Leftists and Democrats have a tried-and-true spin every time Republicans threaten to cut a penny from PBS: it's a War on Big Bird! The media gave that an aggressive workout in the 2012 presidential campaign, when Mitt Romney was cast as Big Bird Enemy #1. This talking point should be retired, since Sesame Workshop sold their precious Sesame Street show to HBO Max in 2015. New episodes on HBO aren't shown on PBS for nine whole months. PBS now gets cobwebbed reruns.
But TV reporter John Eggerton at Broadcasting & Cable magazine warned "House Republicans Take Fresh Aim at Big Bird." On Friday, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Education Subcommittee voted to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting starting in fiscal year 2026. He explained "Public media are forward-funded in an effort to avoid the sort of political football game that, despite that effort, its funding became at the hands of angry Republicans."
Pardon us, Eggerton, but PBS has been a helpful political football for Democrats since the formation of the CPB in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.
There's no guarantee this cut would pass on the House floor, and it would be DOA in the Senate. But radical Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) likened those proposed cuts to attempting to “end public education in America,” and branded the bill the “Every Child Left Behind” Act. They suggest no child can learn a thing without public TV.
CPB is currently slated to get $535 million in 2026, all of which would go away if the funding bill reported out of subcommittee actually made it into law.,
Eggerton made sure to mention a statement by CPB president, the longest-serving president of the CPB in its history -- because she always provides the cover that she was once a co-chair of the Republican National Committee. But she's a Liz Cheney Republican on public broadcasting -- assisting the Democrat spin. Harrison said the Republican-supported cuts would “devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions for Americans in rural and urban communities alike.”
This kind of statement suggests that somehow PBS is overwhelmingly dependent on federal money -- when PBS often claims they barely take a smidge of taxpayer money. But it's also comical to suggest PBS promotes "civil discussions" when most of their programming is tremendously one-sided and can be very uncivil to conservatives.
