Maine’s version of government-run, taxpayer-financed state media, popularly dubbed “public broadcasting,” will likely have to find a new source of bucks to avoid possible layoffs.
The announced shutdown last week of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting means a $2.5 million annual loss to Maine Public Broadcasting Network.
Coincidentally enough the Pine Tree State’s version of “public” broadcasting, commonly known as Maine Public, kicks off its summer fundraising campaign today August 4.
The decision to shutter CPB came a week after President Trump signed a bill canceling its $1.1 billion in federal funding.
The White House has called the taxpayer-financed public-media system politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
CPB helps pay for PBS, NPR and, 1,500 local radio and television stations nationwide.
Maine’s slice of the money pie will be significantly smaller due to the national funding loss, prompting speculation about possible layoffs or programming cuts, or both.
“Roughly 70% of the corporation’s money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country,” Audrey McAvoy of the Associated Press reports. “The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it’s likely some won’t survive.”
Maine of course is one of those smaller outlets, but its CEO and president Richard Schneider insists it “will still be here.”
The state’s Lewiston-based, public-media system “is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12% of its budget,” according to McAvoy.
Maine Public will now have to “figure out different ways” to plug that budget hole, Schneider said.
Despite Trump’s argument that the taxpayer-funded broadcasting system has a liberal bias, the Maine PBS gang has pushed back against claims questioning what it calls its “editorial independence.”
Schneider two years ago pulled down Maine Public’s Twitter account after the social-media website declared public broadcasting to be an arm of the government.
“Today, Maine Public is suspending activity on Twitter, joining NPR, PBS and many public media stations across the country,” he announced in April 2023. ”Twitter’s actions erroneously call into question the editorial independence of our largest content providers and undermine our credibility by association.”
The $269,158-salaried Schneider complained that Twitter labeled public broadcasting as partisan, government-funded media.
In reality that’s exactly what it is.
The only thing “public” about “public broadcasting” is that you are required to pay for it whether you listen to it or not.
That little 55-year-long, state-run, taxpayer-funded, socialistic media experiment is now over thanks to Donald Trump.
Its shutdown comes 15 months after longtime NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner published an essay blasting its coverage as increasingly reflecting a rigid progressive ideology.
Berliner, who said NPR’s partisan leftist bent was losing the public trust, was suspended and then resigned in the wake of his outspoken editorializing.
He had claimed that the network’s new focus on diversity hiring wasn’t reflected in its on-air product due to its allegedly limiting a wide range of political viewpoints.
Berliner’s essay was published by The Free Press, an online site embraced by journalists who believe that the mainstream media has become too liberal.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding,” he wrote.
“In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
He said that while government broadcasting was always considered to be left of center, it had recently morphed into a virtual political movement telling listeners how to think.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher – who before joining the network last year had posted a tweet calling Trump a racist – defended her personal political views as not reflecting the “editorial independence” of the network’s journalists.
Unfortunately for Maher, Trump has now gotten the final word.
