Business notes:

“Elon Musk renews calls to defund NPR after clip of CEO resurfaces on X: 'Your tax dollars' are paying for this.’”

Musk, of course, will be in charge of identifying those parts of government or institutions funded by government which can be cut to help pay for Trump’s planned $4 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires.

While it won’t fit her proposed new role as UN Ambassador, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a top member of Republican House leadership, was unambiguous, posting to Xitter: “I will DEFUND NPR.”

This is nothing new: Republicans in the House voted this past July to remove all federal funding for NPR by 2026; Musk and Ramaswamy, working hand-in-glove with Marjorie Taylor Greene (who was just made chairperson of the new subcommittee charged with implementing their recommendations) could probably speed up that timeline.

While NPR goes to great lengths to avoid political bias in their news (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting even hired last month, “in response to right-wing criticism,” multiple editors specifically to spot and stamp out any progressive perspectives that may creep into their reporting), if they were crippled, it’s safe to assume the roughly 1,500 rightwing hate radio stations in the country stand more than ready and willing to pick up their radio audience.

Rightwing billionaires brought us Fox “News,” Sinclair, two other web- and cable-based rightwing TV channels, nationwide networks of hate radio (now also in Spanish), tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to rightwing podcast hosts, and the destruction of about half the nation’s local newspapers.

Not to mention an entire network of billionaire-funded hard-right phony “pink slime” newspapers that pop up around the country every election year.

There’s no equivalent politically-tilted media systems on the left; Democratic-leaning billionaires have stayed out of the media space ever since Romney’s company took down Air America.

The closest TV and radio counterparts we have are Free Speech TV (available on the web, Dish, Sling, Roku, AppleTV, and DirecTV) and the Progress Channel on SiriusXM (my daily program is carried on both).

In the print media space, Substack is growing (although they also carry hard-right content) and provides a solid community of progressive publications (like HartmannReport.com), but that’s a drop in a much larger ocean; even The Washington Post and The New York Times don’t come close to the strength of editorial bias found in the Murdoch family’s The New York Post or The Wall Street Journal.

Publications like The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Nation, and The Guardian provide solid progressive content, but all have funding bases that are trivial compared to conservative publications supported by rightwing billionaire networks. Ditto for websites like Raw Story, Common Dreams, Alternet, LA Progressive, Democratic Underground, and Daily Kos.

As my old friend and the former CEO/founder of Air America, Jon Sinton, noted on his excellent “reluctant” Substack newsletter:

“The left-wing silo is barren. A couple of old line newspapers and magazines. MSNBC and a handful of smallish digital platforms and shows. Pod Save America stands nearly alone as a left-leaning podcast with a large audience.

“By contrast, the right-wing silo is vast and deep. It houses YouTubians, TikTokkers, broadcasters on Fox, Newsmax, Sinclair TV stations, and talk radio stations; posters on social media; and narrowcasters on myriad podcasts.”

All, I would add, heavily supported by rightwing billionaires. As Politico reported in 2014, the Heritage Foundation used to give $1 million a year to Sean Hannity and $2 million a year to Rush Limbaugh alone.

A close acquaintance who was, for years, a mid-level rightwing talk show host told me how a dozen or more times a year he’d give a speech at a random high school and would receive a check for $20,000-$30,000 by a rightwing foundation as a “speaking fee” each time. It was their way of supporting conservative talk radio.

Again, there is literally nothing like that on the left. Not even close.

I’ve repeatedly called for progressive billionaires to jump into the media space, and perhaps the Musk/Trump assaults that are coming will provoke some to act. It may be wishful thinking, but if it does happen it can’t come too soon.

In the meantime, we all must support (and share with our friends) those outlets where we find useful news and information; if we fail to, America’s media landscape may soon mirror Hungary’s and Russia’s with every station and publication praising Dear Leader 24/7/365.

NOW READ: The America-attacking Trump is coming for our military — and then he's coming for us

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May 8, the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the House of Representatives is holding a hearing titled “Examining Accusations of Ideological Bias at NPR, a Taxpayer Funded News Entity.” Media Matters has submitted into the congressional record the following fact sheet about the long campaign to defund public broadcasting, how it is manifesting currently, and how right-wing interests are pushing to turn all media into right-wing propaganda.

Fact sheet: Right-wing attacks on public media | Media Matters for America

9 pp pdf

the ideological takeover of public broadcasting has been a strategy and goal of conservativeinstitutions since at least the 1990s. Think tanks The Heritage Foundation and ManhattanInstitute and political actors including Heritage’s Mike Gonzalez and Manhattan’s ChristopherRufo have long railed against public broadcasting, calling it “biased,” “woke,” “ propaganda.”

Key ﬁgures behind the attacks on public broadcastingConservative think tanks including The Heritage Foundation and The Manhattan Institute aswell as political actors such as Christopher Rufo have spearheaded recent attacks on public broadcasting and NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher.While The Heritage Foundation and The Manhattan Institute have a long history of attacking public broadcasting, Rufo, a longtime anti-civil rights activist, has only recently shifted hisfocus to Maher.

● THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION / MIKE GONZALEZ○ Project 20251, a comprehensive transition plan organized by right-wing think tankThe Heritage Foundation to guide the next GOP presidential administration, andThe Heritage Foundation make it clear that a future Trump administration wouldescalate the right’s decadeslong eﬀort to ideologically defund and transformpublic broadcasting networks.

Donald Trump’s ﬁrst administration already oﬀereda preview of a conservative takeover of public broadcasting, which included thepurging2of veteran journalists and executives from Voice of America and otherbroadcasters under authority of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.○ Project 2025’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership: The ConservativePromise, features a chapter by Heritage Foundation senior fellow MikeGonzalez advising a future Republican administration on how to defund “woke...

public media institutions like PBS and NPR, which are funded by theCorporation for Public Broadcasting.3■ Gonzalez, who has been calling on Congress to defund public media sinceat least420175, claims that “all Republican presidents have recognizedthat public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake” and that “thenext conservative President must” defund public media “and do it despiteopposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary.”■ Gonzalez also argues that “the government should not be compelling theconservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its ownviews.”■ Gonzalez outlines how a Republican president could defund publicmedia by refusing to sign any spending bill that earmarks “a penny forthe CPB.”●

THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE● The Manhattan Institute has also attacked public broadcasting and advocatedagainst government funding for the industry. Speciﬁcally, the conservative thinktank has argued that the existing public6broadcasting7model hurts8local journalism and no longer serves its original mission. A 2020 report from theManhattan Institute argues that the “public broadcasting establishment hurtsthe future of local journalism.” The report supported then-President DonaldTrump’s proposal to drastically cut funding for public broadcasting.9 10...

CHRISTOPHER RUFO○ RUFO’S ATTACKS ON MAHER■

Christoper Rufo, of The Manhattan Institute, has relentlessly campaigned against NPR CEO Katherine Maher, highlighting old socialmedia posts and media from Maher to portray her as the picture of “left-wing ideological capture of institutions.” Rufo highlighted aselection of Maher’s past statements to portray this image to hisaudience.11 12■ Rufo used Maher’s old social media posts to claim that she has atroubling view of censorship and democracy. Rufo smeared Maher as a“left-wing activist who openly endorses censoring, deplatforming, andpunching political opponents.”13 14 15 16■ Rufo also highlighted the “possibility that Katherine Maher collaboratedwith U.S. intelligence” and said her ideology is to bring “the ColorRevolution” and follow “regime-change models in Egypt, Tunisia, andLibya.”17 18○

RUFO’S HISTORY OF ANTI-CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM■ A senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, Rufo has become right-wingmedia’s most popular anti-civil rights activist, ﬁrst emerging in 2020 topush the baseless, viral claim that critical race theory (CRT) has inﬁltratedsensitivity trainings in federal agencies, the military, and schools, and thedangerous lie that LGBTQ people are trying to “groom” children as part of a vast left-wing plot.■

Rufo’s attacks on CRT● Recently, Rufo has taken up attacking “diversity, equity, andinclusion” (DEI) initiatives to target higher education andcampaign against people in positions of authority whom he views as antithetical to conservative ideology.● In 2024, Rufo helped spearhead a campaign against formerHarvard President Claudine Gay, using plagiarism allegations of...p 7

name of “freedom of speech.” Media Matters’ data has repeatedly shown that allegations of social media bias against conservatives are baseless.37 38● Conservative acquisition of media outlets and platforms○ Conservatives have taken to acquiring their own social media platforms andmedia outlets in an eﬀort to create an information media system that feedsright-wing propaganda to a larger audience. A.J. Bauer reported on this trend in Politico, noting Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter,

Donald Trump’s creation of TruthSocial, and the emergence of other conservative alternative platforms like Gaband Jason Miller’s Gettr (which is reportedly on the verge of shutting down).39

AsA.J. Bauer wrote for Politico, this “is merely the latest front in a 70-year eﬀort byconservative activists to cultivate an alternative media system to rival mainstreammedia hegemony. There is no comparable left-wing counterpart.”40● Similarly, wealthy conservatives have been buying local media outlets to injectright-wing talking points into the local media ecosystem.

Sinclair BroadcastingGroup Chairman David Smith purchased The Baltimore Sun, raising concernsabout the direction of the paper, as Smith has shown that he is more than willingto use his local news resources to put a thumb on the scale for Republican causes.At Sinclair, he required outlets to air “must run” segments that injected a right-wingnarrative into local news reports.41 42 43 44● For 20 years, Media Matters has been countering the right’s false accusationsof a liberal media bias and has found that on issue after issue, the bias does notexist.

:{:{ Media Matters studies have shown that national broadcast and cablenetworks barely covered gaﬀes and incoherent statements made by Trump andtop newspapers have mentioned Joe Biden’s age more than twice as much asTrump’s. Major news outlets also gave much less coverage to Trump’s “vermin”attack as they did Clinton’s “deplorables” remark. Media coverage of climate issues has consistently fallen short, and mainstream outlets have struggled with}:

contextually covering abortion and reproductive rights issues and have platformeddisinformation from anti-abortion advocates. Mainstream outlets have alsofollowed conservative media’s lead in setting a right-wing tone and coverage approach on key issues such as immigration, crime and have conceded economic coverage to the right at times, such as with the recent conservative-led ﬁxation on“stagﬂation.”45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53●

NPR’s own staﬀers have pushed back on Uri Berliner’s claims of a liberal bias atNPR and among leadership. In a blog titled “How my NPR colleague failed at‘viewpoint diversity,’” Steve Inskeep observed that Berliner “gave a perfectexample of the kind of journalism he says he’s against.” Inskeep noted thatBerliner’s piece was “ﬁlled with errors and omissions,” such as falsely claiming thatthe editorial team was unanimously made up of registered Democrats.

Inskeepalso noted several of Berliner’s “sweeping statements” that oﬀered no evidence orlacked context, such as claiming that there is no debate over stories at NPR, just a“frictionless” process like an “assembly line.” Inskeep noted that NPRcorrespondent Eyder Peralta similarly wrote on Facebook, “There are a few bits of ...

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tpm 4 23

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pbs-joins-npr-becomes-second-major-news-org-to-stop-using-twitter-over-musk-label

https://www.alternet.org/elon-musk-2659850295/

defund npr boebert

4 23 kos

rand Paul weighed in on Wednesday to brownnose billionaire trollboy Twitter owner Elon Musk in Musk's still-unexplained and one-sided battle against ... NPR, of all things. Earlier in the week Musk had, after getting through his previous top priorities of stripping The New York Times of its "verified" Twitter status and replacing the Twitter logo with a "doge" meme, told the site's engineers to add a "state-affiliated media" warning label to NPR's site account.

He did this despite NPR plainly and factually not qualifying for that "state-affiliated" tag according to Twitter's own declared rules—which became awkward when journalists and internet meanies alike took screenshots of those rules in which Twitter itself had used NPR as a named example of a media account that wouldn't qualify for the tag. Twitter eventually removed NPR as its example, but didn't change the public rules it had presented.

Twitter itself explains that the "state-affiliated" warning label is meant to designate media sites "where the state exercises control over editorial content," such as Russian media site RT. It's a designator to warn Twitter users against propaganda sites sponsored by foreign governments.

The American government does not have any means of controlling the editorial content of NPR, however—it can apply no pressure other than by whatever regulatory pressures it might use against any other media organization. NPR doesn't get any significant direct funding from the federal government. It was created by Congress a half century ago, but in its current incarnation receives its funds from sponsorships, foundational grants, donations, and "membership" fees paid by public radio stations that broadcast NPR-produced shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Those public radio stations themselves get the vast majority of their funding through sponsorships and pledge drives, but they do get some federal grants. These come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which ... is not NPR.

So Elon, whose companies rely extensively on government money and have been repeatedly saved from bankruptcy due to that federal money, is just flat-out wrong on this one. If anyone cares.

That brings us toRand Paul weighed in, that canker sore of a phrase that never makes anything better. Perennial twit and sitting Sen. Mike Lee weighed in to be even wronger than Elon was.

"To be clear, NPR is state-funded media," Lee tweeted with a link to the story.

Nope! Calling it "state-funded" is much, much wronger than Elon's "state-affiliated" label is. Mike Lee, who has been in the Senate long enough to know how to look these things up, is just lying.

But Rand Paul can do better! "If @NPR doesn’t want to be state-run media, we could always cut off their federal taxpayer funding…" Rand tweeted.

See now, that's just a flat-out lie and then some. Calling NPR "state-run" is disinformation. It's simply a hoax. NPR was spun off from a congressional edict a half century ago, and the "state" has not a damn speck of influence in NPR's programming. If NPR lost all of its "federal taxpayer funding" tomorrow, it would be ... just fine. Absolutely fine. The same cannot be said of Tesla or of SpaceX; government subsidies and contracts are the stuff that keeps Elon Musk's companies from collapse.

If SpaceX stopped getting federal money they'd be well and truly screwed, but you're not going to get Elon Musk or his "conservatism except with legal weed" fanboys to admit that. And heaven knows the white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups Elon is nurturing into site prominence aren't going to have a peep to say about it.

While it is tempting to believe that Paul and Lee are sucking up to Musk on Musk's website because they are spineless little weasels looking for his attention, it's probably more accurate to say that this is about Republicanism's hostility towards the news media in general. Musk is not alone in his belief that any media story questioning his extreme alleged brilliance amounts to a conspiratorial hit piece against him; this has been the stuff of Republican whines for decades before Musk became rich enough for his tantrums to matter.

Paul, in particular, has been fuming at the media for not going along with his disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul is quite convinced that Anthony Fauci helped China build COVID-19 in a Chinese laboratory, or something (?) like that, and he is peeved that neither scientists nor the free press is buying what he’s trying to sell.

Again, though, what's going on here is that a narcissistic billionaire has bought himself a social media mini-empire so that he himself can spread disinformation against his perceived enemies, and high-profile Republicans like that very much. That's precisely what they've wanted all along. If the news makes you look bad, goes the Republican mantra, call it fake and invent a "better" version of the news that makes you look better.

Couple this with Elon Musk's new efforts to boost the known state-sponsored propaganda sites that Twitter used to police, and Twitter's turning into quite the Elon Musk-centered free-for-all. Musk is just fine with disinformation on the site. His only concern is how to best monetize it.

Eeeesh. I still say this ends with Elon either selling Twitter for a massive loss or with the site simply crashing and staying crashed due to a lack of anyone left who both knows how to fix it and gives a damn, but Musk is getting into weird Howard Hughes territory with this obsessive need to retaliate against news organizations that report on him. It's not going to be long before he's using his Twitter powers to change news account icons to dog pictures or sneaking into the system to write "I love Elon Musk" tweets from the accounts of The Washington Post or other high-profile accounts that have pissed him off.

Our planned Ukraine episode will have to wait, as Donald Trump is being arraigned in New York City for his role in falsifying records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. This is the first of a potential slew of indictments coming Trump’s way, and we are here for a celebration of karmic justice—and to talk about what happens to the Republican Party after this.

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CARLSON (HOST): Tuesday, two days ago, Twitter slapped a warning label on all tweets from National Public Radio. Going forward, NPR will be identified for users of Elon Musk's social media site as "state-affiliated media." That is the same category as Russia Today or China's Central Television. It means that NPR is not that different from the Tehran Times, with the exception of course, being less accurate and more anti-American.

So, that happened on a Tuesday. Why are we telling you about it? With all the momentous changes underway around the world, why would we open the show with a story about Twitter recategorizing NPR as state media?Well, because it's true. That's the reason. Finally, thankfully, somebody in authority has told the truth about something and that is thrilling to see on its own terms.

In a world defined by lies from our leaders, this seemed like a rare sign of hope and progress.Telling the truth is the most revolutionary act of all -- far more than taking up arms. And yet, you rarely see it. Human beings created language in order to describe the world around them more precisely than they could with say, grunting or sign language. But unfortunately we've been subverting our own creation ever since. But not tonight.

By calling National Public Radio what it is, Elon Musk has used English as it was intended to be used in order to tell the truth. Of course NPR is state media. Have you listened to it? It has all the hallmarks -- repetitive dishonesty, authoritarian politics, unwavering devotion to the party in charge. Of course, that could describe virtually all media in this country. The difference is thestate actually pays for NPR.

https://boingboing.net/2023/04/07/twitters-npr-decision-making-reveals-musk-to-be-a-wishy-washy-know-nothing.html

No matter how unlikely it seems, Elon Musk claims not to know that NPR is not a state-run media institution. A series of NPR's email exchanges illuminate the decisive and well-informed decision-making process that Twitter's ill-informed buyer apparently used to equate NPR with Pravda. Musk goes back and forth on NPR's status as if there is a question at all.

Musk is working hard to make Twitter great again.

Musk, in another email, compared NPR to media outlets controlled by governments of other countries, while also admitting "it sounds like" that might not be the case.

"The operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should do the same for US, but it sounds like that might not be accurate here," he wrote.

It was a turnaround from a tweet he sent hours earlier that the state-affiliated label for NPR "seems accurate."

Amid the conflicting remarks, in a Thursday email, Musk restated his interest in applying "any given rule fairly to all," and he said the label for NPR's account is still being evaluated.

Musk's comments to NPR over the past two days only further clouded what was already a confusing situation.