Protect PBS and NPR!
Dear Member,
I am writing to urge you to support funding for NPR and PBS. Local radio and broadcast stations are critical bulwarks for fact-based news, local journalism, civic engagement, and children’s programming. Communities with reliable sources of news experience higher voter participation in local and state elections, lower levels of government and business corruption, and lower prices and taxes than they see when these sources disappear. This is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise the American people, disproportionately affecting rural and poor communities. Defunding NPR and PBS will also imperil critical programming at a time when misinformation runs rampant in our modern media landscape.
NPR and PBS bring essential local news and educational material to rural, working-class, and underserved communities. Working class Americans like myself rely on PBS’ local programming for early education materials, local news, and local historical and communal preservation. We similarly rely on our local NPR stations for up-to-date and fact-based local journalism, civics, and emergency service alerts. Public Media is my only accessible news source during natural and national disasters; there is little to nothing else I can access during emergencies. Defunding NPR and PBS will take all of this away from American people like myself, forcing us to fork up money we don’t have for news, education, connection, and emergency alerts from private sources, and forcing us to subject ourselves to advertising from predatory corporate interests. There is nothing else like NPR and PBS on the market; their “competition”—from satellite radio to Apple Podcasts to Spotify to network TV and streaming services—forces us to pay, and increasingly pay more and more.
NPR and PBS are NON-PARTISAN organizations that provide an essential service. I was appalled by the way Congresswoman Green’s DOGE committee suggested that our public news and broadcast networks should interrogate their journalists and staff on party membership and ideological leaning. This is nothing short of new-age McCarthyism. The intent here is clear: persecute any news or programming that is not personally, financially sponsored and run by sitting president Trump and his corporate allies, and screw over the American people in the process. So, I am equally as appalled by president Trump’s recent executive order calling public media “biased” and ordering the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies to cease all funding for public media. This is a dangerous use of the federal government to stymie journalism and free speech, pillars of democracy.
Congress is wasting its time accusing Elmo of being Communist instead of doing its job and rooting out corruption at our government’s highest levels. Vote NO to defunding NPR and PBS, and protect public radio and broadcasting for future generations.
Thank you,
I am writing to urge you to support funding for NPR and PBS. Local radio and broadcast stations are critical bulwarks for fact-based news, local journalism, civic engagement, and children’s programming. Communities with reliable sources of news experience higher voter participation in local and state elections, lower levels of government and business corruption, and lower prices and taxes than they see when these sources disappear. This is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise the American people, disproportionately affecting rural and poor communities. Defunding NPR and PBS will also imperil critical programming at a time when misinformation runs rampant in our modern media landscape.
NPR and PBS bring essential local news and educational material to rural, working-class, and underserved communities. Working class Americans like myself rely on PBS’ local programming for early education materials, local news, and local historical and communal preservation. We similarly rely on our local NPR stations for up-to-date and fact-based local journalism, civics, and emergency service alerts. Public Media is my only accessible news source during natural and national disasters; there is little to nothing else I can access during emergencies. Defunding NPR and PBS will take all of this away from American people like myself, forcing us to fork up money we don’t have for news, education, connection, and emergency alerts from private sources, and forcing us to subject ourselves to advertising from predatory corporate interests. There is nothing else like NPR and PBS on the market; their “competition”—from satellite radio to Apple Podcasts to Spotify to network TV and streaming services—forces us to pay, and increasingly pay more and more.
NPR and PBS are NON-PARTISAN organizations that provide an essential service. I was appalled by the way Congresswoman Green’s DOGE committee suggested that our public news and broadcast networks should interrogate their journalists and staff on party membership and ideological leaning. This is nothing short of new-age McCarthyism. The intent here is clear: persecute any news or programming that is not personally, financially sponsored and run by sitting president Trump and his corporate allies, and screw over the American people in the process. So, I am equally as appalled by president Trump’s recent executive order calling public media “biased” and ordering the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies to cease all funding for public media. This is a dangerous use of the federal government to stymie journalism and free speech, pillars of democracy.
Congress is wasting its time accusing Elmo of being Communist instead of doing its job and rooting out corruption at our government’s highest levels. Vote NO to defunding NPR and PBS, and protect public radio and broadcasting for future generations.
Thank you,
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