The case is deliciously juicy for all of us news junkies. National Public Radio and three Colorado public radio stations versus Donald J. Trump, et.al., using his very own language to, as Shakespeare would say, hoist him with his own petard.
At stake is federal money that amounts to roughly $1.60 per taxpayer per year for public radio. For Colorado Public Radio, it is about 5% of its operating budget, according to Executive Editor Kevin Dale.
Suffice it to say, CPR would rather keep that funding.
The lawsuit contends, among other things, that the order calling for cancellation of the $535 million annual appropriation by Congress for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting violates First Amendment protections of free speech and constitutes retaliation for coverage the administration didn’t like.
In announcing the budget cuts, the White House explicitly revealed that its motive is to silence the medium, saying that NPR and PBS, “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’ ”
Some of that news, naturally, is about the president.
NPR was among the hundreds of news organizations all over the world that covered the elections in 2020 and the unsuccessful legal challenges to the outcome, reporting that Joe Biden won in a free and fair election — something the Trump campaign continues to hotly dispute.
But the truth is irrelevant, as Steve Bannon said in The Atlantic. “Our reality is that we won.” Bannon doesn’t dispute that this contention is unequivocally false, but by hammering the public with the lie, the campaign was able to brainwash millions of people into believing it.
“Who’s won the argument?” he said, dismissing the facts. “I think we have.”
The lawsuit cites two recent Supreme Court rulings, saying government officials cannot “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression” and “the First Amendment prohibits government officials from retaliating against individuals for engaging in protected speech.”
By slashing federal funding, that’s exactly what the administration is doing.
And while it sometimes is difficult to determine the motives behind the government’s actions, this time it’s obvious, the lawsuit says, pointing to the statements from the White House.
The words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia echo from the grave. Sometimes it’s impossible to prove that the government is retaliating in violation of the First Amendment, he said, “But this wolf comes as a wolf.”
The cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would affect a lot more than political coverage of the Trump administration.
In Colorado, public radio has stepped into the void of local news coverage created when the Rocky Mountain News folded in 2009 and Alden Global Capital purchased the Denver Post in 2010 and began eviscerating the newsroom.
The combined newsroom staffs numbered about 600 professional reporters and editors in 2008. It’s estimated only about 60 remain on the job at what’s left of the Denver Post.
The award-winning Colorado Sun is among the scrappy professional news organizations that have scrambled to keep communities informed and hold public officials accountable. But public radio’s reach is broad and deep, and losing that voice would be devastating.
CPR reported 281,100 weekly statewide listeners to its news programs in 2024, plus hundreds of thousands who listen to its music stations. Aspen Public Radio, which also is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, has more than 18,000 weekly listeners and KSUT Public Radio (another plaintiff) reaches listeners across a wide swath in the Four Corners area.
Dale said CPR’s newsroom staff numbers more than 60 and both audience numbers and donations through fund drives have increased since last fall, which ultimately could enable them to hire more reporters.
In a recent commentary in the Grand Junction Sentinel, CPR President Stewart Vanderwilt said that public radio stations across the state “provide news, information, emergency alerts and community connection” that “can’t be replaced by an internet feed of news from a national source.” Ninety percent of the state’s population is reached by the CPR broadcast signal.
Since the collapse of the Rocky and retrenchment at the Post, the only Colorado journalist providing coverage of federal agencies and the state’s elected leaders in Washington, D.C., is a reporter for CPR.
It’s often said that when you lose a news organization, it’s not like losing power. When the electricity is interrupted, the lights go out. You know right away that something is wrong. But when newsrooms disappear, you don’t know what you’re missing.
You don’t know about storms bearing down on your neighborhood, the causes of the Marshall fire, corruption at city hall, how many people died of COVID in Colorado, the 3-year-old kid who saved his great-grandmother’s life.
You don’t know about the people running for the school board or the legislature, or what really happened when Christian Glass died after calling for help in Clear Creek County.
You don’t know when someone in power is lying to you because there’s nobody to check the facts.
The attacks are real and dangerous in more ways than we who have taken free speech for granted for centuries can even imagine.
So, good luck to NPR, CPR, KSUT and Aspen Public Radio. Godspeed.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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