Republican Leader Has No Idea What “Public Broadcasting” Means

Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise went on Fox Business to display his wild, willful ignorance regarding “public broadcasting.”

Scalise, who represents Louisiana, helped lead GOP efforts to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will put hundreds of free, local stations and shows in jeopardy. His response? His constituents should just pay for it.

“Getting rid of the USAID, public broadcasting—look, if you wanna go watch public broadcasting you can pay for it,” Scalise told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “You know, people that wanna watch your show, and a lotta people do, they can pay good advertising dollars because it’s a popular show. If nobody’s watching your program—they’re too many options today in cable programming to have taxpayers funding to the tunes of tens of billions of dollars. We got rid of that wasteful spending, and it’s just the beginning.”

This is not how public broadcasting works, or any publicly funded service for that matter. American citizens already are paying for public broadcasting, and they were receiving worthwhile content in return, from emergency weather alerts to educational content like Ken Burns documentaries and Sesame Street. And even if they weren’t, Scalise’s argument would likely leave mostly poor Americans in rural areas he wants to take public broadcasting from paying even more.

This isn’t about waste, fraud, and abuse. It’s about Republicans and their yearslong war against Corporation for Public Broadcasting–funded institutions like PBS and NPR. For years, the networks have been targeted by conservatives, who frame them as deeply ideological propaganda rather than basic media. Only time will tell how their own constituents will be impacted.