WASHINGTON—News Guild President Jon Schleuss, whose members have come under fire and threats from anti-worker and anti-media President Donald Trump, is making a strong pitch for the public to support, with voluntarily donated dollars, the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.
Trump’s “recessions” law, which the GOP congressional majority gleefully passed, yanks $1.1 billion combined that lawmakers previously appropriated for them. Stations have scrambled to online pleas to readers and listeners to fill the funding gap.
Schleuss isn’t shy about why he’s asking: The U.S., and especially in major media “deserts,” such as those left when big chains and “vulture capitalists” deprive readers and listeners of local papers and programming, need independent voices speaking truth to power now more than ever.
“This rescission is part of a coordinated attack on journalists and media workers,” Schleuss said. “Earlier this year, Trump began blocking journalists—News Guild-CWA members—from attending White House events. His Federal Communications Commission chair opened investigations into broadcasters, including NPR and PBS. And he’s sued several news organizations, including the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s a shame and an embarrassment. The United States was founded on the principle that a free press powers democracy. Folks need to know what they’re voting for, and journalists are the workers who tell them and then hold public officials to account,” Schleuss continued.
“Support for public media used to be bipartisan in America. What happened? NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik dove into the history and how it unraveled under Trump.”.
Trump also turned his ICE agents loose on media members just doing their jobs during the agents and the Army’s occupation of Los Angeles while chasing, wrestling, cuffing, and injuring people without documents on them or, in one case, the president of the Service Employees in California.
“A judge ordered police to stop shooting journalists with rubber bullets in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Press Club filed a lawsuit last month alongside the ACLU of Southern California seeking a temporary restraining order to protect journalists. We joined a similar lawsuit against federal law enforcement agencies and support our members to make sure they can do their jobs safely.
“The judge’s order bars the LAPD from using so-called ‘less-lethal’ munitions such as chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades ‘against journalists who are not posing a threat of imminent harm to an officer or another person.’” Before that, at least one journalist, an Australian TV reporter in the midst of a live broadcast, was shot and wounded by a rubber bullet.
“It’s an important short-term victory as we push for injunctions and police reform to protect every American’s right to a free press under the First Amendment,” Schleuss declared.
“We need to look to our union family in the north for a model of what public broadcasting could one day look like,” Schleuss explained. “Thousands of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalists, technicians, camera operators, and more cover more than 40 million people.
“Those journalists and media workers are also part of The News Guild-CW,A and they work for Canadians as a public good. Canadians invest about $26.51 per person on public media, according to a 2022 report in Nieman Lab. Prior to these cuts, Americans invested just $3.16 a person. A drop in the bucket that was just cut.
“If you’re able, become a regular contributor to your local NPR or PBS station,” he said, after doing so.
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