Behind the half-baked arguments flailing bully Trump uses to attack public media

In one way, this is the easiest column I’ve written.

It’s simple to celebrate public media in Kansas: public radio, educational television, veteran journalists, original reporting, local focus, innovative podcasts and more. For all that, I’m a long-time sustaining member of my local public radio station. And I have written many glowing columns about NPR journalism. Public media in Kansas is awesome.

In another way, this column is tricky. Defending anyone, let alone an institution, from fraudulent attacks is challenging. It’s proving a negative, when the negative is certifiably bonkers. And coming from the White House.

Here goes.

On Tuesday, National Public Radio and three public radio stations sued the Trump administration in response to the May 1 executive order that sought to strip public media of its funding in the United States.

The NPR lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, asserts that Trump’s executive order “violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

The 43-page filing pokes holes in Trump’s executive order: a brazen attempt to extinguish public media throughout the country — and harm its audience in Kansas — based on a partisan grudge.

Under even brief inspection, Trump’s May 1 executive order and the press statements that accompanied it look inept.

They read like the half-baked political flailing of the first Trump administration when the rationale for his decisions was foolish and risible.

Just like many of the actions of the first Trump administration, there is a more principled and legal argument to be made here: Persuade Congress to defund public broadcasting because taxpayer money simply doesn’t belong in the media. The executive order only fleetingly expresses that viewpoint: “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

More often, the White House falsely accuses public radio. It dishes out fake news about the real news.

If not opposed by a lawsuit like the one filed Tuesday, Trump’s executive order would wreck two valuable American institutions for petty and deceptive reasons: hot-button word choices, political innuendo and pet peeves.

What’s Trump’s best response for NPR’s regret at labeling someone as “illegal” in their reporting? Defund NPR.

What’s Trump’s best response to PBS’s documentary about a transgender teen? Defund PBS.

Forever a predatory real estate developer, Trump wants to tear down public media rather than putting money into improvements.

This week’s NPR lawsuit points us to documents that reveal Trump’s pettiness toward public media. First, consider “President Trump Finally Ends the Madness of NPR, PBS,” a press release published by the White House in conjunction with the executive order.

We find 24 bullet point examples of “trash that has passed for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS.” Many of the bullet points, stripped of context, completely misrepresent each instance of public media reporting.

One bullet point links to an NPR audio chat from 2022, headlined: “Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think.” During the discussion, the NPR host says, “These are not particularly easy questions for people to wrestle with.” The guest replies, “I completely agree with you that there is no clear-cut answer.”

How did the White House boil down this nuanced discussion of race? The press release says, “NPR assigned three reporters to investigate how the thumbs-up emoji is racist.”

NPR never used the word racist.

Summarizing the coverage in that way isn’t a political distortion. It’s a lie.

Here’s another White House claim from the same press release: “NPR routinely promotes the chemical and surgical mutilation of children as so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ without mentioning the irreversible damage caused by these procedures.” This bullet point links to a 2023 story from Florida by Melissa Block.

It’s a mind-bending stretch to see NPR as “promoting” medical care for trans kids in this journalism. The writer quotes experts — medical groups, plus an endocrinologist and a psychologist — as they each endorse the medical care.

Dear White House media critics, covering an issue is not to promote one side.

When the administration isn’t misrepresenting the work of public media, it nitpicks political language. In the press release’s final bullet point, the White House writes about the “PBS show Sesame Street partnered with CNN on a one-sided narrative to ‘address racism’ amid the Black Lives Matter riots.”

One-sided narrative? I wondered.

Clicking the link takes you to a cheerful image of Sesame Street characters with the title, “Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism.” What is the other side of racism that the White House wants represented here? Pro-racism?

The White House should be pressured to explain the “other side” of the debate that it is imagining, not Big Bird and PBS.

(The most likely true objection to this program? Sesame Street partnered with CNN, a network Trump would defund if he could.)

Taken as a whole, the list reads like a vendetta seeking a motive: Let’s destroy public media, but first we need a reason.

Given the White House’s complaints about news coverage in their press release, it seems that the executive order is in fact retaliation. Or, consider how the NPR lawyers metaphorically put it:

“It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. ‘But this wolf comes as a wolf.’ … The Order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased.’ ”

And yet, there’s more. Multiplying the unfairness of the lawsuit and executive order is the fundamental fairness of NPR’s news coverage. As a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas, I use NPR resources in my classroom precisely because they are among the most trustworthy and unbiased.

It’s not just me who sees it this way. Say what you will of the charts that organize media organizations in terms of bias; NPR is one of the most centrist sources, regardless of which media critics you trust.

“Our people report straight down the line,” said NPR CEO Katherine Maher during an appearance on CBS. “I think that not only do they do that, they do that with a mission that very few other broadcast organizations have, which is a requirement to serve the entire public. That is the point of public broadcasting. We bring people together in those conversations.”

During the past few weeks, as public media has defended itself against these garbage attacks, Trump’s order has been characterized as a disproportionate attack on people who live in rural areas, including large swaths of Kansas.

The faces of this defense have been the CEOs of NPR and the Public Broadcasting System. Each has stressed how rural audiences will suffer.

On Tuesday, Maher released a statement that repeatedly stressed the NPR’s nationwide virtue of “serving all 50 states and territories” as a source for “tens of millions of Americans.”

“Without public dollars, NPR’s investment in rural reporting initiatives, collaborative regional newsrooms, and award-winning international coverage would all be at risk,” Maher wrote.

Lisa Rodriguez, interim director of content for KCUR, an affiliate station in Kansas City, appeared on the station’s “Up To Date” show to explain how small rural member stations rely on NPR.

“For KCUR, you depend on it for what you hear every day,” Rodriguez said. “But also at these smaller stations, you don’t have as rich a local journalism ecosystem. It is sometimes the only news that is reaching small communities.”

To call the White House’s arguments weak should not minimize their gravity. The consequences of the executive order would be catastrophic, especially to Kansans, if they hold up in court.

Through the rhetoric of this executive order and its press release, Trump relishes in playing the schoolyard bully once again. This time he is not so much name calling or picking on the vulnerable. With public media, he threatens to take his ball, go home and leave Kansans stranded.

Why? The bully doesn’t like the way the game is being played.

However, as the lawsuit makes clear, it is not his ball. And he has no right to take it.

NPR and its fellow plaintiffs seek their continuing independence in their lawsuit. They quote a legal precedent that interpreted NPR’s founding legislation as creating an “elaborate structure … to insulate (broadcasters) from government interference.”

Later, the suit continues, that while “Congress is not obligated to support independent public radio with federal funds,” the government cannot remove funding in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on free speech.

Unfortunately, our current Congress does not appear willing to reassert itself against Trump’s hallucinatory rhetoric and orders.

This week’s lawsuit and its path through the courts may be the only remedy to save public broadcasting in Kansas.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.