Rochester area NPR and PBS dealing with congressional cuts to their budget of $1.9 Million

Congress has eliminated all public media funding — including the $1.9 million that WXXI was scheduled to receive this October.

Incredible community support has gone a long way toward making up that shortfall — but a $700,000 gap remains that must be filled by October 1.

One of the strategies to take over  a society by an autocrat is to control the media and to eliminate the sources of accurate information that undermine the autocrat's lies. We are seeing this happen in the US as the Republican administration attempts to intimidate and eliminate what they consider unfavorable sources of accurate reporting.

Here on MarkhamsSlowNews we have committed ourselves to the Truth pledge which means we fact check and provide only the truth as best we are able.

Here in Rochester, NY area, MarkhamsSlowNews utilized the reporting of NPR and supports there journalism.

The truth and alternative facts: there is a difference.

One of the first moves in every authoritarian dictator's playbook is to intimidate, suppress, and ultimately destroy the free press.

And that's precisely what the Republicans are doing right now.

Legitimate journalists have been banished from the White House press corps. NPR and PBS have been defunded, with local stations nationwide on the edge of heavy cuts or closure. Trump's FCC has launched a wave of phony investigations into news outlets Trump doesn't like.

In the face of these attacks, too many corporate news outlets have submitted to MAGA control by paying fines, failing to endorse opposition political candidates, and editing stores in line with the MAGA propaganda.

The corporate press's main motive is profit not public service. Most journalists are no longer professionals bound to a code of ethics, but corporate actors who obey the preferences of their handlers or they are fired.

There is an important difference between propaganda and news. Can you tell the difference? As a nation, these skills of critical thinking are rapidly atrophying. What will nurture our democracy, and a high quality society is a return to the truth and a dismissal of what the MAGA folks call "alternative facts."

In these times, it is very important to support the independent media. Who are your favorites?

Trump tries to rewrite research funding rules

 

From Stat on 08/11/25

On Thursday night, President Trump signed a sweeping new executive order that seeks to transform how the federal government awards billions of dollars in research grants by giving political appointees unprecedented power over the projects agencies fund. Instead of experts and career civil servants setting funding decisions and priorities, the order places that authority with presidential appointees who, in coordination with the White House, are directed to use their “independent judgment” and “advance the President’s policy priorities.”

The executive power grab, which experts expect to be challenged in court, is likely to have massive and immediate impacts on the daily operations of American science. Read more about it from STAT’s science team.

I've been re-reading 1984 by George Orwell and how Winston Smith the main character works in the "Ministry of Truth" altering documents to align with the propaganda of Big Brother. It seems surreal to see this actually happening in the United States in 2025 when science research will have to align with political agenda of MAGA to get and/or keep funding.

There are reports of scientists leaving the US to continue their research in other countries.

Vulture cf. predatory venture capitalism and science.

 As of 2019, Alden was running over a hundred newspapers, and they’d cut two of every three jobs. It’s a model known as “vulture capitalism,” though a former Chicago Tribune reporter who’d seen Alden’s impact firsthand told Coppins the name didn’t quite fit. “A vulture doesn’t hold a wounded animal’s head underwater. This is predatory.”

McKibben, Bill; Green, Jaime. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024: A Thought-Provoking Anthology with Award-Winning Environmental Insights (p. xi). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Jamie Green bemoans the fact that science journalism is being cut from periodicals and science writers are being laid off. Given this change in the media business Jaimie encourages people to support science periodicals. I asked in a previous post whether anyone on the list subscribed to any science periodicals?

I subscribe to three: Science News, Scientific American, and Nautilus.

The Republican policies are driving scientists out of the Federal government and have cut grants to Universities and colleges leading to scientists leaving the US for other countries where they can find employment and support for their research. Autocracies are anti-scientific because expert knowledge and skill undermines their power unless the experts can be controlled by the politicians. It’s not only the predatory venture capitalists who are a threat to science and accurate science reporting but the autocratic politicians as well. Trump’s answer to the Covid-19 was that it would just go away in the Spring with nicer weather and people could drink bleach.

Stand up to fascistic bullies.