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Happy Wednesday. Here's the latest on TIME, TikTok, George Clooney, Google, Brian Roberts, 4chan, the Spokesman-Review, and much more...

Public media prepares for a big fight

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

America's two biggest public broadcasters, PBS and NPR, are facing an up-or-down vote over their federal funding for the first time in decades.

So for station leaders like Ed Ulman, the CEO of Alaska Public Media, and Jim Schachter, the CEO of New Hampshire Public Radio, it's time to galvanize public and congressional support. “The plan is to remind people of the value proposition,” Schachter told me. “The majority of Americans think it's worth the $1.60 that they pay in taxes,” Ulman added. They are urging viewers and listeners to visit an advocacy website, Protect My Public Media, and send letters to lawmakers.

On the other side: The Trump administration. Trump aides say the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a waste of money and see this as a worthwhile cultural fight. The White House portrays PBS and NPR as vehicles for "radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" Its list of grievances with public media contains news reports about race, sexuality and gender identity along with many allegations of liberal bias.

Station leaders assert that if you tune in, you’ll see that the White House’s portrayal is just plain wrong. "There's nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress," PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement yesterday.

Normally that support, about $535 million for the entire public media marketplace per year, is a barely-noticed line item in a gigantic budget bill. When singled out for "rescission," the $$$ might be a lot more vulnerable.

Two months of lobbying to come

Trump budget chief Russ Vought confirmed on Fox yesterday that the White House will send a rescission proposal to Congress at the end of April, specifically targeting public media as well as foreign aid. The proposal will start a 45-day clock for the House and Senate. 

Congress might ignore the proposal and keep the funding intact – after all, it just approved the money a month ago! – but some Republicans will welcome a chance to vote against NPR and PBS, and others will feel pressure to do the same.

Let's imagine the funds are clawed back. Without the money, some local stations will be forced off the air, especially in rural areas that are Republican strongholds. Alaska Public Media, for instance, operates a radio station in Anchorage and partners with 26 locally owned and operated radio stations reaching almost every corner of the frontier. Those stations combine to form Alaska’s only statewide news network, which employs nearly 60 journalists. "It is fair to say that many of these stations will close if federal funding is eliminated," Ulman said.

Bigger, stronger networks would survive but suffer. This year Schachter's stations in New Hampshire will get $542,000 in federal support – less than 6% of his $10 million budget. He said the federal funds “give us a solid starting point” and enable the stations to raise more money from listeners, foundations and other sources. “We fight every day for every dollar,” he said. And if the federal dollars dried up, “the knock-on effects would be huge,” Schachter explained. Check out my full story here...

'This is not about the money'

In Schachter's view, the Trump White House's attempt to defund NPR and PBS is part of a wider effort to control information and clamp down on independent news coverage. "This is not about the money," he said. "It’s a minuscule amount of money in the federal budget, though it's critical to meeting public media's civic responsibilities. This is about attacking a free press."

White House sidelines wires

A reporter for the Associated Press was allowed into an East Room ceremony yesterday – the first time the wire service was permitted entry into such an event since the White House banned the outlet for using the name Gulf of Mexico back in February. But then the hammer came down. 

Instead of letting The AP back in the press pool, as required by a federal judge, the White House said it is removing the wire spot in the daily press corps rotation altogether. Today none of the wires — not The AP or Reuters or Bloomberg — are on pool duty. Until February, all three were a daily part of the pool.

The change appears designed to withstand legal scrutiny while still punishing The AP. Will it work? Minutes ago the wire service made a new court filing calling the new White House policy "a clear violation of the court's injunction order" and asking Judge Trevor McFadden to enforce his order.

Two key impacts

There is another hearing in the ongoing lawsuit tomorrow, so we'll learn what the judge thinks soon enough. For now there are two key impacts:

 >> News consumers lose. Countless local news outlets rely on The AP and other wires for just-the-facts coverage because they don’t have White House correspondents of their own.

 >> The White House gains more control. By taking charge of the press pool assignments and sending out the text pool reports to the wider press corps, the Trump admin is able to filter information. (Thankfully the TV networks all remain in place.) 

"The administration's actions continue to disregard the fundamental American freedom to speak without government control or retaliation," The AP said last night. "This is a grave disservice to the American people." More here...

WHCA denounces retaliation

"The changes to the press pool today show that the White House is  just using a new means to do the same thing: retaliate against news organizations for coverage the White House doesn't like," White House Correspondents' Association president Eugene Daniels said last night.

Indeed, every move is in the same direction, boosting outlets that cheerlead for Trump while booting outlets that impartially cover him. Today the newly created second "print" spot in the pool, which the wires may sometimes be selected to fill, belongs to the Heritage Foundation website The Daily Signal.

Four Russian journalists sentenced

Antonina Favorskaya, Sergei Karelin, Konstantin Gabov, and Artem Kriger — all of whom are reporters linked to Alexey Navalny — have been sentenced to five years and six months in a penal colony, CNN's Sana Noor Haq and Anna Chernova report. The quartet’s sentence came after "prosecutors claimed the four had produced material for the YouTube channel of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), according to Reuters, which is prohibited under the country's 'foreign agents law.'"

Clooney speaks to Tapper

“Good Night, and Good Luck” keeps doing it: The play just broke its own weekly record for highest grossing Broadway production, THR's Caitlin Huston reports.

Jake Tapper sat down with the play's star George Clooney for an interview that will air in full on "The Lead" later today. In this preview clip, Clooney talks about why he felt compelled to write that still-controversial op-ed last summer calling on Joe Biden to exit the 2024 race.

"It was a civic duty," Clooney said, "because I found that people on my side of the street," Democrats, were "not telling the truth."

Spokane paper goes nonprofit

"The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington, has joined a small contingent of newspapers converting to nonprofit status," Poynter's Rick Edmonds reports. Why it's meaningful: "In joining a growing wave of nonprofit conversions, the family-owned paper aims to preserve community journalism — and keep it out of corporate hands." More here...

Houston news nonprofit shuts down

For all the enthusiasm and optimism about new nonprofit business models, it can still be a very steep uphill climb. Yesterday the two-year-old Houston Landing, which launched with $20 million in seed funding, said it will shut down in May because it has been "unable to build additional revenue streams to support ongoing operations."

The decision "represents a costly and prominent—but, so far, rare—failure of a local news startup," CJR's Sewell Chan wrote...

Briefly...

 >> New this morning: TIME announced this year's TIME100 list and some new extensions of the franchise. (TIME)

 >> Overnight Trump attacked Comcast and chairman Brian Roberts as "a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting." (Mediaite)

 >> During opening statements in the Palin v. NYT retrial, an attorney for Sarah Palin faulted The New York Times for failing to apologize to her. Here's how Katie Robertson covered opening statements for the Times. (NYT)

 >> Reuters' parent is dropping 'diversity' in favor of 'belonging' in response to Trump E.O. 'to ensure ongoing compliance,'" Ben Mullin scooped. (Bluesky)

 >> Chuck Todd has "honed in on a starting point" for his local news business plan: Youth sports. (THR)

 >> "Following a breakout year in 2024, roughly a dozen publishers have introduced new, specialized coverage plans for women's sports," Kerry Flynn and Sara Fischer write. (Axios)

FTC v. Meta watch

Mark Zuckerberg is expected to wrap up his testimony in FTC v. Meta later this morning. On the stand yesterday, he "said he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because it was hard to build new apps and dodged questions about whether he was trying to snuff out competitive threats to his company," the NYT's Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac report.

After the trial adjourned for the day, the WSJ's Dana Mattioli, Rebecca Ballhaus and Josh Dawsey published a big scoop: Zuckerberg, they said, offered $450 million to settle the case last month, "and hoped Trump would back him up," while the FTC wanted $30 billion. No wonder the settlement talks failed...

 >> Related: In a sign of continuing GOP antipathy toward Zuckerberg, Chuck Grassley sent Meta a letter denouncing its "war on whistleblowers," citing the company's efforts to silence Sarah Wynn-Williams.

More tech talk

 >> New this morning: "Google is being sued in Britain for potential damages of up to £5 billion ($6.6 billion) in a class action alleging the company abused its dominant market position in online search." (Reuters)

>>“OpenAI "is working on its own X-like social network," Kyle Robison and Alex Heath scooped. (The Verge)

 >> Mickey Carroll asks: "Is this the end of notorious 4chan internet forum?" The site, "notorious for its extreme right-wing content, appears to have been hacked." (Sky News)

 >> "Chinese factories are flooding TikTok with luxury goods. Not so fast, experts say." Check out Ramishah Maruf's full story here. (CNN)

Entertainment odds and ends

 >> "For the first time ever in Nielsen’s monthly Gauge reports, the 10 most-watched streaming titles were distributed by seven different platforms: Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, Netflix and Apple TV+," Lucas Manfredi reports. (TheWrap)

 >> In an interview with Stephen Rodrick, Jimmy Kimmel said he thinks “liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.” (Rolling Stone)

 >> RIP: Wink Martindale, the beloved host of game shows like "Tic-Tac-Dough," has died. He was 91. (CNN)

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Luciana Lopez and produced with Liam Reilly. Please email us your feedback and tips here.