CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed NPR CEO Katherine Maher to Thursday’s taping of The Late Show for a grieving session on the latter being defunded. According to Maher, the fate of democracy depends on NPR, and only people who seek to divide and pit Americans against each other could possibly support defunding it.

Colbert put the ball on the tee for Maher by repeating the idea that public broadcasting is of vital importance for local news, “And while it's possible now to, like, use streaming wherever you are and basically get another radio station, one of the things, as I understand it, is that with the decline of local newspapers and local news, these NPR stations are critical sources for people to know about their own community.”

Maher then painted a dystopian scene where 20 percent of Americans would be without traffic reports if not for her company:

So, one in five Americans currently lives without access to local news in their community, and what that means is that, sure, they have access to national news, national television, national newspapers, perhaps if they can afford the subscriptions, maybe. But that means they don't have anyone covering their local PTA, they don't have anyone covering the issues of traffic and commuting or the issues of how their forest is being managed or the issues of what prices look like in terms of agricultural and commodity sales, and that really matters when it comes down to how folks live and interact especially in rural areas. 

Maher’s sense of self-importance only got worse:

The other thing is that we know—and there's lots of evidence because this has been going on for about 20 years—that the decline of local news in this country correlates with higher rates of polarization, lower trust in the civic institutions, lower trust in the very institution of democracy itself. So, when you take away local news and when you take away local public radio, what you're really doing is undercutting our ability to trust one another, those of us who we've never met, to talk about how we want to live together in our towns, in our cities, and make decisions as a democracy not at that big-D level of Congress, but the little-D level of where are my tax dollars going to go, how do I want to raise my family, what’s the community that I want to live in? It's incredibly damaging.

Later, Colbert wondered, “You say the public media, you know, fosters civic engagement, especially locally. Why would any politicians or members of any administration want to stop that?”

Snickering slightly, Maher explained, “Well, I think there are broader questions at play there, Stephen.”

Maher then waxed poetic about shared institutions from youth sports to church before adding radio to that list:

We perhaps come from different cultures, and public media allows us to see one another as fundamentally sharing some of the same values. So, what I love, particularly about audio, is that when we do our jobs right, you really have to listen to a person. You're not making judgments on the way that they look. You aren't distant from them because you are, sort of, reading about their life experience. You are hearing from them in their own voice about what it means to hold the opinions that they have, to have lived the lives that they lived. 

She concluded by claiming, “When we do that right, you can fundamentally disagree with something someone says, but you can't deny their empathy or humanity, and that is such a powerful tool. So, if you're seeking to create some sort of advantage in societies that are fractured and splintered, taking away this tool that allows us to see one another as fellow citizens, fellow Americans, it's a really powerful advantage.”

This is why Maher lost the defunding battle. She talks about bringing people together, but all NPR’s programming does is drive them apart. Maybe that’s just the nature of politics, but if so, NPR can do that on its own dime.

Here is a transcript for the September 4-taped show:

CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

9/5/2024

12:27 AM ET

STEPHEN COLBERT: And while it's possible now to, like, use streaming wherever you are and basically get another radio station, one of the things, as I understand it, is that with the decline of local newspapers and local news, these NPR stations are critical sources for people to know about their own community.

KATHERINE MAHER: That's exactly right. So, one in five Americans currently lives without access to local news in their community, and what that means is that, sure, they have access to national news, national television, national newspapers, perhaps if they can afford the subscriptions, maybe. But that means they don't have anyone covering their local PTA, they don't have anyone covering the issues of traffic and commuting or the issues of how their forest is being managed or the issues of what prices look like in terms of agricultural and commodity sales, and that really matters when it comes down to how folks live and interact especially in rural areas. 

The other thing is that we know—and there's lots of evidence because this has been going on for about 20 years —that the decline of local news in this country correlates with higher rates of polarization, lower trust in the civic institutions, lower trust in the very institution of democracy itself. So, when you take away local news and when you take away local public radio, what you're really doing is undercutting our ability to trust one another, those of us who we've never met, to talk about how we want to live together in our towns, in our cities, and make decisions as a democracy not at that big-D level of Congress, but the little-D level of where are my tax dollars going to go, how do I want to raise my family, what’s the community that I want to live in? It's incredibly damaging.

…

COLBERT: You say the public media, you know, fosters civic engagement, especially locally.

MAHER: It does.

COLBERT: Why would any politicians or members of any administration want to stop that?

MAHER: Well, I think there are broader questions at play there, Stephen. I think one thing that's certainly true is that if we in communities feel like we don't have something in common with someone who lives down the road, it creates a space in which other people can come in and take advantage of us. 

It is so important, especially in a country that is as diverse, heterogeneous as ours, that things like public media exist to help us connect across divides. So, there are ways we connect already. We connect because our kids are on the same sports teams, we connect because we go to the same church, but there are people in our community who we might not meet otherwise. We work in different trades. We perhaps come from different cultures, and public media allows us to see one another as fundamentally sharing some of the same values. So, what I love, particularly about audio, is that when we do our jobs right, you really have to listen to a person. You're not making judgments on the way that they look. You aren't distant from them because you are, sort of, reading about their life experience. You are hearing from them in their own voice about what it means to hold the opinions that they have, to have lived the lives that they lived. 

And when we do that right, you can fundamentally disagree with something someone says, but you can't deny their empathy or humanity, and that is such a powerful tool. So, if you're seeking to create some sort of advantage in societies that are fractured and splintered, taking away this tool that allows us to see one another as fellow citizens, fellow Americans, it's a really powerful advantage.