“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
— John F. Kennedy
When President Trump signed the executive order to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS this past week, the collective meltdown across certain media and culture sectors was as predictable as it was performative. Outlets dubbed it a “death blow to democracy,” social media seized with hyperbole, and journalists donned their favorite martyr cloaks as if an incoming totalitarian regime had suddenly threatened their livelihoods. You’d think someone had lit the Constitution on fire during a PBS pledge drive.
Let’s establish a few facts. According to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), its total appropriation for FY2025 was $535 million, including radio and television funds. NPR receives less than 1% of its annual operating budget directly from federal sources. Its member stations, however, derive between 8 and 10% of their revenue from CPB-related grants. PBS affiliates receive roughly 15% of their budgets through similar mechanisms, with rural stations leaning more heavily on that trickle of taxpayer money.
So what we’re really talking about here is cutting off a relatively small but symbolically rich slice of funding — one that, for the loudest voices, represents not just dollars, but a perceived entitlement to taxpayer underwriting.
Myth vs. Math
A budget of $535 million sounds enormous in isolation. But in federal terms? It’s a rounding error. For comparison, the Department of Agriculture spends more than $160 billion annually. The U.S. government spends over $6 trillion a year. CPB’s entire allotment accounts for roughly 0.0089% of that total. If the national budget were a single dollar, the public broadcasting cut wouldn’t even buy you a piece of penny candy.
Yet the reaction from NPR’s defenders suggests that this move is on par with shuttering the National Archives or torching the Smithsonian. This isn’t an existential crisis. It’s a financial inconvenience.
The loudest critics seem to forget a basic economic principle: diversify your revenue stream. A private business that relies on 10% of its income from a single donor is playing with fire. So why should a network of media professionals who pride themselves on independence, grit, and public trust treat a minor budgetary reduction like a cultural assassination?
Theater of the Aggrieved
Let’s call this outrage what it really is: theater. There’s a genre of commentary that arises whenever the government withdraws even the faintest amount of support from an elite institution. The script is always the same:
- Announce the defunding.
- Lament the “attack on truth.”
- Pretend it’s censorship.
- Quote Orwell.
- Ask for donations.
When NPR’s CEO said earlier this year that the network needed to do more to “diversify perspectives” following the viral resignation letter from longtime editor Uri Berliner, who alleged a culture of progressive bias, the response from staff wasn’t self-examination. It was a pep rally. Defenders flooded the airwaves, praising NPR’s commitment to equity and representation while ignoring a sobering fact: Its audience is rapidly becoming ideologically homogeneous.
In 2023, a Pew Research survey found that only 11% of NPR’s audience identified as conservative, down from 22% a decade earlier. Over 67% identified as liberal. That is not a public square. That’s a choir loft.
The Real Public Square Is Elsewhere
PBS and NPR–defenders often invoke the nobility of public broadcasting, its commitment to children’s programming, rural access, classical music, and educational documentaries. And yes, there is merit in those offerings. But we must ask: Is it still necessary for taxpayers to subsidize content in an age where streaming, podcasts, and YouTube offer free, global access to more information than the Library of Congress could’ve dreamed of?
Sesame Street, once the crown jewel of PBS, signed a massive content deal with HBO in 2015. That means many first-run episodes now premiere behind a paywall before hitting PBS. Meanwhile, podcasts like “This American Life” and “Radiolab,” both spun out of public radio, are now media giants in their own right, monetized, branded, and often funded through private partnerships. Why should taxpayers fund operations that have proven they can commercialize content and merchandise characters and charge licensing fees like any other media company?
A Question of Fairness
It’s also worth asking: Why is it the taxpayer’s job to prop up any media outlet, let alone one with a clear ideological tilt? The idea of state-supported news has always walked a precarious line. In countries like the U.K. and Canada, government-funded media outlets are enshrined by charter, but even they face mounting scrutiny about editorial independence. The BBC, for instance, has been battered for being too conservative by the left and too leftist by the right. Sound familiar?
In the U.S., however, NPR and PBS aren’t chartered by constitutional mandate — a line item funds them in a budget. And if that budget is under new management, as it is now, reducing or removing that funding is not censorship. That’s how representative government works.
Opponents argue that losing CPB support will crush rural stations. Possibly. But that’s not the fault of a budget cut; it’s the failure of those stations to innovate. Private-sector media outlets have been forced to adapt or perish for decades. Why should public broadcasters be exempt?
Let’s Have an Honest Conversation
This column isn’t a celebration of defunding. It’s a call for honesty.
If NPR and PBS believe they provide essential value — and in many ways, they do — they should be able to survive through voluntary contributions, syndication, partnerships, and earned goodwill. If their value proposition is as strong as they say it is, Americans will support them.
But suppose their leadership continue to cast themselves as victims of oppression while raking in millions in private grants and licensing deals. In that case, they shouldn’t be surprised when the public tunes out, literally and figuratively.
The truth is, this isn’t about the money. It’s about the symbolism. Cutting funding to PBS and NPR represents a break from the old model of media paternalism, the idea that government-funded gatekeepers must curate what’s worthy of the public’s attention. That may have made sense in 1970, but it’s antiquated in the fractured digital media age of 2025.
Let NPR and PBS prove their relevance without the cushion. If they’re as good as they claim, and if Americans truly believe in the value of an impartial, intellectual, culture-rich media space, they’ll thrive. If not, maybe they’ll finally confront the question they’ve long avoided: Whose public are they really serving?
Picryl.
Jesus Christ is King
