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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The flimsy arguments Trump used to attack public media that serves Kansas
Public broadcasting in Kansas and across the United States faces threats from the Trump administration. (Eric Thomas illustration for Kansas Reflector) In one way, this is the easiest column I've written. It's simple to celebrate public media in Kansas: public radio, educational television, veteran journalists, original reporting, local focus, innovative podcasts and more. For all that, I'm a long-time sustaining member of my local public radio station. And I have written many glowing columns about NPR journalism. Public media in Kansas is awesome. In another way, this column is tricky. Defending anyone, let alone an institution, from fraudulent attacks is challenging. It's proving a negative, when the negative is certifiably bonkers. And coming from the White House. Here goes. On Tuesday, National Public Radio and three public radio stations sued the Trump administration in response to the May 1 executive order that sought to strip public media of its funding in the United States. The NPR lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, asserts that Trump's executive order 'violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment's bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.' The 43-page filing pokes holes in Trump's executive order: a brazen attempt to extinguish public media throughout the country — and harm its audience in Kansas — based on a partisan grudge. Under even brief inspection, Trump's May 1 executive order and the press statements that accompanied it look inept. They read like the half-baked political flailing of the first Trump administration when the rationale for his decisions was foolish and risible. Just like many of the actions of the first Trump administration, there is a more principled and legal argument to be made here: Persuade Congress to defund public broadcasting because taxpayer money simply doesn't belong in the media. The executive order only fleetingly expresses that viewpoint: 'Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.' More often, the White House falsely accuses public radio. It dishes out fake news about the real news. If not opposed by a lawsuit like the one filed Tuesday, Trump's executive order would wreck two valuable American institutions for petty and deceptive reasons: hot-button word choices, political innuendo and pet peeves. What's Trump's best response for NPR's regret at labeling someone as 'illegal' in their reporting? Defund NPR. What's Trump's best response to PBS's documentary about a transgender teen? Defund PBS. Forever a predatory real estate developer, Trump wants to tear down public media rather than putting money into improvements. This week's NPR lawsuit points us to documents that reveal Trump's pettiness toward public media. First, consider 'President Trump Finally Ends the Madness of NPR, PBS,' a press release published by the White House in conjunction with the executive order. We find 24 bullet point examples of 'trash that has passed for 'news' at NPR and PBS.' Many of the bullet points, stripped of context, completely misrepresent each instance of public media reporting. One bullet point links to an NPR audio chat from 2022, headlined: 'Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think.' During the discussion, the NPR host says, 'These are not particularly easy questions for people to wrestle with.' The guest replies, 'I completely agree with you that there is no clear-cut answer.' How did the White House boil down this nuanced discussion of race? The press release says, 'NPR assigned three reporters to investigate how the thumbs-up emoji is racist.' NPR never used the word racist. Summarizing the coverage in that way isn't a political distortion. It's a lie. Here's another White House claim from the same press release: 'NPR routinely promotes the chemical and surgical mutilation of children as so-called 'gender-affirming care' without mentioning the irreversible damage caused by these procedures.' This bullet point links to a 2023 story from Florida by Melissa Block. It's a mind-bending stretch to see NPR as 'promoting' medical care for trans kids in this journalism. The writer quotes experts — medical groups, plus an endocrinologist and a psychologist — as they each endorse the medical care. Dear White House media critics, covering an issue is not to promote one side. When the administration isn't misrepresenting the work of public media, it nitpicks political language. In the press release's final bullet point, the White House writes about the 'PBS show Sesame Street partnered with CNN on a one-sided narrative to 'address racism' amid the Black Lives Matter riots.' One-sided narrative? I wondered. Clicking the link takes you to a cheerful image of Sesame Street characters with the title, 'Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism.' What is the other side of racism that the White House wants represented here? Pro-racism? The White House should be pressured to explain the 'other side' of the debate that it is imagining, not Big Bird and PBS. (The most likely true objection to this program? Sesame Street partnered with CNN, a network Trump would defund if he could.) Taken as a whole, the list reads like a vendetta seeking a motive: Let's destroy public media, but first we need a reason. Given the White House's complaints about news coverage in their press release, it seems that the executive order is in fact retaliation. Or, consider how the NPR lawyers metaphorically put it: 'It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. 'But this wolf comes as a wolf.' … The Order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President's view, their news and other content is not 'fair, accurate, or unbiased.' ' And yet, there's more. Multiplying the unfairness of the lawsuit and executive order is the fundamental fairness of NPR's news coverage. As a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas, I use NPR resources in my classroom precisely because they are among the most trustworthy and unbiased. It's not just me who sees it this way. Say what you will of the charts that organize media organizations in terms of bias; NPR is one of the most centrist sources, regardless of which media critics you trust. 'Our people report straight down the line,' said NPR CEO Katherine Maher during an appearance on CBS. 'I think that not only do they do that, they do that with a mission that very few other broadcast organizations have, which is a requirement to serve the entire public. That is the point of public broadcasting. We bring people together in those conversations.' During the past few weeks, as public media has defended itself against these garbage attacks, Trump's order has been characterized as a disproportionate attack on people who live in rural areas, including large swaths of Kansas. The faces of this defense have been the CEOs of NPR and the Public Broadcasting System. Each has stressed how rural audiences will suffer. On Tuesday, Maher released a statement that repeatedly stressed the NPR's nationwide virtue of 'serving all 50 states and territories' as a source for 'tens of millions of Americans.' 'Without public dollars, NPR's investment in rural reporting initiatives, collaborative regional newsrooms, and award-winning international coverage would all be at risk,' Maher wrote. Lisa Rodriguez, interim director of content for KCUR, an affiliate station in Kansas City, appeared on the station's 'Up To Date' show to explain how small rural member stations rely on NPR. 'For KCUR, you depend on it for what you hear every day,' Rodriguez said. 'But also at these smaller stations, you don't have as rich a local journalism ecosystem. It is sometimes the only news that is reaching small communities.' To call the White House's arguments weak should not minimize their gravity. The consequences of the executive order would be catastrophic, especially to Kansans, if they hold up in court. Through the rhetoric of this executive order and its press release, Trump relishes in playing the schoolyard bully once again. This time he is not so much name calling or picking on the vulnerable. With public media, he threatens to take his ball, go home and leave Kansans stranded. Why? The bully doesn't like the way the game is being played. However, as the lawsuit makes clear, it is not his ball. And he has no right to take it. NPR and its fellow plaintiffs seek their continuing independence in their lawsuit. They quote a legal precedent that interpreted NPR's founding legislation as creating an 'elaborate structure … to insulate (broadcasters) from government interference.' Later, the suit continues, that while 'Congress is not obligated to support independent public radio with federal funds,' the government cannot remove funding in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on free speech. Unfortunately, our current Congress does not appear willing to reassert itself against Trump's hallucinatory rhetoric and orders. This week's lawsuit and its path through the courts may be the only remedy to save public broadcasting in Kansas. Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Manitowoc letter-writers share views on Trump, his proposal to end funding for NPR & PBS
Here are this week's letters to the editor of the Herald Times Reporter. See our letters policy below for details about how to share your views. Read more in Opinion: Click here to view the latest headlines in Opinion Recently, the New York Times reported: 'Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking to End Federal Funding of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.' This is a war on independent journalism valued by millions of Americans. Public radio and television are a threat to Trump because they have provided accurate, reliable, truthful news day after day for decades. The educational and recreational programming has been a household staple for decades for Americans. A loss like this creates a 'dumbing down' of America, in the same vein as defunding universities and the research and medical advances they provide. Where does this lead? Americans must protest this vigorously by calling, writing or emailing their elected public officials: President Donald Trump: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20500; 202-456-1414; U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin: 141 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5653; U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson: 328 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5323; ronjohnson@ U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman: 1511 Longworth H.O.B., Washington, D.C., 20515; 202-225-2476; When Congress does not respond to Trump's dictatorial orders, the people must act. The time is now. Darlene Wellner Manitowoc Our fathers served in World War II in the Air Force. Kathy's father was a prisoner of war for 10 months. We know neither of our fathers fought to serve a man like Donald Trump and his self-aggrandizing platform. Kathy's father did not endure cruelty at the hands of the Nazis to serve a man who has openly stated he admires Adolph Hitler and is imitating his takeover plan. To those who defend Trump, you know his focus is not on the Constitution or citizens. So far, he … was convicted of 34 felonies, which involve misstating his use of his money and his financial value; commuted the sentences of 1,500 insurrectionists who attacked police while trying to take over the government (these people were found guilty of crimes by a jury of their peers); proposed completely unqualified cabinet directors and tried to avoid the Senate confirmation process; withdrew from the Paris Accord and the World Health Organization; threatened neighbors with high tariffs, knowing it would harm them and our own citizens; and attempted to withhold federal assistance to many needy Americans and is now suggesting cuts to Medicaid. 32% of eligible voters voted for Trump. 31% voted for Harris. 2% voted for a third party. 36% did not vote. This is not an overwhelming mandate. We can't ask our dads if they fought for this kind of evil, but we're pretty sure they didn't. Kathleen A. Bernhart and Joseph M. Bernhart Manitowoc Letters to the editor are published in the order in which they are received and letter-writers are limited to having one letter published per month. Letters can be emailed to htrnews@ and Editor Brandon Reid at breid@ Letters must meet specific guidelines, including being no more than 250 words and be from local authors or on topics of local interest. All submissions must include the name of the person who wrote the letter, their city of residence and a contact phone number. Letters are edited as needed for style, grammar, length, fairness, accuracy and libel. This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Trump cuts to NPR, PBS a war against independent journalism
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
NPR reporter says she was censored by boss during Covid lockdowns
Advertisement An NPR reporter says she was censored by a boss at the public radio network after suggesting they report on anti-lockdown proposals during COVID. Meghna Chakrabarti, host of On Point, said earlier this week that she wanted to do a show on the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 as the pandemic raged. The declaration dismissed most lockdown and social distancing measures as superfluous. But Chakrabarti says an unnamed boss shut the idea down. 'There was a point in time where I wanted to actually do a show on the Great Barrington Declaration,' the NPR longtimer revealed. 'I wanted to do a very just a rigorous analysis... [and] try to bring some evidence to scrutinize it [either] positively or negatively... 'There was one person in particular that was a colleague of mine, who just said, we cannot talk about it,' she said of the declaration. 'That even talking about it in a rigorous objective manner is spreading misinformation. 'I'll never forget that,' she continued - leading Zweig to remark: '[The] hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.' 'But this person is someone I deeply respect and admire, and their decisions are top notch, highly, highly intelligent,' Chakrabarti went on to explain. '[But] I wanna bring up this story,' she asserted. 'I wanna bring up this story specifically because fear.' Chakrabarti did not name her colleague, but discussed the incident during a chat with New York journalist David Zweig about the harmful effects of lockdowns five years on. Zweig, Chakrabarti's guest, has written extensively on the US' COVID-19 response for publications for like Atlantic, New York Magazine, and The New York Times . His coverage has been critical, framing the closures of public schools and other social distancing measures as 'one of the worst American policy failures in a century'. Chakrabarti said she was troubled by school closures during fall 2020, around the time three doctors created the Great Barrington Report, which was slammed by most in the liberal media. She then brought up how figures like Francis Collins - the then director of the National Institutes of Health - 'wanted to squash the declaration' perhaps prematurely, on the basis it was 'a bad idea.' Penned by Harvard's Martin Kulldorff, Oxford's Sunetra Gupta, and the NIH's Jay Bhattacharya it preached the notion of 'focused protection', and that those most at risk of dying should only undergo measures to be kept safe - no one else. Collins, 75, left his post in December 2021, and Anthony Fauci - a figure who also framed the well-cited open letter as 'nonsense and very dangerous' - resigned a year later. Both played integral roles in the US government's widely ridiculed pandemic response, which Chakrabarti said created 'political pressures' in NPR's newsroom. She added how the anecdote proved Americans, at the time, could not have 'certain conversations', as fears permeated during the pandemic's early days. Many have since accused members of the media of perpetuating that fear - all at the behest of the federal government. World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - who still holds his position - bashed the herd immunity concept proposed in the Great Barrington Declaration as 'scientifically and ethically problematic.' David Nabarro, a special envoy of the health agency, claimed lockdowns could only be avoided 'if governments [first] impose some reasonable restrictions like social distancing and universal masks and install test and trace strategies.' Such a response - the one the government ultimately went with - has since been questioned by a steady stream of scientists. Others have slammed the government's decision-making process at the time, saying it negatively affected healthy citizens who were at lesser risk of infection. 'Herd immunity against COVID-19 should be achieved by protecting people through vaccination,' the WHO continues to maintain on its website. '[N]ot by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease.'
Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Clemency Burton Hill: My love of Arsenal got me through a catastrophic brain injury
I'm at the immigration desk at Heathrow and the officer is suspicious about my passport. And rightly so because the photograph on it predates a catastrophic brain injury that I had in 2020. Let me tell you: stroke face is real. Like many serious brain injury victims, I also suffer from acute aphasia and apraxia these days, which gives my speech – such as it is – a halted, clotted, strangled quality. In my former life, I had been an award-winning broadcaster for two decades, presenting an array of live TV and radio shows. I'm a born and bred Londoner and in 2020 moved to New York for work with my husband and two young sons. On Monday, January 20 2020, while in a meeting in New York, where I was working as a broadcaster in public radio, my brain – with no warning whatsoever – had essentially exploded after an 'AVM' (a generally-fatal tangle of cerebral veins and arteries) spontaneously ruptured. Before that, I was a very fulfilled working mum, with a husband and family I adored, a wide circle of friends, a career I loved, and, somewhat more privately, a lifelong passion for the world's greatest football team: Arsenal. And then, suddenly, all the floodlights, metaphorically speaking, had gone dark, ushering in a liminal life that seemed – seems – unnavigable. That unfathomable, existence-cleaving rupture left me in a coma. Then, I discovered I had lost half of my skull, and all my ability to form verbal language; I had sustained severe cognitive deficits and I was rendered severely disabled on the right side of my body. Against all possible odds, I survived – a bit of me, at least. And now, five and a half years later, I have come home to see my family. My football family, who have been in my life almost as long as my biological one. It's the semi-final stage of the 2025 Champions' League, you see; a position Arsenal Football Club have not reached in 16 agonisingly long years, and only once again before that. Arsenal were about to meet, in the first leg of the semi-final, a newly-remodelled Paris St Germain team, so I had booked my impulsive red-eye back to my home town. I simply had to be there, didn't I? Footballers and their fans are generally a superstitious bunch, so when only three minutes after kick-off we found ourselves a goal down, I started to feel sweat trickling down my back, palms sweating, heart racing a little ominously. Not because I didn't have faith in my team, but because I definitely didn't have faith in myself to not be a bad-luck omen. Had I somehow caused Arsenal to lose? As I doubted my decision, all the disapproving things my friends and family had said when I had sheepishly mentioned I was flying back for the Champions League semi-final came back to me. I started to hear again the shocked exclamations of those people (for whom all of this seemed incomprehensible, even irresponsible): 'You've only recently got the all-clear to from your neurosurgeon to be able to fly again, what are you thinking?' 'What does your mum think?' 'What do the boys think?' 'Shouldn't you be resting, not hopping back and forth across the Atlantic again?' And so on and so on. When that chilling PSG goal found the back of the net it did seem they had been right. And yet – and yet. What I really wanted to say to those well-meaning friends of mine was something along the lines of: I have lost so much of my former life; anything that meaningfully connects me to it is precious and needs to be held onto. My trip to see Arsenal is like someone else's stupid wellness retreat, boring solo mountain hike, wasteful fashion splurge or cheeky bender. This was a necessary thing. A pause. A gathering. A breath. Even if it simply does not make sense to anyone else. The first football match I remember watching was the 1986 FA Cup Final. Sandwiched between my older brothers on our battered brown sofa, I vividly recall the feeling as we witnessed the drama of the Merseyside derby on our tiny box TV. I was hooked by the rhythms, the music, the non-stop analysis coming from the commentary box, which meant almost nothing to me at the time, of course (I was five), but prompted my brother Elliot to announce to me, in a classic football pundit voice: 'It's Pools of Liver and Tons of Ever!' which had me laughing so much I thought I might die. I remember feeling totally content. I didn't want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, doing anything else but watching the footie. And I would go on to do that very same thing on countless Saturday afternoons. In time I came to recognise the accents of the cadre of football commentators – Des Lynam, John Motson, Bob Wilson, Martin Tyler, Andy Gray. I started obsessively collecting Panini stickers and picking out classic football songs on our out-of-tune piano. By the end of my first season, I had developed something of my own footie vocabulary; I even knew the offside rule. Plus I had also been fully initiated into a world of religious local fandom – we are Arsenal 'til we die – by dint of our mum having been born a stone's throw away from Highbury. And then: May 26, 1989. Anfield. We needed to win by 2-0 to win the FA First Division, and we were very, very close to not doing that, thereby giving it to our close rivals and current league leaders Liverpool on a plate. But then came Mickey Thomas, and one of the most famous moments in football history: 'Charging through the midfield now! THOMAS! It's up for grabs now…!' Over the next few years, I begged to go to the Arsenal as much as I could. I got my first season ticket to Highbury in 1994, queuing with my brothers on a hot August day, waiting patiently around the corner on Avenell Road, then passing my arduously-saved pocket money under the ticket window. In those days, an Arsenal season ticket was about the size of a chequebook covered in flexible red PVC, and we had to physically tear each numbered ticket at the turnstiles on game days. It cost me just over 100 quid, a small fortune of course, but absolutely worth it. My brothers were renewing their season tickets in the West Stand, Block Q, but as a proud new Junior Gunner, I was to be seated in the 'family enclosure' in the corner block of the East Stand Lower, which abutted the North Bank and was the corner that Gunnersaurus, our new team mascot, would appear from every game. It never crossed my mind to ask my brothers if they would consider relocating to the opposite side of the stadium to be nearer to me, their little sister, because by that stage, I was fully convinced that I was already 'home'. These perfect strangers in red and white (and sometimes yellow, if we were playing 'away') were my family too. I came round from my coma in 2020. For 17 days, my family and closest friends had been keeping vigil in shifts at my ICU bed as my unconscious self-sustained only by an array of blinking, beeping life-support machines, fought for my life. Apparently, it hadn't been easy to watch. My husband had been told by my neurosurgeon Dr Chris Kellner that he should prepare to face the fact that, if his wife survived, it would likely be a completely different wife who emerged. That he should try to imagine my life in two halves; a before and an after. Now, as football clichés go – and there are many – the one that goes 'It's a game of two halves!' is up there with the most annoying ones of them all. And yet, as anybody who has ever survived anything dramatic in their life knows: it's true. And even if life has gone swimmingly for somebody thus far: none of us know what is going to happen after half-time. It stands to reason, then, that it's worth fighting for the entirety of the second half. Just in case. In that dismal New York hospital bed, then in the grimmest early days of the pandemic, I would try to focus on the times I felt most myself. Newly mute, immobilised, wracked by intense pain and as lonely as I have ever been. But then momentarily, I would feel myself suddenly gladdened by some almost-forgotten memory cracking through the murky sediment of my broken brain. Meeting my brothers for a quick pint before home games. Memorable away fixtures, be they at White Hart Lane or Old Trafford, Anfield or Parken Stadium in Copenhagen. Or watching – literally smelling – Arsenal lift both trophies of the 1998 Double in Wenger's first full season. I could suddenly perceive my inert body on that wretched hospital gurney twitching with the recollection of all those songs sung with genuine emotional gusto, the sensory memory of embracing strangers, many hundreds of strangers, eyes shining, heart bursting, in all those crowded football stands which I could, even still, navigate with my eyes closed: as familiar as my childhood bedroom. All these seemingly irrelevant details were nothing, really. And yet I knew these were some of the building blocks that made me 'me'. In those desolate early months of 2020, I was incapable of forming the simple motor patterns to say my sons and husband: James, Tom, Joe's names. Yet, somehow, I could still croak the old Arsenal home chants and even make these unlikely words – 'who to, who to, who to be a Gooner?' – recognisable to (if not completely comprehended by) my bewildered American speech pathologist. And on I clung to life, even though medical probability had already deemed that it was almost time for the final whistle to be blown for me. But, no. Not yet. It's up for grabs now…! Finding my way back to myself through the wreckage; to what remains of my former agency, once glibly taken for granted, is a long haul, and not linear whatsoever. But the continued comforts and meaningful parallels I find in football; the hurdles and highs and troughs and non-linearity of that thing called 'progress', the seasonal nature of things, the ups and downs and shocks and unexpected reliefs – all this gives me great succour. I don't belong in my life any more. Yet I still belong in the Arsenal, as so many hundred of thousands of humans have done before me, and will after me. So once again I've defied the naysayers and flown from the US to Paris to watch Arsenal play the second leg of the Champions League. I'm bracing myself for a proper beating tonight. It will hurt, of course it will, yet how fortunate am I that I will be there, to witness it? A glimmering life-force, relit by the most unlikely of matches. (No pun intended!) But to see Mikel Arteta lift up the Champions League would make me properly elated: for him, for this team – and for myself. What motivation would that be! Beyond this season, beefing up our squad a bit, buying a real centre forward and more reliable left-winger would be joyful, and a relief, but – and maybe this point doesn't register with the American, Russian and Saudi billionaires who are snapping up football teams like so much popcorn and candy – winning trophies is not what football is about. I will defend that position until the day I die. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano memorably called it 'the art of the unforeseeable', football's 'stubborn capacity for surprise'.
