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CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Conservative activists have waited decades to defund PBS and NPR. They are finally getting their chance
Richard Nixon tried. Ronald Reagan tried. President Donald Trump tried during his first term in office. All three Republican presidents wanted to strip taxpayer support for PBS and NPR stations. But all three men were stymied by Congress. This time, however, might be different. Trump, emboldened in his second term, sent a package of spending cuts to Capitol Hill earlier this month, and the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the measure Thursday afternoon. The bill, known on Capitol Hill as a 'rescissions' proposal, is the closest NPR and PBS have ever come to a complete loss of federal funding. The bill would strip all federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes taxpayer dollars to radio and TV stations across the country. If it passes the House, it will move to the Senate for consideration. Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. For public media officials, the bill is a worst-case-scenario. But for conservative activists, it is a welcome change and the culmination of a very long campaign. 'We are thrilled to finally get to this point,' NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham told CNN. 'I've been documenting their taxpayer-funded tilt at MRC for 36 years.' Advocacy groups like MRC, short for Media Research Center, which runs NewsBusters, have been arguing against NPR and PBS for decades, asserting that the taxpayer funding is unnecessary and unfair. The core contention is that public broadcasting is infected with liberal bias and thus is not representative of the public as a whole. The leaders of NPR and PBS reject that charge. 'One of the advantages of public media is that we serve everyone, and it is a requirement and a mandate. It's also a very important mission in polarized times,' NPR CEO Katherine Maher told CNN. One challenge with trying to be a middle-of-the-road platform is that 'people don't agree on what the middle is now,' she added. But the belief that PBS and NPR 'which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news'' (something the Trump White House claimed earlier this year) has become close to GOP orthodoxy. Trump has directed his administration to bring public media to heel, sparking several lawsuits this spring. If the House and Senate pass the spending cuts package, it will be a victory both for Trump and for generations of conservative activists. 'This could be our last, best chance to win the battle once and for all,' MRC's call-your-congressman website says. Republicans have been trying to take the 'public' out of public broadcasting for almost as long as the system has existed. In the 1998 book 'Made Possible By…: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States,' James Ledbetter chronicled how Nixon's administration had a 'smoldering animus against public television' that erupted several times in the early '70s. Nixon vetoed two bills relating to the system's funding structure. But even his veto memos defended the existence of public broadcasting and said it needed to be 'strengthened.' Reagan, and later George W. Bush, also proposed cuts to the system's budget and tried to slow its rate of growth. But the proposals always ran into congressional opposition, including from fellow Republicans who strongly believed in the system's mission. The power of educational TV programming like 'Sesame Street' was often invoked to protect public media's pot of money. Graham's group says those arguments are out of date now. And Trump has changed the contours of the debate by trying to zero out the corporation's budget altogether. Trump's anti-NPR, anti-PBS budget proposals were ignored by Congress during his first term. But this year's proposal is branded differently — as a 'DOGE' cut, referring to the much-debated Department of Government Efficiency. The upshot: Added pressure on Republican lawmakers to go along with the bill. The $1.1 billion in public media funds being targeted now, representing the next two years of funding, were allocated by congressional Republicans in a massive budget bill that Trump signed into law earlier this spring. The rescissions package singles out the funds and also claws back money for the US Agency for International Development. Graham said Republicans 'should vote on a party line' to defund what he called 'Democrat-run Broadcasting.' 'It's not state-run, because it sounds like the very opposite of state-run when Republicans are in power. It's Democrat-run at all times, and has been since Jim Lehrer gushed over the twice-a-day coverage of the Watergate hearings: 'As justice, it was pure delicious!'' Lehrer, the famed PBS anchor who died in 2020, made that comment about the fact that Nixon was plotting to defund the system but was sidelined by his own all-consuming scandal. PBS grew in popularity thanks to its live coverage of the Watergate hearings, and some Nixon allies never forgot. Public media officials often point out that news and current affairs programming is a small slice of the overall programming on stations across the country. Shows like 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' and 'Antiques Roadshow' have ardent fan bases — and those supporters have been urged to contact Congress to defend the federal funding that's currently at risk. At the same time, however, Trump allies like Kari Lake have taken to the commercial airwaves to argue that the public dollars are not needed, citing all the changes that have taken place across the media landscape in recent years. 'If NPR and PBS are as amazing as they claim, they should have no trouble securing public funding from people who want to support them,' Lake recently wrote on X. 'But hardworking Americans should no longer be forced to fund content they find objectionable.' Public media officials say those arguments are rooted in exaggerations and misperceptions about what the networks actually air. CNN's Max Foster contributed reporting.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Bob Costas: Trump's attacks on the media are unlike anything in my lifetime
'The free press is under attack,' Bob Costas said at an awards ceremony Monday evening. 'Democracy as we know it is under attack.' The famed sports broadcaster was at the Edison Ballroom podium in New York, accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award for his 'distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public's understanding of the media.' What began as a speech reflecting upon a 50-year career in sports journalism quickly became a scorching sermon about the state of sports media and the threats to the free press coming from President Donald Trump. 'What's happening now are not matters of small degree,' Costas, 73, said of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, including personal lawsuits, FCC investigations, and crackdowns on press access. 'They're different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.' Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. The president 'intimidated ABC into reviewing George Stephanopoulos,' Costas said of the network settling Trump's 2024 defamation lawsuit brought against it after the star anchor repeatedly said on-air that Trump had been 'found liable for rape' in the E. Jean Carroll case when a jury had found him liable for sexual abuse. 'All they should have said was George misspoke,' the sportscaster said. 'They didn't have to pay a $15 million ransom.' Costas then turned his attention to CBS News. 'Did Shari Redstone — because she wants to effect a merger that Trump's FCC could stand in the way of — did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, '60 Minutes?'' Redstone, 71, currently controls Paramount Global, the global media company that owns CBS News. She is seeking to sell her stake in the company as part of a merger with Skydance Media, but the deal needs approval from the Trump administration. As a result, Redstone has reportedly sought to settle the president's lawsuit against CBS over a '60 Minutes' segment — a lawsuit that legal experts have repeatedly deemed bogus — sparking outcry from the network's journalists. 'Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there's billions of dollars at stake,' Costas remarked. (ABC and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) 'These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press,' he said. 'It does not mean that we are without fault,' Costas said. 'It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn't screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives.' However, he added, 'if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump's view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him… I'll stay where we are.' 'I used to love Bob Costas, but then he turned political,' Costas said he's often heard from sports fans. 'You know what, if that's what you think and that's how you think and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.' Costas has often drawn criticism from fellow sports broadcasters for using his perch to bring attention to political issues. In one particularly famous instance in December 2012, he devoted his 'Sunday Night Football' segment to make a plea for gun control after a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself outside the team's practice facility. Costas, who left NBC Sports in 2019 after 40 years there, also lamented the current state of sports broadcasting, which he said 'tragically' lacks in-depth coverage of the political and social issues intimately connected to the games themselves. Such issues, he said, 'need to be covered, not during the game, not in between pitches, or in between free throws, but at some point need to be covered.' Costas suggested that broadcasters have become deferential to the sports leagues, avoiding interrogative questions or controversial topics altogether. 'With all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage, let's say, of the NFL, can't there be a 'Meet the Press'-style interview of (commissioner) Roger Goodell somewhere?' He quipped: 'Sports isn't brain surgery, but it doesn't have to be brain dead either.'
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Bob Costas: Trump's attacks on the media are unlike anything in my lifetime
'The free press is under attack,' Bob Costas said at an awards ceremony Monday evening. 'Democracy as we know it is under attack.' The famed sports broadcaster was at the Edison Ballroom podium in New York, accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award for his 'distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public's understanding of the media.' What began as a speech reflecting upon a 50-year career in sports journalism quickly became a scorching sermon about the state of sports media and the threats to the free press coming from President Donald Trump. 'What's happening now are not matters of small degree,' Costas, 73, said of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, including personal lawsuits, FCC investigations, and crackdowns on press access. 'They're different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.' Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. The president 'intimidated ABC into reviewing George Stephanopoulos,' Costas said of the network settling Trump's 2024 defamation lawsuit brought against it after the star anchor repeatedly said on-air that Trump had been 'found liable for rape' in the E. Jean Carroll case when a jury had found him liable for sexual abuse. 'All they should have said was George misspoke,' the sportscaster said. 'They didn't have to pay a $15 million ransom.' Costas then turned his attention to CBS News. 'Did Shari Redstone — because she wants to effect a merger that Trump's FCC could stand in the way of — did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, '60 Minutes?'' Redstone, 71, currently controls Paramount Global, the global media company that owns CBS News. She is seeking to sell her stake in the company as part of a merger with Skydance Media, but the deal needs approval from the Trump administration. As a result, Redstone has reportedly sought to settle the president's lawsuit against CBS over a '60 Minutes' segment — a lawsuit that legal experts have repeatedly deemed bogus — sparking outcry from the network's journalists. 'Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there's billions of dollars at stake,' Costas remarked. (ABC and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) 'These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press,' he said. 'It does not mean that we are without fault,' Costas said. 'It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn't screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives.' However, he added, 'if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump's view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him… I'll stay where we are.' 'I used to love Bob Costas, but then he turned political,' Costas said he's often heard from sports fans. 'You know what, if that's what you think and that's how you think and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.' Costas has often drawn criticism from fellow sports broadcasters for using his perch to bring attention to political issues. In one particularly famous instance in December 2012, he devoted his 'Sunday Night Football' segment to make a plea for gun control after a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself outside the team's practice facility. Costas, who left NBC Sports in 2019 after 40 years there, also lamented the current state of sports broadcasting, which he said 'tragically' lacks in-depth coverage of the political and social issues intimately connected to the games themselves. Such issues, he said, 'need to be covered, not during the game, not in between pitches, or in between free throws, but at some point need to be covered.' Costas suggested that broadcasters have become deferential to the sports leagues, avoiding interrogative questions or controversial topics altogether. 'With all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage, let's say, of the NFL, can't there be a 'Meet the Press'-style interview of [commissioner] Roger Goodell somewhere?' He quipped: 'Sports isn't brain surgery, but it doesn't have to be brain dead either.'
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
CNN fact-checker becomes network fixture during Trump's first 80 days after giving Biden far less scrutiny
CNN's star fact-checker Daniel Dale has made quite a splash during President Donald Trump's first 80 days in office, earning himself exponentially more air time in comparison to the same period under President Joe Biden. Since Jan. 20, Dale has appeared on-air at least 23 times to fact-check Trump and members of his administration, according to Grabien transcripts reviewed by Fox News Digital. Dale offered his first on-air fact-check of Trump just hours after he was sworn into office in response to remarks Trump made from the Oval Office. CNN anchors frequently have Dale on standby to refute Trump's claims following major speeches like the one he gave to the World Economic Forum and his address to the joint session of Congress as well as Trump's impromptu exchanges with reporters. On at least two separate occasions, Dale appeared on CNN three times in a single day. Cnn 'Fact-checker' Praises Biden As 'Generally Factual,' Calls Inacurracies 'Slips Rather Purposeful Lies' The fact checks challenged Trump's claims on a wide variety of topics from tariffs and trade policy, Ukraine aid, to his commentary about the California wildfires and the deadly airplane-helicopter crash at Washington, D.C.'s Reagan International Airport. The same, however, cannot be said about Dale's coverage of Biden in early 2021. During the same 80-day period, Dale offered just two on-air fact checks of Biden, according to transcript search results. Read On The Fox News App In fact, Dale appeared on CNN more often during Biden's first 80 days to fact-check Trump, who was no longer in office, as well as GOP lawmakers, who at the time did not control either chamber of Congress. Wapo, Cnn 'Fact-checkers' Silent As Harris Falsely Claims Biden 'Starting From Scratch' On Vaccine Rollout During a February 2021 appearance on the now-defunct "Reliable Sources" program, Dale vowed he wouldn't be "on vacation" during Biden's presidency. "We know Biden speaks less, he tweets less, and he lies less when he talks and tweets," Dale told CNN's Brian Stelter at the time. "Trump was a unique case, but that doesn't mean Biden is perfect. He sometimes exaggerates, he sometimes embellishes." Dale later compared Biden's "smattering of falsehoods" to "the daily avalanche we got from Trump" during Trump's first term in office. The "smattering" and "avalanche" of falsehoods correlate with the amount of access (or lack there of) Trump and Biden have given, including in their first 80 days in office. Trump regularly makes public appearances and constantly takes questions from reporters, while Biden limited his visibility and curtailed his interactions with the press. Cnn Fact-checker Daniel Dale Mocked For Timid Critique Of Biden's Habit Of 'Inventing Or Embellishing Stories' Still, there was certainly less of an urgency for Dale to appear on-air to fact-check Biden in 2021 versus Trump in 2025. While Dale appeared on CNN to fact-check Trump on Inauguration Day earlier this year, it wasn't until March 25, 2021, more than two months after Biden was sworn into office, to fact-check him on air over his false claim that his administration was turning away migrant families at the southern border. The second fact-check during the same 80-day period came on April 3, 2021, over what Biden had said about Georgia's election reform bill. Meanwhile, Dale spent more airtime fact-checking Trump about Jan. 6 and his 2020 election denial claims as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill over their comments on government spending. "Biden has been generally factual so far, especially in scripted remarks," Dale wrote on X in March 2021. "Where he has been inaccurate, it has often been when he has been attempting off the cuff to refer to numbers he doesn't have nailed down." This disparity also occurred in Dale's online coverage for Dale wrote at least 26 fact-checks against Trump during his first 80 days, dwarfing the eight fact-checks he dedicated to Biden at the same point in 2021. Notably, Dale fact-checked Trump before fact-checking the sitting president, published on Biden's Inauguration Day. For both Biden and Trump, Dale offered a recap of their falsehoods to mark their first full month in office. For Biden, Dale's headline was "Fact check: Breaking down Joe Biden's first month of claims" while Trump's was "Analysis: Trump's 13 biggest lies of his first month back in office." Dale previously shed light on his fact-checking methodology when it came to Trump and Biden during the 2020 election cycle, telling Stelter that Trump "makes the same false and misleading claims over and over" while suggesting it isn't as obvious for Biden. "If Trump lies, you probably know it," Dale said in August 2020. "If Biden were to lie, you might not know it because it might be new." A spokesperson for CNN declined to article source: CNN fact-checker becomes network fixture during Trump's first 80 days after giving Biden far less scrutiny
Fox News
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
CNN fact-checker becomes network fixture during Trump's first 80 days after giving Biden far less scrutiny
CNN's star fact-checker Daniel Dale has made quite a splash during President Donald Trump's first 80 days in office, earning himself exponentially more air time in comparison to the same period under President Joe Biden. Since Jan. 20, Dale has appeared on-air at least 23 times to fact-check Trump and members of his administration, according to Grabien transcripts reviewed by Fox News Digital. Dale offered his first on-air fact-check of Trump just hours after he was sworn into office in response to remarks Trump made from the Oval Office. CNN anchors frequently have Dale on standby to refute Trump's claims following major speeches like the one he gave to the World Economic Forum and his address to the joint session of Congress as well as Trump's impromptu exchanges with reporters. On at least two separate occasions, Dale appeared on CNN three times in a single day. The fact checks challenged Trump's claims on a wide variety of topics from tariffs and trade policy, Ukraine aid, to his commentary about the California wildfires and the deadly airplane-helicopter crash at Washington, D.C.'s Reagan International Airport. The same, however, cannot be said about Dale's coverage of Biden in early 2021. During the same 80-day period, Dale offered just two on-air fact checks of Biden, according to transcript search results. In fact, Dale appeared on CNN more often during Biden's first 80 days to fact-check Trump, who was no longer in office, as well as GOP lawmakers, who at the time did not control either chamber of Congress. During a February 2021 appearance on the now-defunct "Reliable Sources" program, Dale vowed he wouldn't be "on vacation" during Biden's presidency. "We know Biden speaks less, he tweets less, and he lies less when he talks and tweets," Dale told CNN's Brian Stelter at the time. "Trump was a unique case, but that doesn't mean Biden is perfect. He sometimes exaggerates, he sometimes embellishes." Dale later compared Biden's "smattering of falsehoods" to "the daily avalanche we got from Trump" during Trump's first term in office. The "smattering" and "avalanche" of falsehoods correlate with the amount of access (or lack there of) Trump and Biden have given, including in their first 80 days in office. Trump regularly makes public appearances and constantly takes questions from reporters, while Biden limited his visibility and curtailed his interactions with the press. Still, there was certainly less of an urgency for Dale to appear on-air to fact-check Biden in 2021 versus Trump in 2025. While Dale appeared on CNN to fact-check Trump on Inauguration Day earlier this year, it wasn't until March 25, 2021, more than two months after Biden was sworn into office, to fact-check him on air over his false claim that his administration was turning away migrant families at the southern border. The second fact-check during the same 80-day period came on April 3, 2021, over what Biden had said about Georgia's election reform bill. Meanwhile, Dale spent more airtime fact-checking Trump about Jan. 6 and his 2020 election denial claims as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill over their comments on government spending. "Biden has been generally factual so far, especially in scripted remarks," Dale wrote on X in March 2021. "Where he has been inaccurate, it has often been when he has been attempting off the cuff to refer to numbers he doesn't have nailed down." This disparity also occurred in Dale's online coverage for Dale wrote at least 26 fact-checks against Trump during his first 80 days, dwarfing the eight fact-checks he dedicated to Biden at the same point in 2021. Notably, Dale fact-checked Trump before fact-checking the sitting president, published on Biden's Inauguration Day. For both Biden and Trump, Dale offered a recap of their falsehoods to mark their first full month in office. For Biden, Dale's headline was "Fact check: Breaking down Joe Biden's first month of claims" while Trump's was "Analysis: Trump's 13 biggest lies of his first month back in office." Dale previously shed light on his fact-checking methodology when it came to Trump and Biden during the 2020 election cycle, telling Stelter that Trump "makes the same false and misleading claims over and over" while suggesting it isn't as obvious for Biden. "If Trump lies, you probably know it," Dale said in August 2020. "If Biden were to lie, you might not know it because it might be new." A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.
