AXIOS BURIES THE LEDE: In his column at Spectator World, “Cockburn” concludes:
President Trump signed an executive order last night withdrawing government funding from PBS and NPR. “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens,” the order reads.
The move ends a longstanding debate over why, exactly, the US government was pumping money into outlets that so regularly and vociferously espoused very progressive viewpoints. A fact sheet circulated by the White House highlighted some of the most egregious examples: a PBS station in New York that produced a kids’ program about drag queens, including one called “Lil’ Miss Hot Mess”; a PBS segment on “wokeness” and “white privilege,” and an NPR interview about why genderqueer and trans people love dinosaurs that name-checks the “trans-ceraptops.” How educational!
Spectator contributing editor Stephen L. Miller has been banging the drum for the defunding of NPR for years. “The world will be a great place when our schools have all the funding they need and NPR and PBS need to hold a bake sale,” he told Cockburn this morning.
Cockburn understands the lamentations about how the executive order is another “attack on the press” – but it could have been worse for them. Imagine if Trump had treated the outlets like the Kennedy Center and installed a top loyalist at the top? Would it have been less of an affront to norms to have a Kari Lake-led PBS or a Sebastian Gorka-run NPR? (Gorka may find himself otherwise occupied, if speculation that he’s under consideration to be the next national security advisor prove true.)
Compounding the media’s woes is the fact that the White House is getting into the content aggregation game. This week, while much of the media struggles for traffic and audience capture, White House Wire was launched, as a more MAGA alternative to the Drudge Report. “I’m considering a $1 trillion lawsuit!” Matt Drudge told Axios.
Wait, the real Matt Drudge? He’s actually alive? Has Axios confirmed this? Wouldn’t they have many questions about what happened to the site that bears his name in recent years? A year ago Outkick.com noted, “No One Can Find Matt Drudge.” If Axios has tracked the reclusive former conservative down, don’t they owe it to the readers to get to the bottom of what happened to him? Or as Don Surber asked in December of 2023: Merry Christmas, Matt Drudge: Did you flip because you were bored, you sold the site, or you feared the FBI?