The Globe reports GBH is removing the dreaded word "diversity" from its Web site in the hopes it won't be sent to its room without dinner.
As of five minutes ago, Boston's other NPR news station, WBUR, still had a link on its home page to a 2021 essay by CEO Margaret Low that used two other naugthy words: "Diversity, equity and inclusion at WBUR." She began:
I believe that public media is one of the last great hopes for journalism — a cornerstone of our democracy — and we’re at a critical inflection point. This is a moment of transformation for journalism itself as we grapple honestly and ambitiously with issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!
Ad:
Comments
I don't blame WGBH, but I hope someone challanges this
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 10:50am
Trump/GOP has had their sight set of destroying public media for years so I don't see any changes that PBS/NPR stations can make that will spare them the knife except perhaps to turn into the Trump state TV channel.
But still, I don't blame them for trying to play along. (And many DEI programs weren't effective anyway.)
More importantly, this is specifically what the first amendment is supposed to protect -- having the federal government regulate private speech -- so I hope someone challenges it. The SCOTUS has been fairly sympathetic to free speech issues so there's a good chance they'll rule against using that as the sole rationale for denying funding. The flip side is they'll further protect hate speech which probably should be denied funding. Still, it's better to be a free speech absolutist than to let the government make the call.
What we're probably going to see soon is the worst of the hate and lying podcasters get CPB money. I'd rather see no one get funding than give the white supremacists cash payments. That's true for all NEA grants. (Remember, Musk and friends don't want to cut federal spending. They instead want the federal government to become their mouthpiece and enforcer.)
I do blame them
By deselby
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 11:20am
but I always knew places like WGBH were filled with people who were pusillanimous at core. Elite competition breeds that type. They never took a punch, literal or figurative.
Public media was already a lost hope
By ScottB
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 10:52am
Because the coverage has been so slanted for decades -- to wit, Uri Berliner's rebellion at NPR. They were playing to their audience -- liberal white coastal elites, mostly -- but they're also splitting that audience with MSNBC, the Atlantic, the NY Times, etc.
Even GBH's efforts at "journalism," at least on TV, have sounded more like a progressive echo chamber than anything which challenges the people in power in Boston or Massachusetts.
NPR was pretty level
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 11:12am
I know most people assume NPR had a big slant to the left but their actual reporting (at least on Morning Edition) has always been pretty balanced and good journalism.
A lot of their non-news content has been aimed at the sort of people with money and desire to donate to NPR stations (not exactly surprising) but it isn't biased.
There is no left in American politics
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:49pm
There is only a center (the Democrats) and a right (the Republicans). There's no social democratic party, such as in the Scandinavian countries, let alone a real leftist party like Germany's Die Linke.
Yes, there is the Communist Party USA, but it has zero representation at any level of government, and probably doesn't have more than a thousand members.
So no, NPR doesn't slant to the left; it slants to the center. But the right is in power today, and wants all media to tilt its way.
The end game for the Trump/Musk regime is probably something like Putin's Russia, where the facade of democracy is maintained but actual power is in the hands of an oligarchy.
agreed
By nimbysmustbedefeated
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 10:43pm
Agreed. NPR is liberal, not left-wing.
example of a more mainstream left-wing outlet that people might recognize would be Democracy Now
All media outlets play to their audiences today
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:54pm
The dirty secret is that there are no more mainstream media outlets. Every outlet has its target audience, which it seeks to "superserve" by feeeding them a steady diet of what audience research says they want.
Walter Cronkite is dead, and the days when three networks battled it out to be the principal news source for the whole country are long past.
(sigh)
By MrZip
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 11:04am
Was this even necessary? I thought public radio was only getting a TINY fraction of their funding from the Feds. Perfect time to cut the cord, I'd gladly contribute more to have GBH completely off the Fed dime.
FWIW, saw this recently: "DEI isn't about hiring lesser qualified black, brown or woman candidates over qualified whites. It's about ensuring that lesser qualified whites don't get chosen over qualified black, brown or woman candidates." I suspect DEI-type efforts will come back one day, maybe with a different name, but hopefully with better effect.
The real fear
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 11:23am
CPB funding is pretty small for big metro stations but a lager percentage for smaller, rural ones that will be forced to close when it's gone.
But the even bigger concern is that Trump's FCC wants to deny broadcast licenses to stations that don't tout the party line. So many NPR/PBS stations risk being kicked off the air entirely and replaced with some truly horrible broadcasters. (The sort of people who don't even get airtime on Fox news.) They've even threaten the licenses of NBC/CBS/ABC affiliates. That's why 60 minutes released the transcript for the Harris interview.
I'm not just fear mongering, "Reviewing the broadcast licenses" is one of the first announcements made by new FCC. They want AM talk radio to be the only radio.
There's leverage over CBS/60 Minutes
By ScottB
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 12:41pm
Because Shari Redstone wants to sell control of Paramount. The transaction will ultimately require a transfer of the broadcast licenses of O&O CBS local stations (WBZ is one of these) so they don't want FCC holding up the deal by sitting on the transfer of the licenses. They could go to court but that would delay things.
A news program like 60 minutes is ostensibly exempt from the equal-time rule if the interview with Harris qualifies as bona fide news, but if the interview was selectively edited to favor her campaign, then the network would have violated that rule.
The TV stations wouldn't hold up a deal for Paramount
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:31pm
They're probably not a significant source of the company's profits. They could easily spin them off into a separate entity before the sale.
The 1996 Telecommunications Act...
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:41pm
...established "renewal expectancy"; that is, no petition to deny the renewal of a license can be entertained unless the licensee can be shown to have violated federal law or FCC regulations.
It's not clear how the FCC can get around that. The law is what it is, and the rules are what they are. Any attempt to revoke a license would likely be tied up in the courts for years.
In the history of broadcasting, just two VHF TV licenses have ever been revoked, and both happened in Boston. WHDH-TV Channel 5 signed on in 1957, and was immediately challenged over improprieties in the application for its construction permit. It took until 1972 for the station to exhaust its appeals and lose its license.
WNAC-TV Channel 7 lost its license in 1982 over allegations of bribery and other shenanigans on the part of its corporate parent, General Tire and Rubber. Those allegations had first surfaced in 1965.
GBH is also television, not just radio
By Ron Newman
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 1:52pm
but I think your basic point still applies even then.
Why does WGBH-TV even exist?
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:29pm
In the old days, public television was the home of documentaries, arts programming, innovative children's shows like Sesame Street, and British imports like Rumpole of the Bailey.
Now, all of those have their own dedicated cable channels, or can be found on YouTube.
Where does that leave public television in 2025? You tell me.
Self-censorship
By Angry Dan
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 12:28pm
If they are going to blacklist certain words and topics then it doesn't bode well for the future reliability of their news content.
They have a good weekly
By anon
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 6:20pm
They have a good weekly practice
Is it 2028 yet?
By MassMouse
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 6:46pm
(Goes back into hole rocking back and forth with cat…)
Get off the public teat
By StillFromDorchester
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 12:11am
And then they can tell President Trump to kick rocks.
They always say the funding is almost nothing and can survive without it.
Im sure a few commercial won't bother listeners
See, that's the thing
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 7:27pm
The FCC is investigating NPR/PBS because they say the current underwriting is too much like an advertisement and they can't keep their FCC licenses if they run ads. So Trump and friends are doing everything possible to kick them off the air: deny any public funds and make it hard for them to get corporate funding.
When they are gone, they'll be replaced with religious and right wing talk stations that are both pro-Trump and a lot cheaper to run then stations that actually provide news and community programming.
FWIW I'd prefer to see them operate with only donations but there just isn't enough of that. And while you might not care if they are gone, the loss of what's left of non-corperate media is not a positive change.
Religious and right-wing talk is already on the air in Boston
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:22pm
Religion is on WEZE 590, which was once CBS's all-news station WEEI; conservative talk is on WRKO 680.
I don't think WGBH and WBUR would lose their licenses; I think rather that they'd have to give up their underwriting income. That might make them scale back their news and talk programming, which isn't cheap to produce, in favor of music.
They can't run commercials
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:25pm
Not on 89.7 or 90.9, anyway, Those channels are reserved for non-commercial operation.
They COULD run commercials on 99.5, which is a commercial frequency. WGBH could flip its news programming to WCRB's frequency and run it as a commercial operation, making 89.7 a listener-supported low-budget classical operation.
WBUR would be out of luck; they don't have any commercial channel.
The content on WHBH AND WBUR
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/12/2025 - 8:54pm
The content on WHBH AND WBUR has been trending towards swill since the late nineties. The dumbed-down, ego-stroking output of 89.7 and 90.9 is so mind-numbing I have taken refuge at Bloomberg in spite of the fact it is part of the ClearChannel/iHeartRadioMedia Family of Monopolistic Players.
‘BUR and ‘GBH non-stop boutique and bespoke advertisements they call underwriter recognition and their dependence on underwriters and the role of Public Radio as a springboard for podcasts and other products has caused them to never, never, ever offend their self-selected audience at the expense of half of the potential audience, half of the country.
Give me an NPR that makes me have to look up words in the dictionary and challenges my beliefs. Bring professionalism back to NPR where there is no cant and no inflection, or tone pregnant with opinion.
news bias
By nimbysmustbedefeated
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 10:53pm
With or without tonal inflection and human beings delivering the news, all news is still biased in the sense that they are reporting some stories at the expense of others, and choosing which details to include or exclude. In other words, all reporting is political and it's about time the liberal public snap out of the idea that news can actually be neutral and "balanced" (air quotes are my own)
Tonal inflection doesn't exactly help, but it's also a bit of a misguided expectation people tend to have, to believe that any news outlet can or should be neutral, because they can't.
Or, for the propogators in media of that myth, they're just being dishonest.
OT: Trumpian logic
By Don't Panic
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 1:50am
This is all part of President Donald Trump's distorted worldview:
If you don't test for it, you don't have any cases - COVID Epidemic
If you don't read it, it doesn't exist - DEI initiatives
If you don't admit it, you never said it - Just about every promise he made on his quest to win the Presidential Elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024
I think it has something to do with his upbringing being imbued with the philosophy and teachings of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale - The Power of Intense Belief and The Power of Positive Thinking.
Trump is a con artist
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:13pm
He's probably the most successful con artist in American history. He and his billionaire friends are in office to enrich themselves; I doubt any of them cares a fig what happens to this country. If Donald Trump has so much as an ounce of patriotism in his body, then I'm an aardvark.
By contrast, Hitler and Mussolini were war veterans. They served in World War I, on opposite sides. Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, during his service on the western front. He was still a genocidal racist, but in all other respects he differs profoundly from Trump.
The most recent American President to have served in combat was George H.W. Bush, a World War II veteran.
The previous comment got posted twice
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:16pm
...and I can't delete it, so I've turned the duplicate one into this post.
I think CPB will be defunded
By necturus
Thu, 02/13/2025 - 2:04pm
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides support to all four of Boston's public radio stations. That money is going to go away.
The FCC wants to go further and challenge the practice of public stations selling underwriting announcements, which are essentially advertisements by any other name. If that practice is banned, it would rob WGBH and many other public radio stations of a large share of their revenues. Of Boston's four public radio stations: WGBH 89.7, WCRB 99.5, WBUR, 90.9, and WUMB 91.9, all but the last would be severely handicapped. WUMB gets 90% of its funding from listener donations, but it is a music station and does not air any news programming. Because it's on 99.5, in the commercial part of the FM band, WCRB could be turned into a commercial station, which indeed it was until 2009. WGBH and WBUR, though, are probably toast in the long run; they can only be operated non-commercially, and that means they'd likely have to give up their expensive news/talk formats.
Add comment