It’s not about the digital innovation
NPR scores massive victory against Trump — CPB FORCED to restore $36 million deal after judge shreds their excuse.
Donald Trump’s crusade to kneecap public media just suffered a massive legal humiliation — and it’s one that exposes the breathtaking corruption behind his attempts to silence reporters who refuse to bow to him.
On Monday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting quietly crawled back to court and agreed to revive a $36 million contract with NPR — the very contract it killed after intense pressure from the Trump White House.
This reversal didn’t happen because CPB suddenly rediscovered its mission. It happened because a federal judge all but laughed CPB’s defense out of the courtroom.
Judge Randolph Moss told CPB lawyers point-blank: their story wasn’t credible. Their excuse? That they suddenly dumped NPR to “foster digital innovation.”
Sure. Totally normal to discover a passion for innovation the day after a top Trump official told them not to “do business with NPR.”
The truth spilled out in depositions: CPB’s board chair and executives met with a White House budget officer who openly declared her “intense dislike for NPR.” And within 48 hours, CPB reversed a decades-long partnership — clearly terrified of a president hell-bent on censoring journalists who report facts he doesn’t like.
I have to say, I don’t like NPR either – but that’s not because I think it’s too lefty. It’s because I think it’s too goopy, too touchy-feely, too dumbed down, too convinced that we’re all a bit childish. I went off it years ago. If it were too lefty I would like it a lot more; it’s the sentimentality and the slushy language I got sick of.
But if the alternative is a Trump version? Then long live NPR!
Yes, this! Even “NPR voice” gives me the heeby-jeebies. It’s so dumbed down. To the point that it seems almost science-fiction-level creepy. Like an X-files episode full of zombies. Or like that new show Pluribus, where everyone on Earth has been infected with the Happiness Virus, and the one wonderfully miserable writer woman has to save the world, though sheer misery and cynicism.
NPR is the Happiness Virus!
(Also: run don’t walk to watch Pluribus. Hoo lordy, is it magnificent! Best pilot episode since Twin Peaks, that’s for sure.)
Ugghh yes that’s exactly it – how did I forget to mention the voice? It’s the voice I hate most.
To give them credit, though, they’re still my preferred radio channel(s) when driving, if I’m looking for actual truth on the air (at least, about anything other than trans issues, where I’ve heard reporters using lines that would’ve gotten me beaten with a yardstick if I’d tried uttering them in a journalism class). They even had an episode in the last week or so that discussed how ‘NPR voice’ is a thing, and the downsides of it. Can you imagine a universe where FOX showed one-tenth that level of self-awareness?
Ooh I’ll have to find the NPR voice item.