Lmst

Linked is an article from the Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker (who is sadly not on the fediverse) that does a good job of chronicling the impact of the US legislature's (and #Trump's) recent public broadcasting cuts --- the Chronicle rightly uses the more appropriate term "rescission" --- to both #Austin and #Texas broadly. Austin #PBS, as well as #NPR television and radio stations #KUT and #KUTX, will all be impacted. KUTX was my favourite radio station when I lived in Austin. Its willingness to eschew the top-40 algorithm and branch out is refreshing; the rescission might impact available licensing arrangements for their music.

Here in #FortWorth #Dallas #dfw, the closest analog to KUTX that I've found is #KNTU, better known as 88.1 Indie. It is entirely (well, mostly) commercial free. I say mostly, because I still consider "sponsored by X, offering service/product Y" to be an advertisement (formally referred to as "underwriting"); albeit a more palatable one than the traditional fare of the medium. KNTU is definitely more pop-heavy (and repeat-heavy) than KUTX, but it also caters/panders heavily to a more #millennial audience (guilty).

All that being said...

>The greatest concern is that this economic assault isn’t the end, but simply the latest attack on editorially independent media. The CPB defunding came after the dismantling of Voice of America Radio, and now the question is, what’s next? If the end game is to destroy public radio and television, how long before broadcast licenses become a target?

The irony of putting editorial independence in the same paragraph as Voice of America is painful and invites a comparison that i suspect most folks working in public broadcasting would not appreciate.

>Even if Republican lawmakers have turned their backs on public media, the hope is that donors, including charitable foundations, will continue to see the value of its uniquely community-minded programming. For example, Austin PBS is already strategizing about filling that $400,000 cut to Ready to Learn’s budget. Patiño said, “Our hypothesis is that, once we go out to the marketplace and say, 'Hey, these are the needs that will go unmet, these are the communities that will no longer receive the educational services that we provide and have for years and years and years,’ we hope that people that fund and support educational services in other nonprofits will support us in some way to fill that gap.”

Cutting out the legislative middlemen between the public and their servants, by pivoting to a direct-donor-centered model, might prove to be a silver lining to this rain cloud (and perhaps an unintended and unwelcome threat to that legislative body's hard and soft power).

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2025-08-01/texas-public-media-grapples-with-funding-loss-from-gop-bill/

#PublicBroadcasting #CPB #AustinChronicle #atx #VOA #VoiceOfAmerica #InventingReality

@dangillmor Just gonna leave this here...

https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-inventing-reality-the-politics-of-the-mass-media-1986-st.-martins-press_202012

#InventingReality #MichaelParenti

@SeanAloysiusOBrien "During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum."

*Parenti intensifies...*

#socialism #communism #anarchism #marxism #MichaelParenti #parenti #Chomsky #NoamChomsky #InventingReality #ManufacturingConsent

Frame from the famous "Yellow Parenti" lecture in 1986, a poor recording of a lecture Parenti gave that has a distinct yellow tinge to it. Here, Parenti is gesturing strongly with his hand, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as he speaks emphatically.

Can watch it here: https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-lecture-1986-yellow-parenti

@TexasObserver

>You did a recent op-ed about mass deportations, and you talked about the economic costs, but you also wrote that those who will be affected “are our neighbors, our friends and our coworkers. They sit next to us at church and restaurants, and their children are friends with yours at school.” How have we gotten to where so many people, especially in Texas, have forgotten that?
>
>I think that [Governor Greg] Abbott and Operation Lone Star for Texas has set the stage. They were in … Eagle Pass, they pretty much set a stage of taking one very small piece of a very long border, and having the troops there, having the buoys there, and having constant daily media attention. It was like a movie set because if you went just a mile down the river, none of it was there. It was a stage that was set, and the media filmed that as a clip and used those clips for every freaking story, so that’s all people see is that one clip of that one piece of the river. Well, then you’re gonna start believing it, if you keep hearing it on national news. So after a while, unless there’s someone else bringing up the other side of the story, and we worked real hard to get out those positive stories, to show Dreamers saving people’s lives working at hospitals, being nurses … during the pandemic, they were giving of themselves, the Dreamers that are teachers and firefighters that work to save people’s lives during storms, but they’re always just little clips.

Textbook example of #InventingReality or #ManufacturingConsent.

The gap between reality and you

How our brains invent the world. It shuts down our vision.
And we are not experiencing time correctly. (No suprise here)
🤓

https://youtu.be/wo_e0EvEZn8

#education
#time
#inventingReality

@cykonot I've never seen them go after folks who merely *upvoted* stuff before. That's a whole new level of Inventing Reality. #reddit #luigi #LuigiMangione #InventingReality

@cdarwin

>With Trump soon back in the White House, and people like Orbán cheering him on from the sidelines, can the hard right bring the media to heel?
>
>In the past the answer would have been a speedy no. The United States has major constitutional protections of First Amendment rights, and a strong commitment to freedom of the press.

The "mainstream media" *is* right wing. All of it. Perhaps not as far right wing as Trump would like, but *all* of it is right wing. If I could choose only one book to require every American to read, it would be Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti.

#InventingReality #MichaelParenti #ManufacturingConsent #EdwardHerman #NoamChomsky

@eloquence

>There will be people who say, “Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company”. That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press.

Under capitalism, news organizations have no such "public obligations" and are absolutely not "obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy." They are doing what they are designed to do: Invent Reality (or, if you prefer, Manufacture Consent).

I honestly think that reading Inventing Reality, by Michael Parenti, should be a prerequisite to working in journalism:

https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-inventing-reality-the-politics-of-the-mass-media-1986-st.-martins-press_202012

#capitalism #socialism #communism #marxism #MichaelParenti #InventingReality #EdwardHerman #NoamChomsky #ManufacturingConsent #MainstreamMedia #wapo #WashingtonPost #Disney #Bezos #Amazon

The team that makes Space Time for PBS on YouTube are making a movie, one that I wish existed when I was 19. They're going to explain our percieved reality given the best scientific explanations of our time. If any team can do it, and do it well, it's these folks.

Go watch Spacetime on YouTube. When you inevitably like it, remember to contribute to their indiegogo.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/inventing-reality#/

#spacetime #pbs #inventingreality