The Morning Briefing: Dear NPR and PBS — The 'Public' Shouldn't Have to Fund Anything

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The Sine Qua Non Sequitur is attending a lactose-intense Jack LaLanne retrospective.

These are certainly passionate times for political news junkies. OK, that's a demographic that tends to be passionate all the time, but it feels like there's a little more energy involved of late.

I was going to lead off today with my thoughts on two of the dominant, ongoing issues in conservative media, neither of which I am in sync with. Rather than stir up that hornet's nest, I'll just share this and let people infer what they will:

What if — just bear with me here — the Epstein list was written with Joe Biden's autopen?
— SFK (@stephenkruiser) July 16, 2025

Let us now move on to today's MB focus.

The Democrats have been losing what little is left of their minds over the prospect of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) being forced to wean themselves off of the American taxpayer teat. It's been quite the spectacle, full of more nonsense than a post-Beatles John Lennon song.

Well, lefty kids, D(funding)-Day is almost here. This is from my friend and Townhall colleague Matt Vespa:

The Senate has passed President Trump’s rescissions package on a 51-48 vote, which codifies some $9 billion in cuts, including the elimination of all federal funds for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We, the taxpayers, are one giant step closer toward ending the subsidization of biased outlets that hate us and America. Now, NPR and PBS aren’t going away, but they’ll have to survive like the rest of us in media.

We now have to see if House Republicans can be functional or if we will have to endure another "herding cats while drunk and on stilts" affair. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I have high hopes for this one.

This is, of course, a conversation that we should have had and resolved a very long time ago. The modern media era that began with television is heavy on the "modern" aspect, and is always changing at a rapid pace. What was once important, ubiquitous, and/or cutting edge can quickly become anachronistic or vestigial. Blockbuster Video is one prime example.

The point is that the allegedly noble reasons for the founding and taxpayer funding of PBS and NPR no longer exist. The public now has access to more news and entertainment than it could ever consume. The case can easily be made that we were never in need of a helping hand from "the government" for our entertainment and news choices, of course, and conservatives have been doing just that for a very long time.

The "public" in both PBS and NPR is, obviously, the American taxpayer. Every citizen who pays taxes is funding what are essentially niche liberal fetish media outlets. There is no service being done for the public at large. In their support of ever-more radical leftism, both platforms have been making the case for the withdrawal of taxpayer funding.

As I wrote in a column yesterday, before the defunding of PBS and NPR became a potential reality, supporters of both insisted that the percentage of taxpayer funding that they received was so statistically insignificant that the taxpayers shouldn't worry about it. That's the same line they spew about Planned Parenthood, which is why it seems familiar. My response to that has always been, "So why do you care if that funding is taken away?"

Yeah, it's a rhetorical question.

The entirety of the American taxpaying public shouldn't be forced to fund content that is editorially geared towards its extreme left coastal fringes. If the House Republicans can spend a day or two behaving like adults, we will no longer have to.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07/16/25

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