The blueprint for autocratic governance was drawn some time ago. It was polished by the likes of Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan ruler. And it features the kind of action against the media that, in the United States, led to a significant cut in funding for PBS. How will public media respond?
Twenty years ago, I found myself backstage in a television studio in Caracas, Venezuela, face-to-face with Hugo Chávez, the country’s late president who ruled with singular authority and was a persistent thorn in the side of Washington, D.C. politicians.
I had lingered, mostly unnoticed, with stagehands of the weekly “Haló Presidente” show in which Chávez would vamp for hours and engage with average Venezuelans, extolling the virtues of a “democracy” he said he had reinvented on behalf of the nation’s poor majority. I was researching an article about Chávez’s uncanny resiliency against attempted coups and well-financed enemies.
As I approached him, Chávez was sitting patiently before a large mirror, framed by bright studio lighting, while a makeup artist fussed over him for his camera call.
I’d been shadowing Chávez for a couple of weeks but had not scored a formal interview. Still, he didn’t flinch when I said hello and offered up a couple of questions while he was stuck in the makeup chair.
In between dabs of cotton pads, Chávez riffed on what was next in his remaking of Venezuelan society. By this time, his allies had secured a majority in the national assembly, which granted him political strength to issue policy edicts, appoint judges to regional and national courts, and impose loyalty tests on civil servants, teachers, and even doctors in public clinics.
I remember the chill I felt upon hearing one particular phrase: “We will address the media that is disloyal” to the “Bolivarian revolution.” (Chávez had cast himself as a political heir to Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan rebel who in the early 1800s inspired insurgencies throughout the Americas. In travels abroad, Chávez's entourage often carried a portrait of Bolívar to prop behind him in photo opportunities.) Between jokes with the backstage crew, he hinted at financial fraud investigations of journalists who had reported on corruption in his government.
I bring up Chávez because last week I felt the same chill upon reading a text informing me that the United States Senate had narrowly voted to rescind more than $1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB, as it is more commonly known, supports the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio, and an alphabet’s worth of public media acronyms.
I concluded that what I call the Politics Of Me, designed and perfected in recent decades by autocrats like Chávez, is what drove the U.S. Congress to defund the CPB, giving President Donald Trump what he wanted, and what conservative politicians have craved since the early 1970s.
The blow to public media was delivered with a claim it was all about saving taxpayers’ money. That argument is unconvincing when measured against the actual impact of public media on the American taxpayer – about $1.60 a year.
An autocrat’s dream
Like Chávez and autocrats the world over and throughout history, Trump has counted on party majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives – and a largely supportive Supreme Court, to aggressively deploy executive orders on a number of conservative initiatives.
Trump political appointees are firing legions of of federal workers, many of whom are career employees who have served through Republican and Democratic administrations.
And media outlets have come into his sights. Trump has won settlements from ABC and CBS. He’s sued The New York Times. Last week, he leveled claims of defamation against The Wall Street Journal after the paper linked him to Jeffrey Epstein in an unfolding chapter in the scandal over the late financier’s sex-trafficking.
But what was it that PBS did to incur Trump’s wrath? His aides point to liberal bias in news coverage.
Yet no one has provided solid empirical evidence of wanton bias that merit’s Trump’s scorched-earth campaign against public media. And the flow of emails and messages I’ve received from Trump supporters don’t offer studies or opinion polls to back up their calls for our demise.
“I hope you are defunded. You are leading our nation in the wrong direction and I don't want my tax money paying for it. Make Sesame Street clean again.”–Daryl Ewers, Victoria, Texas
Another letter writer summed it up like this:
“In closing. Good-bye, PBS. Amen. Trump wins again. Sweet victory.” –Katherine H., Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Perhaps the “Make America Great Again” movement believes this is what the nation needs and the people want. But how many of their neighbors, who now face losing valued and even cherished programming, do not share the anti-public media sentiments? A clear majority of U.S. residents say PBS and NPR are trustworthy, unbiased, and should not be defunded. (I can provide the empirical data to support this statement.)
Critics overlook the fact that PBS has a demonstrable record of impartiality, serving communities with kids shows, cultural programming and essential emergency warning systems that do not ask to know a viewer’s politics before broadcasting.
Public media journalists are notable for an uncommon willingness to show how they report the news. And when they slip up ethically, or get something wrong, there are deeply experienced standards executives, inspector generals, and even public editors to set the record straight.
“PBS must continue what it is doing. I have learned several things during the Trump era but the most important may be that we need truthful journalism that we can trust. PBS gives us information that we can trust. We need more of it. Thank you PBS.”–Doris Price-Wicker, a member of the PBS Public Editor’s focus group.
(Focus group members are self-elected; anyone can sign up by going here: https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/#sms-signup.)
Viewer mail overwhelmingly comes to us from people who have a request, a quandary, or a beef with coverage. To find unsolicited praise is not as easy as landing on a critique. Yet some viewers do, in fact, write only to tell us what they like about PBS.
“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the level of integrity and intellect you display each and every day through your news programming.” – Miriam Skapik, Chevy Chase, Maryland
“The News Hour is truly our go-to, one trusted source of information. Amna, Jeff and all the others are outstanding, and the quality and depth of production is impossible to find anywhere else. You will always have our support.” –Alan Scoll, Charleston, South Carolina
A rewritten future
I can’t help but speculate that we’re in this pickle because of the whims of one very powerful man. I mean, would we be where we are now if, after Trump’s second inauguration, we had asked him to host a new, unedited show called “Hello Mr. President”?
Overtly political programming is not what PBS does.
So, where do we go from here?
PBS and most public media will not disappear. However, the sudden adjustment after losing $500 million a year will hurt. PBS, NPR, and local stations in the nation’s largest cities, as well as those with exceptional local support from viewers and listeners, will survive – but not as they are today.
“While we still have an opportunity to restore our funding in the upcoming appropriations cycle, we recognize that this will be an uphill battle,” PBS President Paula Kerger said last week in a note to employees. “Undoubtedly, (the Senate) vote will force many of our stations to make extremely difficult decisions in the weeks and months ahead … The loss of federal funds will also impact our operations at PBS.”
Yes, donations are up and may cover some of the lost CPB funding. (NPR affiliate KUOW in Seattle said it raised $1.5 million from listeners in 12 hours after the Senate vote.) But many stations will lay off producers and journalists. Some stations will merge. And other stations, especially in rural areas — politically red states, ironically — may be forced to turn off transmitters or sell the licenses that reserve their space on the broadcast spectrum.
Public media executives now must remap a future less reliant on political appropriations and increasingly funded directly by audiences, sponsorships from local and national businesses and donations from major foundations. (John Palfrey, president of the MacArthur Foundation, recently told me that the philanthropic community will help, but that foundations “can’t cover all of it.”)
A solution, IMHO
There was a significant crisis on the media landscape even before the Senate vote. Newsrooms were being gutted and local media in particular was shrinking fast.
The sharpest minds among us have recently come up with new ideas to revitalize local media. I like the program in Washington, D.C. that issues coupons to city residents to cover local news subscriptions. Rebuild Local News is working with legislators in several states on tax breaks for news media or support for universities training young reporters for community news outlets. And some cities, like New York, are committing municipal advertising spending to local news outlets.
For some time, I’ve studied a potential solution that could be a new foundation for public media outlets and nonprofit news organizations:
I propose skipping over politicians, working instead with Internet service providers – ISPs – who serve some 300 million customers nationwide. Reliable public media funding can come from a $1 voluntary checkoff on monthly Internet bills.
Adding the checkoff would cost ISPs nothing, apart from some bookkeeping expenses. (Many utilities already feature voluntary checkoffs on bills to help low-income customers.) In return for aggregating public media funds, ISPs would financially support robust streams of trustworthy, non-partisan news, documentaries, educational shows for kids and British crime dramas for adults.
Distribution of this revenue would be overseen by organizations such as community endowment foundations (some of which have already begun supporting local news) or regional versions of the CPB, run by volunteer councils of journalists and producers drawn from communities they serve. These councils would operate much like existing government-sanctioned cooperatives that use mandatory checkoffs to bring electricity to rural customers, or commodity market boards that have long governed the quality standards of crops or manufactured goods.
Journalists and public affairs producers gain vital funding, in exchange for their pledges to abide by professional, ethical standards, and follow new rules on transparency and accountability.
One dollar a month is a small price to pay for guarantees of trust and disinformation-free content.
The minuscule fee can add up: If just 10% of U.S. consumers contribute, it would generate some $360 million a year for local public television and radio.
Moreover, funding from Internet bills wouldn’t replace public media pledge drives or corporate sponsorships. (Nor would it eliminate some level of taxpayer support that future presidents and lawmakers might vote to restore.)
Best of all, the plan offers a way around government funding and the ideological strings that are too often attached. (Although ISPs may need permission from a government regulator, likely the Federal Communications Commission, to list the voluntary check-off on monthly Internet bills.)
A monthly ISP checkoff will help public broadcasters grow audiences on streaming services, digital local news sites, online channels for dramas and educational programs.
The checkoffs would also mean the leading role in funding PBS would truly be in the hands of viewers like you.
Dan Macy, senior associate in the Office of the PBS Public Editor, contributed to this report