If you’re like me, you’re used to hearing “This program was made possible by supporters like you” at the end of NPR and PBS shows. But this year those words take on a special significance.

Thanks to an incredible outpouring of support from people all across the country, public media survived the most serious political attacks in Congress it has faced in years. Repeated efforts to pass bad bills, sneak through dangerous cuts and undermine the fundamental structure of public media failed thanks to the hard work of activists and fans who wrote to Congress, called their policymakers and even showed up in Washington, D.C., to make their voices heard.

We try to shine a spotlight on the media policies that shape journalism in America — for better and for worse. The Freedom of Information Act is a key example of how media policy can have a profound impact on journalism. Congress passed it in 1966 and it went into effect in 1967 over the objections of then-President Lyndon Johnson. It has since become a fundamental tool in journalists’ toolbox for accessing government information and holding our leaders accountable.

The Federal Communications Commission is now seeking feedback on a new rule that could open up even more information to help journalists follow the money in elections and media. However, some broadcasters are lobbying hard to derail this effort at enhanced disclosure.

This is huge: AT&T just announced it’s finally abandoning its doomed merger with T-Mobile.

For nearly a year, we've been showing that this deal would have only meant higher prices, fewer choices and tens of thousands of lost American jobs. Free Press knew it; the Department of Justice agreed; so did the FCC.

Christopher Hitchens was a master at offending just about everybody in the room.

Hitchens, who died Thursday from complications related to cancer, first earned his literary stripes as a political firebrand on the left. No cow was too sacred for Hitchens, an atheist who excoriated organized religion in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything — and lambasted the previously untouchable Mother Teresa in The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. A longtime lefty, Hitchens alienated his former compatriots when he switched gear in the early aughts and defended the United States invasion of Iraq.