Funding appeal brings wrath of MAGA down on Wichita PBS TV station | Opinion
I hate to sound pessimistic, but I’m fairly certain that by Friday, Wichita’s public television station will lose about one-fourth of its funding.
Friday’s the arbitrary deadline that Congress has set for the Senate to defund public broadcasting across the nation — both PBS TV and National Public Radio.
The reason public broadcasters are faced with defunding is simple. They don’t carry water on both shoulders 24/7 for Donald Trump.
With Trump’s unquenchable egotism, there are only two types of broadcasters: Those that spend all their airtime showering him with praise, and enemies of his regime needing to be crushed.
I hate to admit it, but I’m old enough to remember when it was kind of a big deal that Richard Nixon had a secret “enemies list,” the purpose of which, according to then-White House Counsel John Dean, was to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
Back then, the American people found that somewhat distasteful in their president, evidence of paranoia and abuse of power. Nixon’s enemies list was actually the basis for the second count in the impeachment resolution that ultimately forced him to resign.
How quaint that all seems now.
Trump doesn’t bother to keep his enemies list a secret. It’s out in the open. And the latest victim in the crosshairs is public broadcasting.
Senators couldn’t care less what you think
The MAGA faithful, in Kansas and in Washington, are in full hair-on-fire mode because Victor Hogstrom, president and CEO of Wichita’s PBS affiliate, KPTS Channel 8, had the temerity to stand up for his station and ask viewers to contact their senators and ask them to vote no on Trump’s evisceration bill pending before the Senate.
“NPR/PBS long ago gave up any pretense of being a neutral broadcaster. Their actions have proven how partisan they have become and why it’s time to stop giving them taxpayer money,” thunders the Kansas Republican Party in an online ad attacking Hogstrom, who for the record never mentioned parties or partisan politics in his announcement.
Back when we lived in a democracy where public opinion mattered to senators, it wouldn’t have been at all controversial to ask people to reach out and get involved in a public issue.
In the era of Trump, it’s a complete waste of time.
Both of our senators, Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, have sent Kansas a loud, clear message that can be summed up as: Don’t call me, I really don’t care what you think.
The vehicle for that message is Fox News (who else)?
Witness this quote from an unnamed Marshall PR flack on Fox News Digital last week:
“For those questioning whether NPR and PBS simply serve as taxpayer-funded mouthpieces for the Democratic Party, look no further. If they’ve got enough money to run taxpayer-funded ads in Kansas, it makes the decision for us to cut their funding that much easier.”
It makes no sense, but I expect this kind of generic claptrap from Marshall, who fled from his own town hall meeting in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas, when someone asked an unscripted question.
Marshall long since lost interest in hearing from actual Kansas voices. He obviously wants a cush job as a toady in the Trump administration, but sadly (for him) he’s stuck in the Senate, because if he were to leave, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly would get to appoint a replacement until next year’s election, weakening MAGA’s grip on absolute power.
And then there’s this Fox quote from Moran:
“Congress created public broadcasting as a way to deliver unbiased news and educational programming to Americans. Kansas PBS receives federal funding, and tax-payer funded stations should not be taking sides in political debates.”
I expected somewhat better from Moran — I’m sure he’s smart enough to know that asking viewers to ask their elected representatives not to defund their public TV station is hardly “taking sides in political debates.”
I guess I anticipated at least a certain amount of hand-wringing and viewing with alarm before Moran casts his inevitable “yes” vote, like he did with the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
FCC chair threatens PBS Kansas
Remember what I said earlier about Nixon using “the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies?”
Witness this post on X from Brendan Carr, Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in which he directly threatens to use the available federal machinery to screw our dinky little public TV station.
“Federal law prohibits noncommercial stations — including PBS ones — from accepting money in exchange for airing political issue ads. I’ve asked the FCC’s enforcement team to determine whether or not that happened here. I would encourage PBS & NPR to focus more on how they managed to lose America’s trust. That is their problem, not Congress’s work to ensure good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
I can say with certainty that I trust KPTS a whole lot more than I trust Brendan Carr — or Roger Marshall, or Jerry Moran.
Wichita, if we want our public television station, it’s obviously going to be up to us.
The best answer to Trump, Carr, Marshall and Moran is to make up the difference out of our own pockets. It shouldn’t have to come to that, but it does.
The link to join as a member of KPTS is www.kpts.org/support/donations/
The federal funding cut represents about $1 million of KPTS’s $4 million budget, Hogstrom told me last week.
I talked to him after being a volunteer panelist on the station’s public affairs program “Kansas Week.” While these types of shows were once common Sunday morning fare, they’ve been replaced with infomercials on commercial stations.
Here’s an idea for how to pay for your membership:
Last week, my colleague Issac J. Bailey, who writes for our papers in the Carolinas, penned an outstanding column detailing how media titan Paramount turned its back on democracy, the 1st Amendment, journalism, its viewers and common decency with a $16 million payoff to Trump.
This exercise in corporate capitulation was to get Trump to drop a frivolous $20 billion lawsuit he filed against Paramount, because its CBS News division ran an interview with Kamala Harris that made Trump angry.
Not coincidentally, the payoff is also expected to pave the way for Carr’s FCC to approve Paramount’s planned $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media.
If this all seems hinky to you, the best response would be to drop your monthly Paramount+ subscription (if you have one) and turn it into a monthly pledge to your local public television station.
That would send two messages at once.
And it would do a whole lot more good than wasting your time calling your senator.
