‘All They’re Going to Hear Is Capitulation’
The Trump administration’s ideological attacks on public media and education converge at university-based radio stations. Some are breaking free.
In June, Debbie Hiott, the general manager of KUT, an NPR affiliate licensed to the University of Texas at Austin, was invited to a meeting with Anita Vangelisti, the interim dean of the Moody College of Communication, and handed two letters. One offered her the option to resign; the other summarily fired her. Hiott took the latter. “You’re going to have to fire me,” she remembered saying. “The university is going to have to be known for firing me.” Hiott—who was about to turn fifty-six, with short brown hair and a slight Texas drawl—was told by an HR representative that she would not be able to go back to the radio station where she had worked since 2019 as general manager, and to which she had, over the years, donated more than sixty thousand dollars. A longtime journalist, Hiott had previously worked as the editor of the Austin American-Statesman. She had twice served on the Pulitzer Prize jury for local reporting and was well known in Texas editorial and reportorial circles, as well as beyond: part of being the general manager of an NPR station involves sitting on the board of directors at NPR.
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
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