The first time I really knew about NPR was when I was dating someone in college, and they wanted to listen to All Things Considered when we were driving, and I was like, what the fuck is this? Why can’t we just listen to music like normal people?

I had no idea what NPR was at the time, partly because I grew up in a conservative family in the South and no one was listening to this. But I did know what PBS was, like almost every child in America at the time. Big Bird. Ghostwriter. Arthur. Whatever the ideological leanings of your folks, you probably ended up watching some PBS when you were growing up.

Public media as we know it did not originate in the 1960s, exactly — there were attempts at educational or nonprofit radio since the 1930s. But the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 was the big change — it was one of the last accomplishments of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s liberal administration and put the financial teeth into an effort to create things like PBS and NPR, as well as myriad local public media stations across the country. It is one of the least known or recognized achievements of the Great Society programs of LBJ.

Public media has been a bête noire of conservatives from the jump, because it created a noncommercial, non-profit-driven alternative to the mainstream media outlets. At the same time, the right wing was fighting to overturn the Fairness Doctrine, a New Deal-era policy that stated that public broadcasters had to provide equal airtime on radio or television to “both sides” on political issues. I find this doctrine to be problematic because there are not necessarily two sides on any issue, and the government should not really be dictating the parameters of political speech in any media we’re talking about.

But the Fairness Doctrine was repealed under Ronald Reagan and it gave rise to the radio channels that we all know and love that were flooded with a human-wave attack of Rush Limbaughs, Michael Savages, and Alex Joneses, like in the Iran-Iraq War. We all know what came of that — a giant megaphone for the most partisan and ideological views imaginable.

But to bring it back to public media — NPR and PBS survived and even thrived in this environment. At various points in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, NPR’s Morning Edition or All Things Consideredhad a following as large as or greater than right-wing competitors on the radio. PBS raised several generations of kids on 1. actually learning things, like the alphabet and numbers, and 2. on tolerance, kindness, and inclusion. Of course, this is something that must be destroyed, because reasons.

https://youtu.be/gVDXJpExsug?si=NIbkVQsMwP1vAtJF

It’s kind of an album cut but Mitt Romney got in trouble in 2012 for being against Big Bird (basically, public media). This should have been a sign of things to come, because the Trump Administration has gone after public media with an absolute vengeance. One of the things that killed my heart the most was learning that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had a measly dispensation from the federal government to distribute to local public TV and radio stations, was closing its doors. That hit like a gut-punch from Joe Lewis for me.

What I’m saying is — public media will survive. Our favorite college radio stations and local NPR affiliates probably will make it. But this is far from assured.

I often think that public media in America is one of the greatest things we’ve ever produced — much as documentarian Ken Burns (also famously on PBS) said that national parks were America’s “best idea.” Along with university presses that somehow manage to publish important but sometimes difficult academic scholarship that the world needs, it feels like a utopian project.

We can’t lose these things. If you’ve ever loved your local college radio station that plays weird music or you’ve parked your kids in front of Sesame Street, please consider donating to the media organizations that keep your local community healthy and informed. For me, it is KEXP in Seattle, the greatest radio station ever, and WABE, our NPR affiliate in Atlanta. This is really game time. Things that we enjoy and take for granted could be gone, because of a bunch of ghouls who can’t think straight for 30 seconds. Just look at your local media and see if it’s possible you could kick in a little bit.

Donate to NPR, donate to PBS, donate to WNYC, donate to WABE, donate to KCRW, donate to KEXP, donate to WBUR. There are so many other great local broadcasters but these are the ones we’ve been closest to.

To understand more about the historic arc of public broadcasting in America and why it’s so important and vital today, see Professor Josh Shepperd’s book Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting from University of Illinois Press.