PBS Should Not Get Federal Funding

Let me start by saying I watch public television – Channel 9 by me – and love it, except for most of its political programs.

OK, got that?

I also make note of the fact that Trump just issued an executive order canceling federal funds to support PBS. I have no opinion whether Trump has the legal authority to do this and am not qualified to discuss the matter. I know Trump issues some sort of executive order daily as if the guy is a king or perhaps Zeus.

But I agree with the sentiment behind his executive order. Citizens should not have to pay for public broadcasting although most of the funding for PBS comes from private donations. Those should be sufficient.

Let me take this step by step.

Some might say the government should pay for PBS because it has good programming. It sure does, except for most of its political shows. I love Masterpiece Theatre and Downton Abbey and Miss Marple and Chief Inspector Moss etc.

But I know that many people – I’d say the majority – never watch PBS and couldn’t care less about the next series based on a Jane Austen novel. Why should they pay for someone else’s pleasure?

Some might say, even if most people don’t watch PBS, the programming on their local public station is good for them and they should support it even if they don’t like it.

To which I say people who don’t watch PBS might say PBS lovers have a lot of nerve to decree what is good for them. It’s like when my mother would tell me to eat my spinach because it was good for me. I hid it in my napkin when she wasn’t looking.

But all of this isn’t the point. I don’t believe Trump cares about the arguments I just made. He objects to PBS because of its left-wing bias. I agree it has a left-wing bias and for that alone it does not deserve public funding. I’m saying I’m with Trump on this one.

Get a load of the left-wing bias of PBS. It initially refused to cover the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal. That’s a news outlet? It initially dismissed the lab-leak theory related to Covid. That’s a news outlet? It vigorously advocated the Russian collusion theory before the 2016 election. That’s a news outlet?

All of this was nonsensical, and not how a news station works. It’s how a propaganda machine works. PBS has such a left-wing bias it doesn’t even know it has one. It thinks its bias is the reality of the world.

In the last presidential election, more than half the country rejected the ‘woke’ mentality of PBS. Why should those people pay to support views that don’t represent them, views they can’t stand?