On Tuesday, March 25th, 2025, President Donald Trump accused public media outlets National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of being biased and unnecessary. Under the premise that his administration receives enough coverage from private media, he stated on Truth Social that funding them was \u201ca waste of money\u201d and that Congress should take away their budget \u201cimmediately\u201d. This call turned into a political onslaught: \u201cRepublicans, don\u2019t miss this opportunity to rid our country of this giant scam [\u2026]. JUST SAY NO AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within Congress, republican legislators reproduced the message, demanding the \u201cpure and simple dismantling\u201d of the CPB. But the attack is two-dimensional: while the legislative power cut the 1100 million dollars that support local public stations, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under the leadership of Brendan Carr, started to operate as a political pressure arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This shift in the FCC\u2019s political culture has redefined \u201cpublic interest\u201d. The agency has gone from being a protector of pluralism to an institution that uses threats about broadcasting licenses as a surveillance tool against critical media. It is a perfect clamp: local public media are financially suffocated while being subjected to hostile regulatory pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the revenue of NPR and PBS does not depend exclusively on Congress, the CPB is the lung of local public television and radio stations. The cut directly affects over 1500 locally managed chains. Those located in isolated or inhospitable places such as Alaska, where radio is an essential emergency and companion service, are facing a dark future today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most CPB employees lost their positions in late September, at the end of the 2025 fiscal year. A small transition team stayed until January 2026 to ensure an \u201corderly\u201d closure, but the damage is already done: the mass creation of \u201cnews deserts\u201d in which the cultural and ethnical diversity of marginalized groups loses its only visibility window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a clear example of the power of the presidential word to establish narratives that justify anti-democratic measures. Public media are not a luxury; they are sources of trust for communities ignored by the market and provide a necessary counterweight to the economic power of the media ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Issuing a stigmatizing speech that disguises pluralist journalism as \u201cbias\u201d is actually a censorship mechanism. Communicational violence is rising and being used by the executive and legislative power, leveraging the democratic system to undermine it. Through his speech, Trump is implying that public media should focus on covering the actions of his administration, which is a mistaken approach to the role of public media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Communicational violence is not an abstract phenomenon. It has offices that close, journalists who lose their job and citizens who are left in the dark. To defend public media is not to defend an expense but to protect the minimum infrastructure required so that democracy is not just a privilege of large cities. We must commit to a respectful, responsible and pluralist communication for a stronger and more pacific democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Diego C\u00e1ceres Bustos, January 2026<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
El cierre de la Corporaci\u00f3n para la Radiodifusi\u00f3n P\u00fablica de Estados Unidos (CPB, por sus siglas en ingl\u00e9s) no comenz\u00f3 con una firma en el congreso estadounidense, sino con un adjetivo en una red social. As\u00ed lo podemos ver despu\u00e9s que Donald Trump ordenara el fin de la financiaci\u00f3n federal, lo que est\u00e1 conduciendo al […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[44],"tags":[77,360,359,362,361,33,54,270],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnas","tag-convergencia","tag-estados-unidos","tag-fcc","tag-medios-locales","tag-medios-publicos","tag-noticias","tag-regulacion","tag-trump"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regulacionconvergente.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Columna-Trump-vs-Medios-Publicos.jpg?fit=1080%2C566&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2874,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions\/2874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulacionconvergente.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}