Okay, but do you actually know what monies changed hands under the now-ended agreement? Perhaps PBS was not paying ASU, as the person quoted said, it was a mutually beneficial relationship. ASU got to have a very cool internship opportunity right on site of its prominent J-school.
If PBS was not paying significant money to ASU, then it is unlikely to be related to federal politics.
That part is fairly easy to understand with a few google searches. Journalism programs are at a loss across the country and have been in decline for some time. When a university program is not profitable they close the program.
Low wages, less employment opportunity, and the decrease in interest of writing. Combine this with social media and the age of influencers - you suddenly have a huge decline across the board.
Journalism is not what you see on tv. Those are essentially actors and are the 1%. The rest are those writing in newspapers (in decline) and making barely livable wages with most on contract rather than salary. It’s an incredibly difficult line of work when it comes to wages and job security.
> When a university program is not profitable they close the program.
That's moving the goalposts. Universities are not for-profit organizations (with a few exceptions).
By insisting on focusing on 'profit', the enemies of liberal education and liberalism can shut down much of it. Business school is of course profitable, and science has patents. What about the history department?
That would be up to the school.
After all, it does have a $1.4 billion dollar endowment. (ASU is not struggling at all)
Every university has to decide what is profitable and what is a loss leader. You have to be well rounded to attract students, but also make money.
In this case, the school decided that this studio had less benefit to them than reward. If this studio attracted more students (tuition $$) then it would be a benefit.
People are getting mad at the White House, but in reality the school decided that this studio wasn’t worth keeping.
This is inherently political. The "revised priorities" are clearly because of our current economic and political climate. Your comment is intentionally obtuse or malicious.
Malicious?
It’s clear that the journalism program at ASU is at a loss and the university is prioritizing profitable programs. You are making a lot of personal assumptions from minimal text to support your statement. The school certainly has the funds to keep it open but are choosing not to.
What you are referring to is whether PBS as a network decided to not renew their contract with the University due to budget cuts. In which no statement has been made about this yet and would be nothing more than conjecture at this point.
IF that is the case, there is a bigger question at play: “is it a public service if the public is required to pay but not allow to contribute?”. For example, not everyone is allowed to enroll in the University.
As an avid and long term PBS viewer, donor, news hour west was 90% a waste of time anyway. Most evenings it is virtually the same broadcast, same segments. Media is more VOD-oriented anyway. They have been posting both broadcasts to YouTube for years, so you can assess this if you'd like.
The exception is if there's something notable to report on between 5PM and 8PM EST
>Moderating perceived bias would be an obvious survival strategy.
>Oh, drat, I've been ostracized. Whatever will I do?
Because you seemed to think the issue was the lack of reason when it's actually the reason itself.
Also, the government acting on perception instead of evidence is horrible.
In my opinion the claims of bias at PBS were done to keep the core Republican voter base energized. They've been told to not trust the media while Trump appoints multiple Foxnews employees to high level positions in the government.
Ok then, I look forward to my tax breaks and refunds enabled by cutting this program. I’m sure it’s in the mail with all the other dividends for citizens that Trump mentions every few months.
Again, this would be the Legislative branch. Your right to vote has not decreased, and you can absolutely contact your senator to introduce a bill for what you stated. I mean, you have a representative. Absolutely use them if you dislike something.
However, disagreeing with the Legislative or Executive branch in no way erodes your democratic rights.
One man’s public journalism is another man’s state sponsored propaganda.
I don’t want my extorted taxes funding any of this. I hope other countries in Europe follow suit and shut down any state funded media and journalism networks.
P.S. Funnily enough, in my country, the hard left was very fond of the state media network - that they filled with their own talking heads - until recently when the present center right government started changing the seats to their own apparatchiks and the programs started to change from hard left propaganda to neo-liberal propaganda. Now, they don’t fancy all that money going to the state media channels anymore. Suits them right.
The article doesn’t mention it, but I wonder if this has anything to do with ASU’s President trying to cozy up with the Trump administration [0]. Trump has already at least tried to cut federal funding for PBS [1]. I’m not sure where that’s at now.
People shouting about PBS news being horribly biased are just flat-out wrong. Obviously their viewership leans centrist liberal, but no other news program in recent times approached their level of nonpartisanship when dealing with national politics. Regardless of their affiliation, they’d ask most interviewees a couple of pointed questions but always let them explain themselves uninterrupted, and let them have the last word unless it was blatantly false. In the Obama era they regularly had top Republican leadership on from that era and years past— Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell were on there all the time. I’ve seen Steve Bannon respectfully (actually rather warmly) interviewed within the past year, as well as people from the heritage foundation, Manhattan institute, Cato institute, and other people from across the right-wing spectrum.
David Brooks isn’t representative of the Republican mainstream at the moment, but they’ve started getting more representative Republican counterpoints on their panels over the past few months, even after the republicans cut their funding.
They present a more reasonable, tempered, and charitable perspective on both political parties than any other major news outlet.
PBS and NPR have long been my go-to sources for news. Very much in the classic "who, what, when and where" vein. Editorial content is small, segregated and usually includes advocates for both sides. Blissfully boring and informative...
NPR News veered sharply left over the past ~10 years, even more so local affiliate programming like that put out by KQED. In the past year or two there's been a moderate course correction, but their reporting is still clearly stuck in a liberal cognitive bubble.[1] I think a large part of it was the generational turnover that occurred, and their eagerness to "speak the truth", emboldened by the belief that any random sociology study that happened to support their view firmly established their beliefs as scientific fact, unchecked once Republicans disengaged from earnest empirical debate. But I agree about PBS, they managed to stay the course.
[1] NPR generally has always had a liberal bias, but their professionalism was sufficient to keep them straight shooting. Even Justice Scalia used to listen to NPR News, at least as late as the aughts.
I do agree that NPR is less neutral than PBS but if you want to hear what harder left political commentary sounds like, listen to an episode of Chapo Trap House. NPR isn’t sharply left— they’re very on the very mainstream end of liberal centrist with an occasional smattering of “I was a socialist for a semester in college” liberal in their editorial content— they’re just not shy about it.
PBS on the other hand— while obviously coming from an institution that exists because of things liberals value— clearly puts a lot of effort into representing most mainstream views charitably. It’s almost like if Reuters had a daily news hour.
The first half is usually solid, the back half is, well, usually more opinionated/softer. Lots of interviews with professors who seek to have their opinions represented as facts or members of the public have their plight elevated as serious national policy concerns.
Sure there’s definitely a change in content but I don’t think it’s quite that bad. Tonight was capehart and brooks— who has never supported Trump even though he’s a conservative, so not a great foil for capehart… Pretty soft/polite analysis that always feels very late-aughts. Yesterday was someone who worked in the state department for 25 years giving a pretty dry breakdown on Venezuela. the night before that was a professor from Tulane criticizing trump’s strategy on Venezuela. The night before that was an interview with Bill Cassidy explaining the GOP health care proposal he co-authored, and a report from someone embedded with the Lebanese army. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s like a rehash of the conversation at the campus coffee shop over there.
Probably best to dissect a specimen. I guess really the guy's just hocking his book here, but it's vacuous and packed with opinions and pessimism, and really not particularly high quality journalism.
For example, I disagree with the opinion that LLMs can't be a free lunch, or at least can't be CAPEX instead of OPEX, which Reich doesn't realize in the stated opinion.
I had to go back pretty far to find a professor, specifically, the first few were social outreach or labor organizers.
Your claim was professors want their opinions to be considered fact.
Promoting a book doesn't do that. Having opinions is normal and what we are talking about. Whether the person is pessimistic has no relevance here and I would like to know why you presented that as evidence.
It's a national federally funded organization and they want to chat on about justice and fairness, literally asking in order "how does this effect diversity? oh. How about equity? oh. how about inclusion?", and it's such a surprise that it costs a trillion dollars to not plop a choo-choo from LA to SF when everyone "feels like it"? It's gross, it's gross to me. Stick to the news.
I assume by your rant you don't have the evidence I requested and your claims a more likely based on your political views and not reality.
What's disturbing is that you're probably an engineer, like you know how to open PRs but also think the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe that explains why software has bugs
Yeah, we're opining on a segment that I opined is excessively opinionated (i.e., opinions are confidently stated so as to be represented as facts, "half of teachers are using LLMs") but when you look, the "study" is just a bunch of opinion polls. So yeah it is, in the literal sense, the professor's opinion being represented as facts, thank you have a nice day.
How? Because they stated their opinion and they think they're right?
As opposed to having an opinion you think is wrong?
>half of teachers are using LLM
This is their opinion based on a study that polled teachers? How is this unreasonable?
Determining popularity by polling makes complete sense.
You're just anti intellectual for political reasons. Also supporting Trump while not liking people who are opinionated and overly confident makes you a hypocrite
I mean this is just one case, I didn't cherry pick this, I peeked at a few previous episodes to find an episode where there was indeed a professor for the feature interview.
It's uninteresting because it's basically become a platform for regulatory capture. It's a wellspring of obviously non-universal ideas like, "there is no right way to integrate AI and primary education", "the federal government should subsidize ai access", or "only safe ai platforms should be permitted". I mean it's obviously their right to blather incessantly about it, I just think it's boring, and that's all I've said.
Maybe it's because I'm not a politician or a philanthropist, and I'm not required to tailor my actions to appease a large number of people subject to my will, but there's obviously better ways to approach that, like delegating and talking to people, who are local to the concern.
It's a nuanced and long term discussion and I think lots of the stuff that winds up in these interviews is really a local issue that's going into the wrong channel by well-meaning folks who don't understand government, or worse folks who are seeking to exploit government for profit.
And concretely, the interview doesn't focus on the book or the study, it's literally just an authoritative "intersectional" quiz about how AI/Education crosses with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,... a dumb question.
> it's literally just an authoritative "intersectional" quiz about how AI/Education crosses with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,... a dumb question.
What's an "authoritative intersectional quiz"?
>Maybe it's because I'm not a politician or a philanthropist..
Your accusations were about professors so why are you bringing up politicians. Also a philanthropist doesn't have people under his control.
>...delegating and talking to people, who are local to the concern.... lots of the stuff that winds up in these interviews is really a local issue that's going into the wrong channel
What's a local issue that shouldn't be discussed on PBS? You were just discussing AI which isn't a local issue.
>because it's basically become a platform for regulatory capture
How? You used so many buzz words I believe you either used chatgpt to generate the response or you're a bot
This user must be a bot check the comment he replied to be me higher in the thread. It almost looks like a valid response but actually jumps around to different issues right wing people have about the news.
After I heard someone call McConnell a RINO I knew that no amount of concessions would make them feel coverage was “fair.” It’s Trump’s way or the highway.
Enjoy your vibes-based version of reality where objective truth doesn’t actually matter. That’s definitely not one of the primary criticisms conservatives have wielded against the post-modern left. You won’t bother to check, so I’m sure you’ll feel that expat community will be happy to have you!
I’m glad Walter Cronkite is remembered through that school. In my mind, he was one of the last great journalists from an era that wasn’t strongly politically biased.
When I read that I'm always personally confused. He had a commanding voice and had an aurora of being above it all. But when you listened and watched what he actually did, he seemed very political in my mind, though perhaps more of a moderate(?).
He even advocated for world government, endorsed politicians, etc.
Have you tried going back 80% ap articles, some opinion columns, classifieds and sports with a lifestyle section.
We are living in an era of more news, different formats more in depth. I think our expectations are misaligned we expect everything to be one click away and social media to present it to us in a doom scroll. The articles shared just here on hn you would never find in a newspaper. If you are lucky you discover a zine like phrack or 2600 and wait months for the next issue.
I read the newspaper, just like you described, in the 90s and 2000s as a kid. It was really interesting and valuable. Honestly, yeah, that sounds amazing.
Yeah. This is the tech world making everything better. Sure the news is biased, poorly-written garbage, but you can have a lot of it, instantly, for like no money!
The Internet is not devoid of good quality media. Yes, some of it you have to pay for. The free papers we had before the Internet were never bastions of great journalism (though I'll admit that national TV news once was once pretty decent, and free).
And all news is biased. The only thing is, you can only see the bias towards your ideological enemies. When it's your bias, it's called "the truth."
https://current.org/2025/11/weta-to-cut-staff-cancel-pbs-new...
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