Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

cpb.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 596 posts

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#441

Post by mike_hearn »

dotandgtfo wrote: post #323
mike_hearn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the morality of taxation and the role of the state is a deep topic that has been debated for thousands of years. Nearly everyone accepts that taxation is justified for some cases where you can't really avoid benefiting from the expenditure, the textbook example being public goods like defense (you can't opt-out of benefiting from the defeat of an invading army) or a lighthouse (you can't stop a sailor who didn'…

Your lighthouse parable is still highly relevant for public broadcasters when you consider that modern public broadcasting heavily subsidize expensive original reporting that for-profit newspapers are free to and happy to republish. A core reason for having a robust public broadcasting system is that it lifts the quality of the entire information ecosystem. Saying this as a Norwegian. I happily pay around 200/300 dol…

Yes, people who enjoy state TV like making other people pay for their enjoyment. That's immoral. Certainly, you cannot argue it's moral because you personally believe it's high quality. Lots of people in any country feel the exact opposite: that state TV damages the entire information ecosystem and is outright malign. Under what consistent moral code should they be forced to pay for it?

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#442

Post by kaishiro »

nataliste wrote: post #437
kaishiro wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "everything is political", then eliminating federal funding from NPR and PBS doesn’t solve the problem - it guarantees that only corporate and ideological interests shape the narrative. Public funding exists not to claim perfect neutrality, but to create a space where journalism isn’t entirely driven by profit motives or partisan agendas. Strip that away, and you’re not removing bias - you’re institutionalizing it…

Journalism, and specifically NPR, is already driven entirely by corporate and ideological interests. Your supposition that federal funding helps remove bias is trivially disproven by the last decade of coverage of NPR, where I literally (literally!) have not been able to turn it on without race, gender, or Trump being mentioned within a minute (it became a game). To be fair, there was one exception. and that was a re…

If your position is "I don't care anymore", then you're not making a principled argument - you're venting. That's fine, just don't pretend it's a policy stance.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#443

Post by insane_dreamer »

bhouston wrote: post #3

The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…

> I have some faith the courts in the US will stand up to this

The courts have no recourse if Trump decides to ignore them, as he already has.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#444

Post by insane_dreamer »

hypeatei wrote: post #25
bhouston wrote: post #3

The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…

> Right now I have some faith the courts in the US will stand up to this I think "the guardrails will hold" thinking is flawed when you have someone who is willing to completely side step the system and push the limits. We're not actually sure what holding someone from this administration in contempt even looks like functionally since U.S. marshals are under the DOJ.

SCOTUS' ruling on Trump's presidential immunity blew a massive hole in the guardrails.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#445

Post by mlyons1340 »

brnt wrote: post #226
lamename wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education to the uneducated (or those who would prefer we remain uneducated in the face of power) can easily cast any education as "biased" against their purposes. Most people see through that for what it is, but an increasing population of Americans don't.

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”

This is a really dumb quote.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#446

Post by nkotov »

hadrien01 wrote: post #2

I suppose this is in response to this executive order: ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF BIASED MEDIA https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/endi... I would add that PBS has this to say about public media funding: > The U.S. is almost literally off the chart for how little we allocate towards our public media. At the federal level, it comes out to a little over $1.50 per person per year. Compare that…

That's a $1.50 too many.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#447

Post by [deleted] »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #355
mathgeek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes.

"It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes." All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had peopl…

[deleted]

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#448

Post by axus »

ncr100 wrote: post #331
yubblegum wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is so weird right now. The weirdness started in 90s. First it was cultural (TV in 90s, Jerry Springer et al). Then it was electoral (hanging Chads anyone?). Then it was constitutional (Patriot Act). Then it was psychological (all those spooks running various "alt" Q etc.). And now it is lobotomy time. Took almost 3 decades but here we are.

I speculate it started in the 1950s. There was a move to make Business about numbers over People, per my Grandpa's "Back In My Day" speeches he used to give me. He blamed the MBA (no offense to MBAs) for encouraging money-over-people thinking. This then leads to GOP appearing to value winning political power for itself over building a healthy society, in my view.

The GOP voters (and maybe even the politicians!) have a different view of what a healthy society requires. Supposedly keeping womens' sports genetically pure, punishing pro-Palestinian speech, and deporting lots of people is very important for a healthy society, and justifies their behavior.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#449

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

jmward01 wrote: post #288

People love the idea that the pendulum always swings back but that is survivor bias. The graveyard of history is filled with civilizations where the pendulum failed to swing back the last time. I have no faith that the US is exempt from history, but that doesn't mean we can't at least try to defy it. No reason we can't at least try to push the pendulum back one more time and put in place better safeguards. Get out th…

Bold of you to assume that voting will be able to change anything - will future votes not be rampant with corrupt practices? What controls will still be in place to ensure that?

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#450

Post by basscomm »

koolba wrote: post #372
mmastrac wrote: post #4

This is quite sad. PBS and NPR were jewels of the American system. The right-wing has latched on to the message that all public-funded media that isn't right-wing-biased is _bad_ and are trying to kill it everywhere. We are constantly fighting the same battle in Canada where the right-wing accuses media of being left-leaning, while most major news outlets are actually American-owned and slant right a lot of the time.…

> This is quite sad. PBS and NPR were jewels of the American system. The right-wing has latched on to the message that all public-funded media that isn't right-wing-biased is _bad_ and are trying to kill it everywhere. It's pretty hard to argue that PBS and NPR do not have a left wing bias. The closest thing they'd have to a conservative voice would be bringing in a token anti-Trump (generally former ) Republican. NP…

> PBS would always make mention of support from, 'Viewers like you". When in reality it was from "Tax payers of which 50+% likely do not agree with funding this content".

'Viewers like you' send in donations that public broadcasting stations use to purchase rights to broadcast NPR/PBS programming or programming from whatever other sources they want. The CPB doesn't dictate what the stations can broadcast they provide resources so that they can broadcast. The money they get from the CPB usually goes to cover operational costs, which donations may not cover, especially in rural areas.

Post reply on HN