With partisan outcry and support of the Heritage Project’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, or Project 2025, making headlines, Radio Ink looked into the “Mandate for Leadership” to see what changes the conservative policy document could hold for radio.
NPR and The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Under the Media Agencies section, the Project 2025 doctrine unsurprisingly calls for a conservative president to prioritize ending funding for public broadcasters, even if facing opposition from within their own party.
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez writes, “Not only is the federal government trillions of dollars in debt and unable to afford the more than half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year, but the government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views.”
“Conservatives will thus reward a President who eliminates this tyrannical situation. PBS and NPR do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives…That may be an acceptable business model for MSNBC or CNN, but not for a taxpayer-subsidized broadcaster.”
Cutting CPB funding is something the Republican Party has collectively pushed for unsuccessfully for decades. Project 2025 calls for an aggressive solution.
“The 47th President can just tell the Congress – through the budget he proposes and through personal contact – that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB. The President may have to use the bully pulpit, as NPR and PBS have teams of lobbyists who have convinced enough Members of Congress to save their bacon every time their taxpayer subsidies have been at risk since the Nixon era.”
Gonzalez says this would by no means cause NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, or American Public Media to file for bankruptcy.
Project 2025 also calls for the FCC to strip NPR affiliates of their Noncommercial Educational status, meaning they would lose their signals at the lower end of the dial and their exemption from licensing fees. “NPR and PBS stations are in reality no longer noncommercial, as they run ads in everything but name for their sponsors. They are also noneducational.”
International Broadcasting
In Project 2025’s section on the Department of State, it lists international broadcasting as a crucial component of US foreign policy and public diplomacy, enabling direct communication with global populations, especially during conflicts. Referencing the Voice of America, the policy says post-Cold War complacency and technological advances in communication have seen a decline in the effectiveness of US international broadcasts.
To improve foreign policy outcomes and promote pro-freedom messages, Project 2025 calls for upgrading broadcasting infrastructure and refocusing on direct global engagement.
The AM For Every Vehicle Act
Tucked into the Department of Transportation section is a passage that, while not specifically calling the legislation into question, carries rhetoric very similar to the AM Act’s most staunch opponents, including the Consumer Technology Association.
“As private companies develop a future of new, emerging technologies, one role for DOT is driving clarity in the government’s role and setting standards for safety, Department of Transportation security, and privacy without hampering innovation. DOT can oversee the testing and deployment of a wide variety of new technologies, allowing communities and individuals to choose what best fits their needs. It is the role of the private sector, not the government, to pick winners and losers in technology development.”
The hands-off approach could be applied to any potential safety measure – including AM radio in the dashboard for emergencies.
National Weather Service
“Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.” Under Project 2025, the National Weather Service would concentrate on its commercial operations, leveraging its data-gathering capabilities for private companies.
The proposal recommends transforming the NWS into a Performance-Based Organization, ensuring it prioritizes its core function of delivering precise, timely, and impartial data to both the public and private sectors.
The Federal Communications Commission
“Few appointments to these [independent regulatory agencies] will be as important as the President’s selection of the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission,” starts Section Five.
The subject of ire from House Democrats, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr authored Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC. His policy priority recommendations for the next conservative president are, “Reining in Big Tech, Promoting national security, Unleashing economic prosperity, and Ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”
While radio is only mentioned once in the chapter, Carr addresses the FCC’s “important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” referring specifically to Big Tech.
Please tell, have you made a report on how radio stations are including visual ?
Visual is key and the favorite of the youth.