Indigenous participation crucial amid concerns over Bill C-5, Carney says
Carney's Bill C-5, like Premier Doug Ford's Bill 5, are sparked concern among some First Nations about their long-held treaty rights and the potential for environmental damage caused by pipelines, mines, rail links and roads.
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Chicago Tribune
15 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.' What does that mean for public radio and TV?
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced Friday that it will 'begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package… which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades.' The budget for the next two years was $550 million per year, or $1.1 billion total. What does that mean for audiences who rely on public radio and television? In Chicago, that includes WBEZ and WTTW, but stations across the country will all be affected to some degree. Josh Shepperd is a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of 'Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting.' A Chicago native and WBEZ alum (where he was a broadcast engineer), he shares some initial insights. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Q: What is the Corporation for Broadcasting and what role does it play in public radio and TV? A: The CBP was founded with the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967 in order to mitigate a possible political influence of the government on a publicly-funded broadcasting unit. If it were state-based media, then it would be propaganda messaging directly from the political party in power. So the CBP is one degree of separation through a corporation to a series of content creators, of which most are registered as non-profits. That's the affiliate network and there's about 1,500 of them. And what the CPB does is, it receives the money (allocated by the government) and then distributes that through block grants. NPR and PBS do get some of that, but last I read, NPR only gets 1% and PBS gets 15%, although it changes each year. But the affiliates (the individual stations) can get anywhere from 8% to 70% of their budget from the CBP. In Boston, for example, they get a lot of donations and don't need as much federal money. They'll have a sales structure where they produce a show like 'Antiques Road Show' and it will be purchased by a number of PBS affiliates. But the stations getting a higher percentage of the CBP budget are typically in rural areas, like Cairo, Illinois, that do not have the capacity for a lot of fundraising. And so what happens is, a lot of that money goes to operations and it essentially runs the transmitters or the antenna. The cutting of the CPB is a very extreme blow because it's not just an attack on certain content, it's that they're removing the capacity to broadcast at all, because there are no operational funds to be on the air. Q: Will the end result be that many public radio and television stations cease to exist? A: I think we're looking at 10-15 stations — that's a speculative number — might fall out of FCC compliance, meaning they can not afford to maintain their license. So we'll see shutdowns. It will disproportionately affect Indigenous communities and First Nations broadcasting. Almost all the infrastructural money for (broadcasting on) the reservations comes from the CPB. So almost all of them will shut down. That's 20-something stations. In areas like far southern Illinois that aren't Southern Illinois University territory, so not Carbondale — they have a TV and a radio station, and because it's based at a university, that's helped to maintain some stabilization of public media in rural areas — but a really rural part an hour or two away, those areas will be without local news completely because all the corporations that bought the local newspapers have disinvested in local journalism. It essentially nationalizes content for those areas, so that local cultures no longer exist to themselves anymore. Q: The reason the CPB is 'winding down' is because they exist to distribute federal funds and now there is zero money for them to distribute? A: It's mind-blowing in a lot of ways. I think it's possible it will come back, or it will wind down to a skeleton that can be rebuilt later. But it's like the spine within the body; without the spine, you have a bunch of organs and some flesh. It's everything. Without the CPB, you don't have public media — although you might still have NPR and PBS, because they might be able to find self-sustaining ways to continue to make programs. But it ceases to be public media as we understand it. Q: How might this affect the Chicago market? A: It's going to hurt everyone. It is safe to say that WTTW, which is one of the 10 major public television stations in the country — it produces content, it has a wide and loyal viewership — will almost inevitably have to make layoffs. It will probably affect the kinds of content they're able to produce. It will affect educational outreach. It will decimate every station to some extent. They will probably get an increase in donations for a while, and if the political winds change again, they could rebuild the CPB. But in the interim, it'll be very bad. I try to be moderate in explaining how this works, but this is an ideological project to remove local news access from rural communities, which only have one or two news sources. It eliminates access to information within one's own community. This is about changing the information ecosystem that eliminates local news and replaces it with national news. Q: The situation sounds dire. A: I would call it the most dire situation I've ever seen for any public media system in the west, including Europe. Most of the media we interact with is commercial media, like HBO or something like that. But it's fundamentally different in non-commercial and public media in that public media is built around a mission statement, not the attempt to recoup an investment and profit. It's built around an idea or a principle, and the principle is equal access to information. Before the '60s, it was all educational and called educational television, and it was there to provide equal access to education during segregation. So the idea for public media is to realize democratic access. The entire purpose of it is different from commercial media — even though I love commercial media a lot — so it's really important for democracy that we have this experiment going. And it's such a nominal cost, it's something like $1.60 per person per year.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Issues Threat to Canada After It Backs Palestinian State
Canada on Wednesday became the third close U.S. ally to announce its plan to recognize the state of Palestine in recent days, leaving President Donald Trump none too pleased. 'Preserving a two-state solution means standing with all people who choose peace over violence or terrorism, and honouring their innate desire for the peaceful co-existence of Israeli and Palestinian states as the only roadmap for a secure and prosperous future,' said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Canada's decision follows an announcement from France last week that it will recognize Palestinian statehood. On Tuesday, the United Kingdom committed to do the same unless Israel fails to meet certain conditions to improve conditions in Gaza and commit to peace. Canada's decision, like the U.K.'s, comes with stipulations. Palestine must demilitarize, for example, and 'hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part,' said Carney. Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post, in which he threatened that the decision could hamper a prospective trade deal between the U.S. and Canada, which is to be reached by a Friday deadline lest hefty tariffs go into effect. 'Wow!' Trump wrote. 'Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh' Canada!!!' The response to Canada, a country Trump seemingly has a penchant for intimidating, had more teeth than those to France's and the U.K.'s announcements (on the former he said, 'That statement doesn't carry weight'; the latter, he said, would reward Hamas). Trump seemingly hopes to use the impending trade deal deadline to bully Canada into backing down on its pledge to uphold statehood for Palestine (which is, under international law, 'a right, not a reward,' according to the U.N.'s secretary-general). Carney, for his part, has already noted that the U.S.-Canada trade deal may take some additional time to come to fruition. 'We're seeking the best deal for Canadians,' he said Wednesday. 'We have not yet reached that deal. Negotiations will continue until we do.' Trump's fluid list of demands, per the National Post, has included Canada shelling out for Trump's 'Golden Dome' defense system and aiding Trump's immigration agenda along the U.S.-Canada border.
Hamilton Spectator
2 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Canadian party leaders react
Canada's Conservative and NDP leaders chimed in with calls to action Friday afternoon on the heels of the missed trade deadline. 'Conservatives share Canadians' disappointment that a deal with the United States was not reached by the August 1st deadline,' Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a post on X , calling Trump's tariffs 'deeply misguided policies (that) will hurt families and businesses on both sides of the border.' Poilievre called on Carney's government to cut taxes on energy and home-building and repeal what the Conservative Leader called 'anti-development laws.' Carney 'gave in on key issues' amid tariff talks but still could not achieve a deal in time, NDP Leader Don Davies chided in a statement , pointing to the scrapped digital services tax and the controversial Bill C-2. 'Mr. Carney knew his strategy was failing. He hinted at a missed deadline days ago - and now it's happened.' Davies urged the Liberals to invest in domestic manufacturing and union jobs, stop cuts to Canadian public services and speed up trade diversification with Europe and Asia, among other demands.
