When Big Bird becomes Public Enemy #1, the greatest threat to our nation is not equality or, God forbid, diversity in children’s TV programming. Instead it is the dangerously dystopian rhetoric spread by neo-nationalists who would dare crown themselves keepers of “Truth” while shutting down independent media outlets opposing them.
The nation’s Fourth Estate — a free and robust media — is the last pillar of hope on which we may still hang the Constitution and what it was intended to engender in our nation. There cannot and will not be a true democracy without an equally independent and fearless media. It must be protected.
This month, the loss of Public Broadcasting and its wealth of fact-checkers was an act more apropos for the president’s Russian friends, where the destruction of their media contributed in no small part to Putin’s rise and retention of absolute power. Given how frequently Trump seeks out Putin’s good graces, it’s not hard to imagine why the White House is suddenly so determined to stamp out PBS’s award-winning investigative journalism.
Journalists who criticized Putin’s power grab in its infancy were first publicly dehumanized, then arrested or exiled by the hundreds as enemies of the state. Investigative journalists continue to be openly assassinated while Putin has free reign to govern without public scrutiny.
As noted by PBS’s Frontline, “43 journalists and media workers have been killed in Russia since Putin came to power in late 1999, at least 25 of them in ‘direct retaliation’ for their reporting.”
By 2024, Russia’s press freedom ranked 162nd out of 180 countries by Reporters Without Borders. Nearly all media is now state-censured and reports only the official Kremlin rhetoric.
But what is truly terrifying, and should alarm us as well, is the number of Russians who so quickly believed such state-sponsored propaganda was an acceptable substitution to actual journalism.
In a 2017 survey, “76% of all Russians polled thought the media’s job was to support the government in its work and go along with its decisions,” wrote German Public Media reporter Anastassia Boutsko.
When the fires of a critical, independent press were smothered, Russian families seemingly accepted the resulting cold within the span of a generation. What has come out of the White House Press Office lately indicating we are protected from this same chill?
Millions of letters, phone calls, and social media posts sprouted in support of America’s esteemed public broadcasting as it faced the MAGA firing squad. Even Oscar the Grouch would have been proud. The American people did their part; political grift failed us, not our voices.
Sadly, this test was only the start. The president’s purely personal assault on PBS is the first of many ahead for our nation’s media. Already his administration’s criticism of independent journalists has reached a religious fervor on social media and from the pulpit of the White House Briefing Room.
In 2022, our nation’s media health was ranked 42nd in the world by Reporters Without Borders. This year, we’ve already fallen to 57th. One needs only watch Frontline’s documentary “Putin vs. the Press” to see the parallels between our nation’s trajectory and the Russian menace.
“All privately owned independent TV channels have been banned from broadcasting in Russia,” reported Kaela Malig for Frontline in 2023. “After lawmakers passed a law in March 2022 criminalizing the spread of ‘fake’ information that discredits the Russian armed forces, the government cut access to several western media outlets” including Voice of America, which Trump has already seriously diminished. The Russian version of Sesame Street, “Ulitsa Sezam,” was also canceled after losing government support. Sound familiar?
As our nation grapples with the very real loss of PBS’s Newshour and NPR’s Morning Edition, we might well be forced to rely on foreign media to learn what our elected representatives or would-be kings are actually doing in Washington in our names.
Corruption and cockroaches breed in the dark. PBS and its sister stations were a flashlight gifted to the American People decades ago by true patriots who understood its value. MAGA is moving to imprison us — uninformed and uneducated — in the dark once more.
Those who claim they want a great nation while dismantling every agency tasked with just such a cause are not interested in the betterment of the masses. The elite, those purchasing the nation’s networks and newspapers, have become the only benefactors.
The White House isn’t trying to save money by canceling public media. Instead, it only hopes to draw closed the iron curtain hiding its dismantling of our democracy.
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Written by Emily Sherman, a writer, educator, and award-winning journalist who resides in Muhlenberg County. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky's School of Journalism and Media, and holds a Master’s Degree in education from Murray State University.
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