Ken Burns Condemns Republican Plan to Defund PBS: ‘I Couldn't Do Any of My Films Without Them'

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With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Ken Burns is set to release a six-part series on the American Revolution this November. But it could be premiering on a PBS deprived of federal funding by Donald Trump and Republicans.
In an interview with 'CBS Sunday Morning' set to air this weekend and taped at Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello, Burns praised PBS as essential to both his filmmaking career and America as a whole after the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of $1.1 billion over the next two years after the funds were approved by a previous Congress.
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'I couldn't do any of the films I've done without them being on PBS. I could go into a streaming service or a premium cable tomorrow and get every one of the millions of dollars it took to do this in one pitch, but they wouldn't give me 10 years. They want it in a year or a year and a half, and that's the deal. I can't do that,' he told CBS' John Dickerson.
Burns pointed out that the majority of PBS' 330 affiliates serve largely rural areas, some of which could be at risk without federal funding. PBS and National Public Radio have been longtime targets of conservative derision for their perceived liberal bias even though, as Burns pointed out, conservative icon William F. Buckley hosted the show 'Firing Line' on PBS from 1966 to 1999.
'They also have not only our good children's and prime time stuff, they have classroom on the air continuing education, homeland security, crop reports, weather emergency information. That we're going to take away?' he said.
In a wide-ranging interview in which Burns reflected on the American Revolution, his relationship with the history of the United States, and Donald Trump's plans for America's 250th anniversary, Burns also discussed what he believes the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that the 'pursuit of happiness' is one of humanity's 'unalienable rights.'
'The Pursuit of Happiness is not the acquisition of things in a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. That's what the founders said, to be virtuous, to live a virtuous life, to continually educate yourself, is what was required to sustain this republic and I think that's what we've gotten away from. Everything is sort of all individualized. We're all free agents. We don't realize that freedom, the thing that we tout, is not just what I want, but also that's intention with what we need,' he said.
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