Editorial: The Lights Are Going Out Across American Media

In just 24 hours, two seismic events have shaken the very foundation of public and legacy media in the United States—and the tremors will be felt for generations. Republicans in Congress, after years of strategic chipping away, have finally succeeded in defunding NPR and PBS. Simultaneously, CBS has announced the cancellation of The Late Show, effectively ending one of the last bastions of prime-time satire, cultural commentary, and political scrutiny on network television. This isn’t just a bad news cycle. This is collapse.

It’s not just that programs are getting canceled or budgets slashed. It’s that the infrastructure—the soul, really—of American public discourse is being gutted before our eyes. In places like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, public media stations might limp along, bolstered by deep-pocketed donors and institutions that still believe in the public good. But in small towns, rural counties, and middle-American cities like Duluth, Topeka, or Norfolk, where local PBS and NPR affiliates serve as lifelines for everything from civic information to children’s programming, this funding cut is a death sentence. These stations will shutter. And with them will go not just the news, but the communal memory of towns that rely on these outlets to stitch together their civic lives.

This is not just a pause. This is not a program that Democrats can resurrect in a future administration. Public media has always run on trust and consistency. What we’re witnessing now is the irreversible erosion of both. Once a station closes its doors, once engineers are laid off and studios are dismantled, that ecosystem doesn’t just spring back to life because someone re-appropriates a line item in a federal budget. We are losing something fundamental, and we are losing it fast.

And then there’s CBS.

It’s no coincidence that The Late Show’s cancellation comes as the Paramount-Skydance merger is in its final stretch, a deal long shadowed by concerns about political influence and editorial control. With the Trump’s Justice Department having to sign off on the deal, CBS—the oldest and once most trusted name in American broadcasting—now finds itself in the crosshairs of a hostile ideological takeover. Let’s not mince words: Stephen Colbert was fired. He wasn’t shuffled out or retired. He was removed—along with the platform he built over nearly a decade—because his voice was too sharp, too critical, too loud.

Colbert wasn’t just a comedian — he was a watchdog. A nightly reminder that the absurdity of power required laughter, yes—but also accountability. The decision to silence him is not just a cost-saving measure or a “creative refresh.” It’s a stark warning that the guardrails are off.

Just weeks ago, CBS News quietly settled a legal dispute over its 60 Minutes reporting—another blow to the editorial independence of a network that once made its name standing up to power. The message now is clear: editorial scrutiny is optional, depending on the whims of the parent company and the political allies they wish to please. The same company that once aired Edward R. Murrow’s rebuke of McCarthyism now bends to a different kind of authoritarianism—one veiled in boardroom decisions, strategic mergers, and quiet cancellations.

And if CBS can fall, any of them can.

The consequences are devastating. Americans should now be asking themselves: who can we trust? With public media defunded and legacy networks compromised, where is the source of truth? Because it’s not just about content—it’s about the invisible frameworks of accountability, fact-checking, institutional memory, and ethical journalism that make real news possible.

We should be terrified by how little outrage is meeting this moment. Perhaps it’s because the shift has been slow, insidious. Perhaps because so many people have tuned out, convinced that media is already broken beyond repair. But this? This is different. This is the difference between broken and barren.

We are entering an era where local stations will go dark, where satire is silenced, and where the evening news has been scrubbed by corporate overseers afraid of offending politicians in power. For people living outside major metropolitan areas, the collapse of public media means not just a loss of information—it means a cultural blackout. It means no more election guides in October, no more emergency broadcasts, no more town hall coverage or school board debates aired in living rooms across small-town America.

This isn’t just a culture war. It’s a scorched-earth campaign against the public square.

There is no quick fix here. The infrastructure is falling, and once it’s gone, we won’t be able to just plug the cord back in and reboot. America must now grapple with the reality that we are losing the very institutions that once held our democracy accountable. That loss is incalculable—and unless we act, it will be permanent.