The scramble to keep public media afloat
The Public Media Bridge Fund hopes to raise $100 million over the next two years to support local news organizations at risk of closure, the organization said, following congressional approval to rescind more than $1 billion in federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB — the independently-run, congressionally-funded nonprofit — announced this month it would shut down.
Advocates and public media executives have warned that the funding cuts and subsequent closure of CPB will devastate rural communities that rely on local stations, with rural stations less able to weather the slashed federal funding compared to urban and suburban stations with larger donor bases.
'The people who are paying the price are local communities, in an era where local community connection is being eroded and local news is in crisis,' Tim Isgitt, CEO of Public Media Company — a nonprofit public media consulting firm that launched the bridge fund — told POLITICO. 'These members of Congress voted to kill what, in many communities, is their only source of local news and information and they did it eyes wide open.'
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.'
'This is a highly interconnected and, in some ways, interdependent system. So when a significant portion of local organizations start to fail, it's going to have an impact on other distressed local organizations that are also losing money. And I don't know where those dominoes stop.'
For this fall alone, Isgitt said, the fund is hoping to raise $50 million — but in order to sustain endangered newsrooms for the next two years, they'll need a minimum of $100 million, he added.
So far, philanthropic organizations including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation have committed $26.5 million to the Public Media Bridge Fund. While Isgitt said there is no official list designating which newsrooms will receive a disbursement, he said the Fund is compiling additional data to determine the most at-risk stations.
Isgitt said he remains hopeful, though he admits reaching the full $100 million goal will be difficult.
'There is a recognition from philanthropy across the board right now that there's a need and there's an opportunity to keep the system from collapsing,' said Isgitt. 'However, philanthropy is being asked to fill a lot of gaps right now, and I don't know how sustainable that is overtime.'
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