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The Intercept
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Intercept
PBS Station Wipes Drag and Trans Content After DOGE Outcry
The New York-area PBS station WNET has scrubbed its archives of at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression, The Intercept has learned, as Congress and the Trump administration target public broadcasters with attempts to strip their funding. The station's educational program 'Let's Learn' became an object of ire for the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency this spring over the 2021 episode 'The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish,' in which the drag queen and children's author Lil Miss Hot Mess sings about drag performance to the tune of 'The Wheels on the Bus.' The subcommittee's chair, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the 'Anti-American Airwaves' hearing in March by claiming that 'PBS News is not just left-leaning, but it actively uses taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical, left positions like featuring a drag queen on the show' and calling Lil Miss Hot Mess a 'child predator' and a 'monster.' Far from defending the programming, PBS CEO Paula Kerger distanced the broadcaster from the show. 'The drag queen was actually not on any of our kids' shows,' she said, claiming the episode made it to the PBS website by mistake and had already been removed. PBS followed up with a letter that said it had 'removed all remaining references to the Episode' online on March 26, 2025. But it wasn't just PBS: The New York member station that produces 'Let's Learn' — which had stood by the episode under scrutiny in previous years — then quietly removed the episode across its platforms, according to an Intercept analysis. WNET also erased two other episodes about a children's book featuring a a transgender protagonist, the analysis shows. WNET did not respond to requests for comment. A PBS spokesperson reiterated Kerger's claim that the episode was uploaded by mistake and said its removal was unrelated to the current political climate, but did not respond to questions about why over 250 other 'Let's Learn' episodes are still available for viewing on the official PBS website. Public broadcasting was an object of U.S. conservative wrath for decades before the Trump administration. But as the current government has intensified its attacks, PBS has engaged in other recent examples of self-censorship. PBS removed a scene in which Art Spiegelman discusses an anti-Trump cartoon from a documentary about the artist, and it pulled a gaming documentary with transgender themes from planned syndication — then relisted it after The Atlantic asked about the deletion. But the erasure of WNET's programming on drag and transgender culture shows the effects reaching a local level, where the station that produced the episodes elected to take them down — despite previously having defended them. After premiering in the spring of 2021, 'The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish' quickly garnered social media outrage and news coverage. Following the first round of backlash, WNET added a disclaimer on its YouTube channel and the 'Let's Learn' website, noting that the series is 'not funded or distributed by PBS.' But at the time, WNET defended the episode, telling Fox News that Let's Learn 'strives to incorporate themes that explore diversity and promote inclusivity, which are relevant to education and society. Drag is a performance art that can inspire creative thinking and the questioning of stereotypes.' The outrage didn't go away: Two years later, Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt explicitly mentioned the episode when he vetoed a bill to extend funding for his state's PBS station. Despite all the attention, WNET continued to make the episode available — until this year. An Intercept analysis showed that following the DOGE hearing, WNET quietly removed all mentions of the episode across its platforms. The original episode page now displays a generic error message, reading 'Oops! The page you are looking for was not found.' 'The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish' no longer appears in a list of episode titles, and the video is listed as private on the WNET Education YouTube channel. WNET also instructed search engines not to list the episode's old webpage. Aside from removing 'The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish,' WNET has additionally removed at least two more 'Let's Learn' episodes, The Intercept has found. In the November 2020 episode 'Max and the Talent Show,' author Kyle Lukoff reads his book of the same name. The story concerns a white transgender boy named Max who helps his Black male friend Steven prepare for a talent show and 'find the perfect gown, shoes, cape, and tiara,' according to the School Library Journal. The journal calls the book 'an excellent choice as an early reader with an LGBTQIA+ theme.' WNET removed that episode and another, called 'Brain and Same Both Have Long 'A.'' That hourlong episode also features 'Max and the Talent Show,' which students read in order to 'practice sounds with the long 'a.'' Although it has been erased from PBS and WNET platforms, 'The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish' can still be viewed via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
PBS Doc on Iconic Cartoonist Cuts Trump Criticism
A PBS executive pushed for the removal of an anti-Trump cartoon in a documentary about famed artist Art Spiegelman. Stephen Segaller, of parent company WNET, said that his rationale was not to get in the good graces of the president, who has attacked PBS for pushing 'left-wing propaganda.' Rather, the comic's inclusion in the documentary feature, Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, was a 'breach of taste,' The New York Times reported. The cartoon 'portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump's head,' according to the Times. The depiction of Trump was for the 2017 Women's March newspaper, RESIST! Trump signed an executive order on May 2 axing public funding for NPR and PBS, which he accused of 'spread[ing] radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'' The call from American Masters executive producer Michael Kantor came in April about two weeks before the documentary was set to air. Filmmakers ultimately agreed. (A portion of the segment can be seen on Instagram.) 'We were told the film still has an anti-fascist message, and the audience can connect the dots themselves,' producer Alicia Sams told Documentary Magazine, which first reported on the decision. 'The irony of censoring someone who is a free speech advocate is maybe lost on PBS, but certainly not lost on us.' Sams and the other filmmakers questioned PBS's motives. They noted that the documentary had already been approved to air, and to do so in the 10 p.m. slot to allow for obscenities. 'If PBS cannot protect the free speech of its content creators and subject matters without fear of retribution from members of the government who may find their views displeasing, then how can it strengthen the 'social, democratic and cultural health' of the American people?' Sams and four other producers and directors wrote in a letter to executives at PBS and WNET, citing PBS's mission statement, according to the Times. 'Rather, your actions will have a chilling effect on the free speech of artists, filmmakers, and journalists who have long looked to public media as a platform for all Americans,' they wrote. Spiegelman, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the graphic novel Maus, sharply criticized the scene's removal in a statement attached to the filmmakers' letter. 'It's tragic and appalling that PBS and WNET are willing to become collaborators with the sinister forces trying to muzzle free speech,' he said. Segaller claimed that Trump's pressure on PBS—and on any institution that doesn't fall in line with his demands—was irrelevant. 'I don't think we'd have made a different decision if it had been a year earlier,' he told the Times.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Criticism of Trump Was Removed From Documentary on Public Television
The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning 'American Masters' series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations. The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste. Alicia Sams, a producer of 'Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,' said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie's April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of 'American Masters,' informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels. Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump's head — was a 'breach of taste' that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series. But the filmmakers have questioned whether political considerations played a role. They have noted that earlier this year, according to Documentary Magazine, which first reported the 'American Masters' decision, PBS postponed indefinitely a documentary set to air about a transgender video-gamer for fear of political backlash. Sams pointed out that their film had already been approved for broadcast — the filmmakers agreed it would be shown at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., so that certain obscenities would not need to be blurred or bleeped — and that the call came a week after a Capitol Hill hearing in which Congressional Republicans accused public television and radio executives of biased coverage (the executives denied that accusation in sworn testimony). 'If PBS cannot protect the free speech of its content creators and subject matters without fear of retribution from members of the government who may find their views displeasing, then how can it strengthen the 'social, democratic and cultural health' of the American people?' Sams and four other producers and directors wrote to PBS and WNET executives last month, quoting from PBS's mission statement. 'Rather, your actions will have a chilling effect on the free speech of artists, filmmakers and journalists who have long looked to public media as a platform for all Americans,' they added. A statement from Spiegelman was appended. 'It's tragic and appalling that PBS and WNET are willing to become collaborators with the sinister forces trying to muzzle free speech,' he wrote. Segaller acknowledged the pressures facing his station, but insisted politics had not played a part in its decision: 'I don't think we'd have made a different decision if it had been a year earlier,' he said. PBS referred an inquiry to WNET. This month, Trump accused NPR and PBS of producing 'left-wing propaganda' and, in an executive order, instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end federal funding for them as allowed by law. The chief executives of all three organizations have challenged the legality of the move, which could decrease public media's revenue and alter their relationships with member stations. The filmmakers acknowledged that 'American Masters' had the right to demand the change under their licensing agreement. They acquiesced, Sams said, because the change would not affect the movie which they own, for distribution elsewhere. The documentary, in uncut form, had already played at film festivals and run theatrically at Manhattan's Film Forum and elsewhere, and is currently available on the streaming service Kanopy. The film chronicles the life and work of Spiegelman, 77, whose graphic memoir, 'Maus,' won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The book narrates his parents' experiences in the Holocaust and his latter-day reckoning with them — famously depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. In their letter, the filmmakers highlighted the irony of editing a film about Spiegelman, given that — as the documentary shows — 'Maus' has been subjected to book bans in recent years. The removed scene features Spiegelman reading a short comic he drew about Trump in late 2016. It was printed in a magazine that his wife, Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker's longtime art editor, and daughter, the author Nadja Spiegelman, self-published and distributed at the 'Women's March' protest shortly after the 2017 inauguration. 'Even a TOWER full of Tic Tacs can't mask the toxic stench of Fascism!' the cartoon begins. It also features a swastika drawn into the border between panels. Defunding public television would further constrict the viability of topical documentaries, said Thom Powers, the founder of the DOC NYC festival, where 'Disaster Is My Muse' premiered last fall. 'The underlying question is, who is in the speaking-truth-to-power business today?' Powers said.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Now PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech
American Masters, an award-winning documentary series in its 39th season on PBS, promises to tell 'compelling, unvarnished stories' about the nation's most important cultural figures. The program's most recent story, though—Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, about the cartoonist-author of Maus, the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel depicting the Holocaust, and a self-described 'poster boy for books being censored'—seemed to need a bit more varnish on its approach to Donald Trump. In April, two weeks before it aired on PBS stations, a 90-second segment of the film in which Spiegelman referred to the president's 'smug and ugly mug' was cut from the film at the behest of public-media executives. (The details of this incident were first reported by Anthony Kaufman for Documentary magazine.) PBS has been under attack by the Trump administration since January. By the time Disaster Is My Muse was aired in shortened form, the network was already under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, and the White House had a plan to claw back $1.1 billion in federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which passes money on to PBS. 'Their attempt at preemptively staying out of the line of fire was absurd; it wasn't going to happen,' Spiegelman told me this week. 'It seems like it would be better to go out with dignity.' Alicia Sams, who co-produced the film, told me that she received a call from the executive producer of American Masters, Michael Kantor, at the beginning of April. It was less than a week after a contentious congressional hearing in which the network was accused of being a 'radical left-wing echo chamber' that is 'brainwashing and trans-ing children.' According to Sams, Kantor said that Disaster Is My Muse would need one further edit before it could be shown: The filmmakers had to remove a short sequence where Spiegelman reads aloud from the one of the few comic strips about Trump that he's ever published, in a zine associated with the Women's March in 2017. There was no opportunity for negotiation, Sams said. The filmmakers knew that if they refused, they would be in breach of contract and would have to repay the movie's license fee. 'It was not coming from Michael,' she told me. 'It was very clear: It was coming from PBS in D.C.' [Read: PBS pulled a film for political reasons, then changed its mind] Kantor deferred all questions to Lindsey Horvitz, the director of content marketing at WNET, the producer of American Masters and parent company of New York's flagship PBS station. (Sams told me that in her understanding, WNET leadership had agreed with PBS about the cut.) Horvitz provided The Atlantic with this statement: 'One section of the film was edited from the theatrical version as it was no longer in context today. The change was made to maintain the integrity and appropriateness of the content for broadcast at this time.' A PBS spokesperson said, 'We have not changed our long-standing editorial guidelines or practices this year.' (The Atlantic has a partnership with WETA, which receives funding from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.) Molly Bernstein, who co-directed Disaster Is My Muse with Philip Dolin, said this was 'absurd.' She told me that the team had already been through discussions with PBS over how to make the film compliant with broadcast standards and practices. A few profanities are spoken in the film, and some images from Spiegelman's cartoons raised concerns, but the network said that these could stand as long as the film aired after 10 p.m., when laxer FCC rules apply. 'We were delighted that was an option,' Bernstein said. A bleeped-and-blurred version of the film would not have worked. 'It's about underground comics. It's about transgressive artwork.' The team did make one other change to the film, several months before its broadcast: Some material featuring Spiegelman's fellow comic-book artist Neil Gaiman was removed in January after a series of sexual-assault allegations against Gaiman were detailed in a cover story for New York magazine. (Gaiman denies that he 'engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.') The filmmakers say they did this on their own, to avoid distractions from the subject of the film. But they also said that Kantor told them PBS would likely have had that inclination too. In any case, to say the snipped-out material about Trump was 'no longer in context today' is simply false. Spiegelman's commitment to free speech is central to the film. So are his repeated warnings about incipient fascism in America. ('That's what I see everywhere I look now,' he says at one point.) They're also clearly relevant to the forced edit of the broadcast. Indeed, the censored clip was taken from an event involving Spiegelman in June 2022 called 'Forbidden Images Now,' which was presented in association with an exhibit of Philip Guston paintings that had itself been postponed for political reasons after George Floyd's murder, presumably on account of Guston's having made a motif of hooded Ku Klux Klansmen. [Read: Don't look away from Philip Guston's cartoonish paintings of Klansmen] Just a few months before that lecture, Spiegelman learned that Maus had been removed from the eighth-grade curriculum in McMinn County, Tennessee, on account of its rough language and a single panel showing the naked corpse of his mother following her suicide. 'The tendencies brought up by this frantic need to control children's thoughts,' Spiegelman told MSNBC's Art Velshi in 2023, are 'an echo of the book burnings of the 1930s in Germany.' The filmmakers told me that Spiegelman's free-speech run-in with the county school board was instrumental in persuading WNET to back Disaster Is My Muse. 'When Maus was banned, interest in Art and the relevance of his story increased,' Sams said. Only then did American Masters pledge its full support, licensing the film before it had even been completed, and supplying half its budget. In the lead-up to its broadcast, PBS also chose to highlight Spiegelman's focus on the First Amendment in its promotional materials. The network's webpage for Disaster Is My Muse describes him as 'a pioneer of comic arts, whose thought-provoking work reflects his ardent defense of free speech.' (Neither PBS nor WNET would explain how a decision had been made to censor footage from a documentary film that is in no small part about censorship.) A broader 'context' for the edit can be found in PBS's other recent efforts to adjust its programming in deference to political considerations. As previously reported in The Atlantic, not long before Kantor's call with Sams, PBS quietly shelved a different documentary film, Break the Game, that was set to air on April 7, apparently because it had a trans protagonist. The film, which is not political, was abruptly placed back on the schedule within two hours of my reaching out to PBS for comment. (The network did not respond to questions about why Break the Game's original airdate had been canceled.) If these efforts were meant to forestall pressure from the White House, they have roundly failed. Two weeks after Disaster Is My Muse aired—with its reference to Trump removed—the president attempted to dismiss three of five board members at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A few days after that, he issued an executive order directing the board to terminate all funding, both direct and indirect, to NPR and PBS. (Both moves are being challenged.) But just imagine how much harder the administration would be going after PBS if Trump had seen the clip about his 'smug and ugly mug'! 'This seems like volunteering to pull the trigger on the firing-squad gun,' Spiegelman told me. The end of Disaster Is My Muse includes some footage from a 2017 free-speech protest on the steps of the New York Public Library, where Spiegelman read out the lyrics of a Frank Zappa song: 'And I'm telling you, it can't happen here. Oh, darling, it's important that you believe me. Bop bop bop bop.' The political climate has only gotten worse since then, he said. 'There's no checks and balances on this. This is severe bullying and control, and it's only going to get worse.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Now PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech
American Masters, an award-winning documentary series in its 39th season on PBS, promises to tell 'compelling, unvarnished stories' about the nation's most important cultural figures. The program's most recent story, though— Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, about the cartoonist-author of Maus, the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel depicting the Holocaust, and a self-described 'poster boy for books being censored'—seemed to need a bit more varnish on its approach to Donald Trump. In April, two weeks before it aired on PBS stations, a 90-second segment of the film in which Spiegelman referred to the president's 'smug and ugly mug' was cut from the film at the behest of public-media executives. (The details of this incident were first reported by Anthony Kaufman for Documentary magazine.) PBS has been under attack by the Trump administration since January. By the time Disaster Is My Muse was aired in shortened form, the network was already under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, and the White House had a plan to claw back $1.1 billion in federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which passes money on to PBS. 'Their attempt at preemptively staying out of the line of fire was absurd; it wasn't going to happen,' Spiegelman told me this week. 'It seems like it would be better to go out with dignity.' Alicia Sams, who co-produced the film, told me that she received a call from the executive producer of American Masters, Michael Kantor, at the beginning of April. It was less than a week after a contentious congressional hearing in which the network was accused of being a 'radical left-wing echo chamber' that is 'brainwashing and trans-ing children.' According to Sams, Kantor said that Disaster Is My Muse would need one further edit before it could be shown: The filmmakers had to remove a short sequence where Spiegelman reads aloud from the one of the few comic strips about Trump that he's ever published, in a zine associated with the Women's March in 2017. There was no opportunity for negotiation, Sams said. The filmmakers knew that if they refused, they would be in breach of contract and would have to repay the movie's license fee. 'It was not coming from Michael,' she told me. 'It was very clear: It was coming from PBS in D.C.' Kantor deferred all questions to Lindsey Horvitz, the director of content marketing at WNET, the producer of American Masters and parent company of New York's flagship PBS station. (Sams told me that in her understanding, WNET leadership had agreed with PBS about the cut.) Horvitz provided The Atlantic with this statement: 'One section of the film was edited from the theatrical version as it was no longer in context today. The change was made to maintain the integrity and appropriateness of the content for broadcast at this time.' A PBS spokesperson said, 'We have not changed our long-standing editorial guidelines or practices this year.' (The Atlantic has a partnership with WETA, which receives funding from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.) Molly Bernstein, who co-directed Disaster Is My Muse with Philip Dolin, said this was 'absurd.' She told me that the team had already been through discussions with PBS over how to make the film compliant with broadcast standards and practices. A few profanities are spoken in the film, and some images from Spiegelman's cartoons raised concerns, but the network said that these could stand as long as the film aired after 10 p.m., when laxer FCC rules apply. 'We were delighted that was an option,' Bernstein said. A bleeped-and-blurred version of the film would not have worked. 'It's about underground comics. It's about transgressive artwork.' The team did make one other change to the film, several months before its broadcast: Some material featuring Spiegelman's fellow comic-book artist Neil Gaiman was removed in January after a series of sexual-assault allegations against Gaiman were detailed in a cover story for New York magazine. (Gaiman denies that he 'engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.') The filmmakers say they did this on their own, to avoid distractions from the subject of the film. But they also said that Kantor told them PBS would likely have had that inclination too. In any case, to say the snipped-out material about Trump was 'no longer in context today' is simply false. Spiegelman's commitment to free speech is central to the film. So are his repeated warnings about incipient fascism in America. ('That's what I see everywhere I look now,' he says at one point.) They're also clearly relevant to the forced edit of the broadcast. Indeed, the censored clip was taken from an event involving Spiegelman in June 2022 called 'Forbidden Images Now,' which was presented in association with an exhibit of Philip Guston paintings that had itself been postponed for political reasons after George Floyd's murder, presumably on account of Guston's having made a motif of hooded Ku Klux Klansmen. Just a few months before that lecture, Spiegelman learned that Maus had been removed from the eighth-grade curriculum in McMinn County, Tennessee, on account of its rough language and a single panel showing the naked corpse of his mother following her suicide. 'The tendencies brought up by this frantic need to control children's thoughts,' Spiegelman told MSNBC's Art Velshi in 2023, are 'an echo of the book burnings of the 1930s in Germany.' The filmmakers told me that Spiegelman's free-speech run-in with the county school board was instrumental in persuading WNET to back Disaster Is My Muse. 'When Maus was banned, interest in Art and the relevance of his story increased,' Sams said. Only then did American Masters pledge its full support, licensing the film before it had even been completed, and supplying half its budget. In the lead-up to its broadcast, PBS also chose to highlight Spiegelman's focus on the First Amendment in its promotional materials. The network's webpage for Disaster Is My Muse describes him as 'a pioneer of comic arts, whose thought-provoking work reflects his ardent defense of free speech.' (Neither PBS nor WNET would explain how a decision had been made to censor footage from a documentary film that is in no small part about censorship.) A broader 'context' for the edit can be found in PBS's other recent efforts to adjust its programming in deference to political considerations. As previously reported in The Atlantic, not long before Kantor's call with Sams, PBS quietly shelved a different documentary film, Break the Game, that was set to air on April 7, apparently because it had a trans protagonist. The film, which is not political, was abruptly placed back on the schedule within two hours of my reaching out to PBS for comment. (The network did not respond to questions about why Break the Game 's original airdate had been canceled.) If these efforts were meant to forestall pressure from the White House, they have roundly failed. Two weeks after Disaster Is My Muse aired—with its reference to Trump removed—the president attempted to dismiss three of five board members at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A few days after that, he issued an executive order directing the board to terminate all funding, both direct and indirect, to NPR and PBS. (Both moves are being challenged.) But just imagine how much harder the administration would be going after PBS if Trump had seen the clip about his 'smug and ugly mug'! 'This seems like volunteering to pull the trigger on the firing-squad gun,' Spiegelman told me. The end of Disaster Is My Muse includes some footage from a 2017 free-speech protest on the steps of the New York Public Library, where Spiegelman read out the lyrics of a Frank Zappa song: 'And I'm telling you, it can't happen here. Oh, darling, it's important that you believe me. Bop bop bop bop.' The political climate has only gotten worse since then, he said. 'There's no checks and balances on this. This is severe bullying and control, and it's only going to get worse.'
