An existential threat for US public media?

IN BRIEF: 

• Republican legislators are gearing up to introduce bills which would defund both national and local public media.
• A new department tasked with ‘government efficiency’ will be created, and could target public media.
• Donald Trump has also appointed Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, the US international public broadcaster.

IN FULL: 

Trump, who won November’s election and will return to the presidency on 20 January, has appointed the billionaire businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a not-yet-created agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) that will be tasked with finding deep cuts in public spending. Already, Musk and Ramaswamy have said they want to see public media defunded. 

The Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been selected to lead a new House subcommittee working with the DoGE, told Fox News she planned to make good on Musk’s wish to defund NPR, claiming it spread “nothing but Democratic propaganda”. In reality, NPR gets little of its funding from federal grants.  

Read more: What does a Trump presidency mean for US public media? (Research Insight) 

The incoming Republican-led Congress and White House — emboldened by their empowerment of alternative media, including Musk and Trump’s own social media platforms — appear serious to follow through on their threats. This year alone, there were three different bills aimed at eliminating funding for NPR and CPB, and members such as New York Republican Claudia Tenney, who sponsored one of the bills, said they will be reintroduced again in the next congress, reported Semafor. 

Meanwhile, the Republican Senator John Kennedy has introduced a bill he called the “No Propaganda Act.” If passed, it would end federal funding for public media in the United States by blocking the federal government from funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds the US’ constellation of public media stations and networks. 

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting refuses to provide Louisianians and Americans with fair, unbiased content. It wastes taxpayer dollars on slanted coverage to advance a leftist political agenda. The No Propaganda Act would save taxpayer money by putting an end to Big Brother’s propaganda outlet,” Kennedy said. 

Meanwhile, Trump has appointed Kari Lake, a Republican firebrand who has previously called journalists “monsters”, to lead Voice of America, the federally-funded international broadcaster. 

During his first term, Trump was accused of using his appointees to turn Voice of America, whose aim is to offer unbiased news to audiences around the world, into a pro-Trump propaganda outlet during his first term. In his announcement of Lake, a local TV news anchor turned election denier who lost races for Senate and governor in Arizona, Trump hinted that he believed he had found an ally to try to reshape its coverage, according to The New York Times. 

Lake will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media,” Trump said in a social media post. 

The appointment has spread chills through the organisation, according to another report by The New York Times, though it remains unclear whether Trump would actually be able to fire the current director of VoA. In 2020, Congress passed a law limiting the power of VoA’s parent agency, requiring a bipartisan board to approve appointments and dismissals of all network heads within the agency. No more than three members of the seven-member board can come from the same party, and Trump would need confirmation from the Senate to appoint any new board members.