🔥Last week, Republican Sen. John Kennedy introduced the subtly named “No Propaganda Act.” If enacted, it would end federal funding for America’s public media.

He joined an effort by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are heading up an amorphous cost-cutting advisory group for President-elect Donald Trump and have also suggested that support for public media should be eliminated from the federal budget.

Musk’s suggestion and Kennedy’s bill got little press coverage for an understandable reason: It’s nothing new.

Kennedy is the latest in a long line of Republicans who have drafted legislation to defund NPR, PBS, their member stations and their primary funding mechanism, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Efforts to defund NPR and PBS have been raised by Republicans and successfully batted away by public media defenders with annual regularity for decades.

This time could be different. Republicans’ focus on the media has never been remotely this intense. While PBS has found some success on YouTube, NPR’s incomplete digital transformation, declining radio listenership, and high-profile political stumbles have left it weaker than ever. Now there’s greater concern among public radio figures than there has been in years about the future of NPR and public radio broadly.

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/08/2024/weakened-us-public-broadcasters-will-fight-for-their-lives-in-2025