The scramble to keep public media afloat
Conservatives in Congress have long sought to eliminate federal funding for public media, and scored a major victory with Trump's rescissions package.
In May, Trump issued an executive order looking to restrict all funding for NPR and PBS. CPB, PBS and NPR challenged the order. But Congress, which appropriated more than $500 million to CPB annually, codified the president's move in this year's Rescissions Act.
'I don't want to sugarcoat this, but the loss of CPB funding to local rural communities is devastating,' said Isgitt. 'We're doing what we can to do what Congress failed to do: protecting stations.'
Isgitt expects things to worsen in November, when CPB normally doled out funding to affiliates. Newsrooms that depended on at least 30 percent of funding from CPB are now at risk of going dark, he said.
'From Mississippi to Idaho, local public media organizations are run by people who live in their communities, governed by people who live in their communities and reporting on community issues,' said Isgitt. The loss of CPB funding, he added, will 'have ripple effects across the system.'
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