Trump is aiming to silence public media in the US – and if he succeeds, his supporters here will take note

The ABC dodged a bullet in the Australian election. The Albanese government supports the ABC. In the United States, however, the 2024 presidential election severely wounded public media in America.

Fresh from his decisive victory in Congress – passage of the One Big Beautiful bill that locks in the legislation to prosecute Trump’s domestic policy agenda – Trump is demanding Congress cancel funding for public media, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). Hardliners in the US House of Representatives have already voted to end all federal funding for public media. The Senate will vote on this issue in mid-July.

We have tale of two vital and powerful media institutions in Australia and the US. What happens over there can affect what happens here.

Towards the end of Australia’s election campaign, Peter Dutton, then leader of the Liberal Party, opened up on the ABC. He looped in The Guardian for good measure. And he implied other media deserved his words:

Forget about what you have been told by the ABC, The Guardian and the other hate media.

Dutton’s words embellished previous policies under Coalition governments, with budget cuts to the ABC of over $500 million, and several inquiries into the degree of ABC’s neutrality and objectivity in its coverage of news and current affairs.

Read more: Peter Dutton calling the ABC and the Guardian 'hate media' rings alarm bells for democracy

Kim Williams, chair of the ABC, said the network would “perform well” under any scrutiny from a Dutton government. Dutton himself, shortly before the election, demanded the ABC show “excellence” in order to prove to taxpayers that its almost $1.2 billion annual budget was justified.

The Coalition’s defeat aided the ABC’s victory in its longstanding quest for financial stability and future growth. The ABC can continue to build on the commitments established by the Albanese Labor government in 2023 – even though there are choppy waters for the ABC as its new leadership makes programming and staffing decisions for the years ahead.

With a new Coalition shadow cabinet in place, we will see as future budgets play out whether they have changed their tune on their approach to the ABC.

We will see how both the government and the Coalition react to Kim Williams’ powerful case he recently presented for “more investment for much-needed renewal” in the ABC.

Public media in Trump’s America

In America today, public media are facing Trump’s wrath.

Trump’s hatred of mainstream media is legendary. For the past decade, Trump has called the major media outlets the “enemy of the people” – the same label that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin used against those who dared to oppose him.

In his second term, Trump is engaged in aggressive muscling of the enemies he sees in the media. The Associated Press is barred from the pool of journalists covering the president. Trump has silenced the Voice of America. The US ABC and CBS television networks have both settled lawsuits filed by Trump to seek damages for their broadcast coverage of him and the 2024 presidential campaign. The price to help avoid regulatory punishment by the government of those two networks: $US16 million (A$24.5 million) each.

For a country that established freedom of the press under its Constitution, Trump’s attacks on news media are an ongoing assault on America’s democracy.

Trump’s attacks on PBS and NPR show the existential threat they face.

In 1967, Congress established and funded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to bring to life public television and radio across America. Money from CPB supports the stations. The stations contract with PBS and NPR to help produce the programming they air, from the PBS NewsHour, Frontline and Sesame Street on PBS to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR – and much more.

Trump holds the same sentiment that Dutton expressed against the ABC – that the public broadcasters are biased toward the “extreme woke Marxist left”. Trump wrote on Truth Social that:

Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the most influential Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, was in-your-face direct on the case against public media:

This bill’s real simple. Don’t spend money on stupid things, and don’t subsidize biased media.

In late April, Trump ordered the firing of three of CPB’s five directors. On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that will savage public media’s existence:

At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage […] The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS.“

Public media has filed red-hot lawsuits against Trump and his officials for crushing the First Amendment free-speech rights of public televion and radio stations, and for cancelling funds appropriated by Congress. The court rulings in these cases will be crucial to the outcome.

The last near-fatal threat to public broadcasting was in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan sought Congress’ approval to decimate its funding. Under Reagan conservatism, media belong in the private sector. The conservative’s political bias against public broadcasting framed the push to cancel government funding.

But Congress rose up successfully against the Reagan cuts – led not only by Democrats but with Senate Republicans from rural states who understood how important public broadcasting was to their communities. Their budgets were trimmed, but PBS and NPR were not decapitated.

Lessons for the ABC

The same is true here: ABC stations in country areas are similarly held in high regard.

The cuts to public media passed the US House by one vote on June 12.

The Senate will vote in the coming days. We will see if some Senate Republicans who voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful bill last week will stand up again and vote to buck Trump on this issue and protect public media in their states.

If Trump succeeds in silencing public media in America, the Trump echo chamber in Australia will take note. Some hard conservatives in Canberra and the Murdoch media will likely leverage Congress’ approval of Trump’s order that PBS and NPR be punished for their left-wing bias and that public media should become the province of the private sector. Defunding public media in the US will sustain the sentiment that one day, under a future government here, the scythe will be wielded at the ABC.

If the US Senate supports Trump, the fight for the ABC in Australia – not just over money, but over its role, responsibilities and standing in Australia – may not be over.