Amid the predictable wailing over the House vote to claw back $1 billion of taxpayer funding from hopelessly biased public media outlets PBS and NPR, one news outlet was unusually bitter: The Wrap, an L.A.-based news site focused on the entertainment business, which seemed to take the cuts as a personal affront, and in the process proved it resides in a West Coast liberal bubble. (Seriously, Bluesky?)

A social media reaction roundup by Sean Burch was amusingly headlined:

Republicans Ripped on Social Media for Slashing PBS and NPR Funding: ‘We Live in Hell’

‘Defunding PBS and NPR is such a disgraceful and pitiful attack on education, learning and truth,’ one Bluesky user says.

Well if those calm, reasonable Bluesky users say it…..

Burch began:

Many PBS and NPR fans are not happy with Senate Republicans and President Trump, after the Senate voted to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasters on Thursday morning - and they are sharing their displeasure on social media.

This must be the most predictable reaction ever:

On Bluesky, which was described as 'Blue Heaven' for 'The Resistance' to Trump and Elon Musk's X after the 2024 election, several prominent users have criticized the revoked funding.

Tess Patton, a Wrap "reporting fellow," wrote "Not Just ‘Sesame Street’: How Trump’s Billion-Dollar NPR, PBS Cuts Will Hurt Small Town America -- Academics and public radio professionals warn that budget cuts could decimate a watchdog for political corruption and delay emergency responses for rural, low-income communities." (The Wrap's headline decks are so long one hardly needs to read the story.)

The impact is devastating and wider than just the loss of 'Sesame Street.' As rural, low-income communities see less representation in their local media coverage and even less so on a national level, it will further widen the gap between socio-economic classes. The lack of local media outlets could also lead to delayed emergency alert responses and less scrutiny of community governing, causing greater damage and opening the door for political corruption.

Watch the urban liberals at PBS and NPR pause from “Queering your classroom” to belatedly acknowledge flyover country and flood warnings:

Now, the NPR and PBS stations are forced to deal with the ramifications.

'These cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas. Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,' PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said....

The Wrap was not above emotional blackmail.

These news deserts are a significant problem when dealing with very local emergencies. The nation saw one just this month in Texas, when 134 people died in devastating floods. What happens when the next violent weather event hits a small community?

Brian Lowry, Wrap media editor, denied the reality of NPR and PBS’s liberal slant in “‘Defund PBS’ Realizes a Long-Held Conservative Dream Built on Lies and Half-Truths -- The decades-old campaign against NPR and PBS doesn’t reflect reality, but it does fulfill a Trump promise.”

Clearly Lowry didn’t take the bias argument seriously.

….the notion that PBS and NPR represent wild-eyed bastions of liberalism simply flies in the face of reality, except for a relatively small percentage of its programming. Nevertheless, the perception has taken root among the GOP, unshakably so, stoked by the belief that any negative reporting on Donald Trump reflects 'fake news,' and the hard-to-refute sense that when it comes to the president, facts sometimes seem to exhibit a liberal bias.

Admittedly, it's difficult to engage in a debate about this with those who fall squarely within the pro-Trump camp, among them people who see 'Sesame Street' as being too 'woke' for seeking to teach kids to accept differences in others.

Yet as casual viewers of PBS or regular NPR listeners can attest (and given the latter's soothing, sleep-inducing voices, 'casual' surely describes a lot of them), public broadcasting offers a wide assortment of options, most of them apolitical.

Lowry found PBS and NPR shows "even-handed," which tells us more about his politics than that of the public media he's defending. No "fact checkers" were alerted.

Whether that's PBS' 'NewsHour' or its 'Frontline' franchise, NPR's 'Morning Edition' or 'All Things Considered,' the tone is invariably sober, straightforward and even-handed in a way that, frankly, sometimes works to its detriment vis-a-vis showier alternatives.