I attempted to watch a PBS program called BBC News: The Context. It was 30 minutes of news that had nothing to do with the United States. The first 25 minutes focused on the UK’s “asylum reform” debate, and the final few minutes covered a former Bangladeshi leader. This is what’s airing on PBS — the Public Broadcasting Service — which was sustained by taxpayer dollars for decades until federal support began winding down in 2025.
PBS has aired BBC programming since the 1970s, starting with British dramas and news shows. Over time, the partnership grew so much that many nights PBS looks like a BBC relay station. Classic BBC dramas, documentaries, and news segments fill its schedule. Since 2017, The Context — a political program produced in London for a British audience — is being broadcast directly into American homes. PBS was created to serve American communities, yet it devotes valuable public airwaves to the BBC, a foreign network.
There are several reasons Americans should object to a British state-funded broadcaster shaping the news on PBS. PBS isn’t just airing The Context — it also fills its lineup with BBC dramas, BBC documentaries, BBC history specials, and BBC current-affairs programs that have nothing to do with American life. Rather than focusing on American issues, PBS is airing long segments on UK politics and Bangladesh, broadcasting from London with foreign hosts instead of relying on Americans.
American public television should not act as a platform for another country’s news, entertainment, and cultural programming. If PBS is supposed to be “public broadcasting” for the United States, then the shows it carries should be American-made and American-focused — not imported from a foreign government-funded network. And PBS’s main interview host, Christiane Amanpour, is a British-Iranian citizen who broadcasts from London for most of the year — yet she is presented to Americans as the face of their public television news.
PBS has long been funded by Americans and was intended to highlight American-made journalism and American programming, not foreign productions, foreign perspectives, or foreign hosts.
In a media environment where Americans struggle to find honest, relevant reporting about their own cities, states, and country, PBS shouldn’t be outsourcing the job to the BBC or producing content with foreign hosts in London. Public news in America should serve American communities, American stories, and American priorities — not operate as an arm of another nation’s public propaganda.