Defunding Public Media Makes Perfect Sense If Destroying Democracy Is the Goal

U.S. Congress’ decision early Friday morning to completely defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a blow to anyone who cares about the role the media must play to sustain the health of a democracy. The move follows a request by President Donald Trump to claw back more than $1 billion lawmakers had already allocated to the entity, which supports National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service stations across the country.

Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But it’s one that, until now, never came true. Past efforts ran up against a noisy public—including people of every political persuasion—who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.

Many were engaged in the current fight, too; they dialed their members of Congress by the thousands to urge them to preserve essential funding for favorite local radio and television stations. But Republican members of Congress chose to listen to their Dear Leader instead. The week prior to the rescission vote, Trump threatened to withhold his “support or endorsement” in upcoming elections to any Republican who didn’t back the clawback. And with far too few exceptions Republicans willingly got in line

Clearing a Path for Destruction

The loss of CPB funding will be felt for years. “This is a vote to evade public accountability and hide the Trump administration’s destructive actions from independent scrutiny,” Free Press Action co-CEO Craig Aaron said.

It won’t be easy to rebuild what Trump has ruined, but we must because the health of our democracy depends on having independent public media. And the less than $2 per person that U.S. taxpayers willingly paid to fund the CPB was paltry by comparison with what other modern democracies spend on their own public media.

Congress is acting on the false belief that the November 2024 election—which Trump won with less than a majority of the popular vote—delivered them a mandate to remake the federal government in the president’s autocratic image.

The benefits in this public-interest equation far outweighed any expense. They include essential educational programming, invaluable accountability journalism, and the broadcast of emergency information.

As senators debated Trump’s defunding request on July 16, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the Alaska Peninsula, prompting rural and island-bound public-radio stations to issue tsunami alerts to affected listeners throughout the region. It’s these rural stations that rely the most on public funds to air potentially lifesaving updates during emergencies and their aftermath.

Still, Congress is acting on the false belief that the November 2024 election—which Trump won with less than a majority of the popular vote—delivered them a mandate to remake the federal government in the president’s autocratic image, regardless of the costs.

Public Media Benefits Democracy

And those costs are very high. The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires won’t have to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms—including the sorts of journalism that hold our country’s rich and powerful accountable—and replacing it with propaganda.

If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media. Americans routinely rank PBS among the most trusted institutions in the country, and a “most valuable” service taxpayers receive for their money.

These benefits accrue to our democratic system. A 2021 study coauthored by University of Pennsylvania professor (and Free Press board chair) Victor Pickard finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country’s democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage, and lower levels of extremist views. Other studies strongly suggest that declines in such local news and information lead to drops in civic engagement.

There’s reasonable criticism of the public-broadcasting system that had been in place since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. For example, CPB needed to offer more support to the proliferation of local noncommercial outlets serving communities too often overlooked by legacy commercial media. In addition, tax laws need to better accommodate local commercial news outlets seeking to shift their fiscal models to not-for-profit.

But we should build these changes on the foundation the CPB has established over the decades. That foundation has been swept away by a leader who cares far more about himself than the health of our nation.

Rebuilding at the State and Local Levels

It’s hard to find a silver lining to such a dark cloud. If any exists it’s in the energy and organizing for better public media at state and local levels.

New Jersey just re-upped its commitment to fund the Civic Information Consortium, a groundbreaking state-level effort that supports trustworthy, community-based news and information sources throughout the state.

These solutions are needed in addition to a federal mechanism for funding public media, not in place of it.

Local lawmakers in other states—including California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington—are advancing policy solutions that increase public support for and access to nonpartisan and independent local news. Noncommercial media—including existing outlets like Capital & Main, City Bureau, LAist, Mississippi Today, Outlier Media and ProPublica—are offering an antidote to a hyper-commercial media system that is too fearful of political leadership (and protective of profit margins) to act as a check against official abuses of power.

One possible solution is to impose a small tax on advertising to fund the production and distribution of local news and civic information, something Free Press has long advocated for.

But these solutions are needed in addition to a federal mechanism for funding public media, not in place of it. We still need to mobilize behind efforts to restore the CPB or a similar entity to that role. The goal—building a media system that serves the interests of the American people, and not those of a unitary executive—is vital to saving our democracy.