“President Petersen is correct to call out PBS imposing viewpoint discrimination on a candidate they do not support — but eliminating public broadcasting isn’t the answer. Public broadcasting has value, especially now when corporate media is consolidating and shutting down. Just four years ago, people were rightly concerned that only a handful of powerful interests owned the news. Public broadcasting is supposed to be a safeguard against that — a place for non-editorialized statements of fact.
But when taxpayer-funded media engages in viewpoint discrimination, as ASU and PBS did in blocking a candidate they do not support, it destroys that trust. Without investigative journalism — like Arizona Republic’s Stacey Barchenger’s reporting — the public would never have known what happened. That’s why PBS must tell the people of Arizona exactly what steps they will take to ensure this never happens again. If they can’t, all we’ll have left is private journalism, and that’s not good for balance either.
The First Amendment protects a free press — but it also comes with the responsibility to avoid imposing political agendas and to protect the public from government-funded media being weaponized. The balance in the First Amendment is vital, and what happened here is bad for the people of Arizona.
This is part of a bigger problem. Even Arizona’s own Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, refuses to work with CISA — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — because he claims it’s politicized. Let’s be honest: that politicization didn’t happen in a vacuum. Under the Biden administration, CISA shifted from protecting our critical infrastructure to actively policing speech, flagging political content, and suppressing viewpoints they didn’t like. That’s government censorship.
If our current elected officials can’t work with government agencies like CISA without fear of political weaponization, then the system itself is broken. And when that same pattern of censorship bleeds into public broadcasting — as it did with PBS — it’s all part of the same issue: public trust being destroyed by partisan abuse of taxpayer-supported institutions."
-Chairwoman Gina Swoboda
###
About the Arizona Republican Party:
The Republican Party champions freedom, limited government, and equality, aiming to empower all Americans. We advocate for economic prosperity through free enterprise and common sense policy, reducing government overreach and taxes. Committed to safeguarding rights and promoting strong national defense, healthcare reform, and quality education, we are dedicated to reviving the American Dream and ensuring a brighter future for Arizona and the nation.
