America Is Tearing Down Another Great Public Institution

The defunding of public broadcasting comes at a time of growing contestation over the US media landscape.

- Lin Suling

President Donald Trump called them the "enemy of the American people" peddling "radical, woke propaganda." For decades, Republican presidents — including Mr. Richard Nixon and Mr. Ronald Reagan — had tried but failed to defund them.

Mr. Trump has now succeeded. In a sweeping move, he signed legislation rescinding US$1.1 billion (S$1.4 billion) to public broadcasters last week.

Yet the biggest headlines and commentaries regarding the US news media industry in July were not about this historic development but the furore over commercial television network CBS axing The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

The reason for this? Political theatre captures more attention than stories of complex policy shifts. CBS, owned by Paramount, cited financial reasons, but many Americans think otherwise.

Days earlier, Mr. Colbert had made a scathing on-air joke linking Paramount's US$16 million lawsuit settlement with Mr. Trump to the company's proposed merger with Skydance Media, then under regulatory review by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He called it "a big, fat bribe."

Continuing the drama, when FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, a Trump pick, was asked on Fox News if the President played a role in the show's cancellation, he did not deny it. He chose to emphasize Mr. Trump's election promise to take down legacy broadcast media.

For his part, Mr. Trump also did not discourage his supporters from painting this as a personal victory for him — gloating openly on social media that he "absolutely love that Colbert got fired," having previously called him "very boring" and "a no-talent guy."

Whatever the case, Americans must get real. Pontificating over what happened to