On Friday, PBS followed NPR’s lead and sued President Trump over his executive order telling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding PBS and NPR. PBS filed suit along side Lakeland PBS, which operates PBS stations in Bemidji and Brainerd, Minnesota.

In a statement, PBS proclaimed its “independence,” when it’s obvious they are dependent on federal funding. "After careful deliberation, PBS reached the conclusion that it was necessary to take legal action to safeguard public television's editorial independence, and to protect the autonomy of PBS member stations." 

“Autonomy” and “editorial independence” are code words for “as liberal as we wanna be.”

The lawsuit argues: "The EO makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is cutting off the flow of funds to PBS because of the content of PBS programming and out of a desire to alter the content of speech. That is blatant viewpoint discrimination and an infringement of PBS and PBS Member Stations' private editorial discretion."

Here we go again – they want “private editorial expression” with public money.

White House spokesman Harrison Fields spoke for the Republican view, that CPB is "creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers' dime."

"Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS," Fields said in a statement. "The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective."

The public television court filings say PBS would lose $81 million per year in federal grants and "a substantial portion" of the $227 million that public TV stations pay it in order to run programs from children's shows to politically loaded Frontline documentaries. 

How biased is PBS? On Monday, Clay Waters published his latest study of the guest count on PBS News Hour. From January 20 through May 19, liberal-Democratic leaning guests outnumbered conservative-Republican leaning guests by 173 to 41, a ratio of 4.2 to 1. 

PBS naturally tilts to the Democrats. Objecting to that is somehow an affront to their "independence." They should be truly independent and go on without involuntary taxpayer support.