21 Aug 24 | Americas, News and features, United States
Reframing the US government’s relationship with the media and placing free speech and democracy in the firing line is at the heart of Project 2025, the 922-page policy plan supported by over 400 conservatives and led by the Heritage Foundation thinktank.
Contributed to by more than 100 of Donald Trump’s former administration officials, the document lays out a comprehensive vision for the next conservative US administration, and seeks to fundamentally change the nature of government’s relationship with the media.
The US has one of the most highly developed mass media networks in the world, TV being the most consumed. The “big three” – Fox, MSNBC and CBS – dominate the mainstream independent sphere and are often criticised for a consistently “far left” or “far right” bias; public government-supported networks PBS and NPR, meanwhile, promise to provide unbiased factual reporting.
Many on the right, including former President Donald Trump, accuse NPR and PBS of left-leaning bias and call for ending government-funded media. Republican lawmakers’ past efforts to defund NPR and PBS have gained traction with Project 2025.
But defunding public media could lead to local news station closures, increasing the influence of biased reporting from major networks like Fox, which the left claims is a mouthpiece for Trump’s political agenda.
Trump has always tried to reframe free speech as biased and has sought to place journalists in the news itself in the pursuit of delegitimisation.
As explained by Russian economist Sergei Guriev and American political scientist Daniel Treisman, authors of Spin Dictators, the new generation of autocracy is diverse. While the primary goal remains the same – monopolising political power – this new power is maintained “by repressing any opposition, controlling all communications, [and] punishing critics.”
A skilful ruler can control people by reshaping their beliefs about the world, fooling them into compliance and even enthusiastic approval. “In place of harsh repression, the new dictators manipulate information. Like spin doctors in a democracy, they spin the news to engineer support. They are spin dictators.”
A closer look at Chapter 8 of Project 2025, with its policy proposals against public media and press freedom and its potential to endanger journalists both domestically and abroad, reveals these strategies and beliefs in action.
Mike Gonzales, a journalist and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, lays out the plan for how a future administration could defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
The CPB operates as a private nonprofit corporation and is the primary financial backer of public radio and television, using tax dollars to finance public media institutions to ensure Americans have access to free, local public media. While fully funded by the federal government, the organisation doesn’t engage in programme production, distribution, or station ownership.
At the centre of Gonzales’s case against the CPB is the need to defund National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The claim is that the nonprofit media organisations have a liberal bias, and the country cannot afford to spend half a billion dollars on “leftist opinion”. The “government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views,” his document asserts.
NPR and PBS have faced longstanding criticism from Republican politicians on the basis of an alleged liberal bias. Republican nominee Donald Trump took to Twitter earlier this year, writing, “No more funding for NPR, a total scam!” He claimed that the organisation is “Only used to damage Trump’” and that “they are a liberal disinformation machine,” after a former editor at NPR criticised Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO, for fostering a liberal bias.
Gonzales asserts that a Project 2025 defunding of public media would not lead to the end of such organisations. “Defunding CPB would by no means cause NPR or PBS – or other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding – to file for bankruptcy,” he argues, “The membership model and support from corporations and foundations would enable these broadcasters to continue thriving.”
David Liberman, a media studies professor who has been covering the industry for decades agrees: “Project 2025’s proposal to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting falls into a familiar trap. The Heritage Foundation believes that it would undermine what it calls the “leftist opinion” it perceives on PBS and National Public Radio. But the initiative is mostly symbolic: little federal money goes to their most controversial newscasts.”.
Only 8% of NPR’s revenues actually come from federal funds and 15% for PBS. Cutting the amount of cash the government gives them would likely have a detrimental, but not fatal, effect. But the CPB has another function, it supports almost 1,500 smaller stations including rural stations across the USA. According to the CPB, rural public broadcasting stations heavily rely on its Community Service and that’s where 70% of CPB’s annual appropriation goes.
Liberman, who has reported on these populations firsthand, adds: “The entities that would be most hurt are independently owned NPR stations—particularly the ones that provide local journalism. The money from CPB accounts for about 12% of their budgets. The lost contributions would be especially damaging to stations in rural news deserts that have lost their daily newspapers.”
This not only diminishes the visibility of local issues but also deprives communities of trusted journalism, making more accessible news outlets such as social media platforms like X and biased news organisations like Fox the primary sources people turn to for information,
Defunding and denouncing public media sources like PBS and NPR not only has a financial impact, but also a profoundly chilling effect on public broadcasters, setting a dangerous precedent for the topics and individuals that they cover or give a voice to. Gonzales concludes that NPR and PBS are “non-educational.”
While the argument for maintaining unbiased public media is valid, penalising free speech and dismissing information as lacking educational value simply because it doesn’t align with the Republican Party’s values blurs the boundaries of governmental influence and challenges the distinction between fact and opinion in the public media sector.
But it is the attack on local journalism that is the most pernicious.
29 Apr 19 | Academic Freedom, News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”106402″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]When conservative Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson was invited to deliver the distinguished Roy H Park Lecture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s journalism school, outrage exploded online.
Current and former students offered fierce criticism of the choice, especially on Twitter where some called Carlson racist and a propagandist. Many said they were disappointed and ashamed. Carlson, people criticised, was not a journalist, but an entertainer. What business did he have speaking to budding journalists? Others pointed to Carlson’s comments about immigrants — they make the US “poorer and dirtier” — and his critiques of diversity, as well as his use of language, critics say, upholds white supremacy.
Despite the backlash, the school moved forward with the lecture, which was largely uneventful. Students and faculty listened. Some audience members asked pointed questions. And then it was over.
That’s how John Robinson, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s journalism school, remembers it. He understood the outrage but said it was a teachable moment.
“Students aren’t snowflakes. They understand BS when they hear it,” he said. “I just don’t see any evidence that students are intolerant of others’ views when it comes to speakers.”
Yet last month US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to uphold freedom of speech on college campuses in response to a supposed “crisis”.
“Under the guise of speech codes, safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity, and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today,” Trump said during the signing ceremony, surrounded by predominantly white students in conservative organisations.
Not much is changing. The order encourages universities to “foster environments that promote open, intellectually engaging, and diverse debate” through the First Amendment — freedom of speech. It requires that universities receiving federal research or education grant money must “promote free inquiry”.
But public universities in the US already have to uphold the First Amendment if they receive funding from the federal government. Further, some academics are arguing that the order could actually hurt freedom of speech by causing universities to self-censor who they invite to campus.
In a survey conducted by professor Tori Ekstrand of UNC-Chapel Hill students, 86 per cent said the university should invite speakers with a variety of viewpoints to campus, including those whose perspectives vary from their own. On the national level, the Knight Foundation found that extreme actions, including violence and shouting down speakers, are largely condemned.
So, who is Trump protecting?
In early April, three students from the University of Arizona protested an on-campus presentation by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, calling them a “murder patrol” and “an extension of the KKK”. All three students were charged with misdemeanours by police: “interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution”; one of the students was also charged with “threats and intimidation”. A county prosecutor has yet to decide if a prosecution will go forward.
Trump has not commented on the incident, but many are following the case because it is unusual for arrests to follow a nonviolent protest, especially one on campus. Commentators have said the strong reprimand was a result of the recent order.
The case in Arizona relates to a larger issue on campuses: punishing students who protest. In 2017 the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, published a report arguing that freedom of speech is under attack on American college campuses — citing “shout downs” that interrupt speakers, safe spaces and restrictive policies. The group created a model bill, establishing punitive measures for students and others who interfere with free-speech — essentially punishing protesters on campus. It also prevents administrators from disinviting speakers, no matter how controversial. Many states, including Arizona and North Carolina, have adopted versions of the Goldwater bill.
In a report on the bill, the American Association of University Professors put it bluntly: the legislation “seeks to support what it sees as the embattled minority of conservatives on campus against the ‘politically correct’ majority”.
And for those who find themselves outside the conservative viewpoint?
“It’s an attempt at intimidation,” said Michael Behrent, vice-president of the AAUP’s North Carolina conference. “The argument is to try and force members of the progressive left … to make them feel threatened and endangered, rather than an attempt to outright block their free speech.”
A chilling effect. And this isn’t the first time Trump has attempted this. In 2016, Trump said he planned to change libel laws to make it easier to sue news organisations. The same year, he threatened to imprison or revoke the citizenship of those who burned the flag.
“What we see coming out of his legacy is this notion of protecting conservative speech,” said Kendric Coleman, a professor at Valdosta University who studied the role of safe spaces in the LGBTQ+ community. Trump “is trying to redefine harassment speech into free speech”.
Technically, hate speech is protected by the US constitution, as long as it doesn’t incite violence. But detractors say some speakers — like white nationalist Richard Spencer, who has been disinvited from a number of events and universities — may actually cross the line into incitement of violence.
But some university administrations are hesitant to actually define the line between protected free-speech and incitement to violence. And with new policies coming from the state and federal level, with the intention of protecting free-speech, that line may only become more blurry.
At the heart of the debate lies this question: Should speech that is harmful to certain groups be protected? In the survey conducted by Ekstrand, 93 per cent said others should be allowed to express unpopular opinions on campus. But that number drops to 61 per cent when that speech is offensive to others.
The Knight Foundation also found that American students consider both protecting free-speech and promoting inclusivity as important to democracy. But only 37 per cent of students identifying as Republican said that it is “extremely important” to promote inclusivity — compared to 63 per cent of Democrats.
This is where policies like Trump’s executive order and the Goldwater bill lie. While the left prioritises inclusivity at the expense of free speech, the right resists in opposition.
At stake remains whose voices receive protection, and whose get censored. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1556180903639-20dca59b-8321-10″ taxonomies=”8843″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
