Latest news with #CorporationforPublicBroadcasting
UPI
18 hours ago
- Politics
- UPI
Rescission of public broadcast funding threatens rural areas
1 of 2 | The headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) is seen in Washington, D.C., on May 27. The congressional rescissions bill passed by the U.S. House and Senate cuts more than $1 billion in funding for public broadcasting. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo July 30 (UPI) -- Publicly funded radio and television broadcasts bring news and emergency alerts to rural and underserved populations and the congressional rescissions bill will have some at risk of going off air. The U.S. Senate passed the rescissions bill earlier this month, peeling back about $9 billion in funding for public broadcasting, foreign aid and other services as recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency. The decision could lead to growing news deserts as rural communities lose what is often their main source of local coverage and critical information. For public broadcasting, the bill cuts the funding allocated for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. For fiscal year 2026, $535 million had been approved in the appropriations bill passed in March 2024. Earlier this year, Congress approved $535 million in funding for fiscal year 2027. Public broadcast funding is directed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It is a private, nonprofit organization that was authorized by Congress to oversee government public media funds in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Funding is distributed to more than 1,500 public television and radio stations. "The vote by the U.S. Senate and House to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have profound, lasting, negative consequences for every American," Patricia Harrison, CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in a statement. "Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down. Parents will have fewer high quality learning resources available for their children. Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives." Government funding for public media is distributed to stations based on need. Stations that broadcast to rural, underserved and minority populations receive a higher portion of their funding from the CPB due in part to not having access to as many resources as those in highly populated areas. Tribal radio Tribal stations will be among those most deeply affected by the loss of federal funding. KSUT Tribal Radio broadcasts to the Four Corners region of the Southwest. It has served listeners in Northwest New Mexico, Southwest Colorado, Southeast Utah and Northeast Arizona since it was founded in 1976 by the Southern Ute Tribe. Four tribes are served by the station as well: the Southern Ute Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Jicarilla Apache Nation in Northern New Mexico and the Navajo Nation in northeast Arizona and Northwest New Mexico. Much of KSUT's coverage area is already considered a news desert -- an area that lacks adequate local news coverage. Each of the states KSUT broadcasts to have lost at least 15% of their local newspapers since 2004, according to The Expanding News Desert project at the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. "We chose with the limited resources we have for original reporting to focus on indigenous affairs. That certainly is not a service that folks get of regional news and information on Native American issues," Tami Graham, KSUT executive director, told UPI. About 20% of KSUT's budget, about $330,000, comes from federal funding, Graham said. With that funding source gone, the station is planning to fundraise rapidly to maintain its level of service. Due to its rural coverage area, it does not have access to the kinds of philanthropic resources that stations in larger markets have." "It's a double whammy losing that funding and not being in major markets," Graham said. "We have great listeners who are very supportive. We're looking for where we can shave and cut costs. We're trying our best to avoid any major staffing cuts." KSUT's goal is to raise about $600,000 in the next two years to backfill the lost federal funding. Fundraising, listener membership, business underwriters and grant funding outside of the federal government are four revenue resources it will lean on. "How we survive in the meantime is resilience. We're going to survive," Graham said. "There will be stations that will go dark. I have no doubt about it. Hopefully that will just be temporary." Emergency broadcasts Public media is oftentimes the only source of emergency alerts and critical information in rural areas. State and local alerts are pushed through public radio and television broadcasts through the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts. Public media stations were crucial in Southern California during the wildfires in January. According to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 111 Wireless Emergency Alerts were shared with more than 18 million people in affected and at-risk areas. In 2024, there was a 30% increase over 2023 in Wireless Emergency Alerts issued by federal, state and local authorities. Public radio is particularly crucial in rural regions where cell and Internet service is unreliable if not completely unavailable. "Turning on your radio can be a lifeline," Graham said. "Old-fashion radio in a lot of these tribal communities is really important because they know that's how they're going to get their information if it's a rapidly developing wildfire or COVID information. We were hugely important to communities about what restrictions there were on tribal lands related to COVID." Wildfires are the most persistent threat in the KSUT coverage area. "There's wildfires happening now in our region," Graham said. "We pride ourselves on keeping any updates around evacuation notices and road closures on our airwaves. We put a lot of energy into making sure we're taking the information we're finding and then relaying that to the degree that we can for those folks who may not have the ability to gather that information for themselves because of a lack of connectivity." Viktor Pickard, C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania, told UPI cuts to public media are likely to cost lives. "Many rural communities are going to lose emergency alert systems," he said. It's not hyperbolic to say these cuts will at least indirectly lead to people losing their lives." 'An already vulnerable system' Pickard said a significant percentage of local public media stations are likely to shut down in the next year with a disproportionate number of them serving rural areas. The Trump administration may oversee this significant blow to public broadcasting but partisan attacks on the system are not new. "The budgetary concerns are really a red herring," Pickard said. "It's much more ideological." Republican opposition to public media can be traced back to its inception, according to Pickard. President Richard Nixon was critical of PBS and its content. Republican administrations that followed shared at least some of Nixon's ire, seeking to cut funding, claiming public broadcasts held a liberal bias. "Every democratic country in the world does it though," Pickard said of funding public media. However, the United States lags behind other countries in its financial support. According to Pickard, the United States spends about $1.50 per person on public media funding. Great Britain spends more than $100 per person. "We've always impoverished our public media system in the United States compared to other media systems in the world," Pickard said. The funding model is designed, in part, to keep publicly-funded media organizations independent from government influence. It has also made organizations vulnerable. "The system was already vulnerable," Pickard said. "We're already a global outlier compared to how public media systems are funded around the world. In many ways, [President Donald] Trump is exploiting an already vulnerable system." Pickard worries that the further degradation of the news media ecosystem will ultimately be a major blow to U.S. democracy. "We have these natural experiments on what happens when a local community loses news institutions," he said. "People are less likely to vote. They're less physically engaged. They're less politically knowledgeable. There are higher levels of extremism and higher levels of corruption." Pickard cited studies by the Democracy Fund, a nonprofit foundation with the mission of supporting democracy. Senior director Joshua Stearns penned a compilation of more than 50 studies that indicate journalism, especially local coverage, increases engagement with policy. "When people lose local media, they are no longer well informed," Pickard said. "That's a critical area alongside losing emergency alert systems. We have these news deserts that are rapidly expanding all across the country. In many cases, public media are the last institutions standing that could provide some level of news and information."
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Why conservatives should be rooting for NPR and PBS
Dominic Pino is the economics editor and Thomas L. Rhodes fellow at National Review and host of the American Institute for Economic Research podcast 'Econception.' After decades of complaining about it, Republicans have finally cut federal spending for public broadcasting. The $9 billion rescissions package that President Donald Trump signed last Thursday removed funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which supports PBS and NPR, for fiscal 2026 and 2027.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kansas City radio station reeling from federal funding cuts: ‘Slash and burn'
Kansas City's independent volunteer-based radio station sees potential — in the artists it platforms and the communities its listeners call home. Now, many of the voices uplifted on 90.1 FM over the years are speaking out against federal funding cuts that leave the station in a precarious position. Like Kansas City's NPR and PBS stations, KKFI will feel the impact of Congress's decision to claw back more than $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Over the next two years, KKFI, Kansas City's community radio station, will lose $170,000 in federal funding, or roughly 10% of its budget. The implications are broad, said Kelly Dougherty, the station's director of development and communications. 'I'm not going to lie, it's been tough trying to explain to people how this affects stations like KKFI,' Dougherty wrote in a message to listeners last week. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, handles the music licensing agreements for noncommercial public radio stations like KKFI. The blanket licenses with performing rights organizations make it affordable for community stations to play music on the air. 'To negotiate those individually would be cost-prohibitive to many, many stations, and you know, it could very well be cost-prohibitive to us,' Dougherty told The Star, which has partnered with KKFI for the last three years to highlight the voices of Black Kansas City residents on the air and its website. If KKFI were to lose that licensing, she said, the station's programming could be limited and staff would have to undertake the demoralizing process of removing embedded music from archived shows. That would be especially burdensome for a station with 85 volunteer-produced shows and just four full-time employees. 'People go, 'If it's all volunteer, why would you cut programming?' Well, if you can't afford to play certain kinds of music,' said Steve Tulipana, a performer who runs three Kansas City music venues. 'It's flabbergasting and more than that, it's infuriating why this is happening,' Tulipana said of the cuts. 'A lot of it seems without any rhyme or reason. It's just slash and burn.' Emergency broadcasts KKFI doesn't have hard data on how many people tune in. The Nielsen Ratings are too expensive for the station to afford, Dougherty said. But the 100,000-watt tower broadcasts its signal for roughly 80 miles, meaning it's capable of reaching more than 2 million people, she said. The listenership includes people in the heart of Kansas City, but also many in rural areas where other FM stations have no signal. That turns KKFI into a vital function when severe weather is bearing down on communities. For non-commercial stations, CPB is also responsible for funding the emergency warning system. 'All of that comes through community radio, through public radio, NPR, warning people about tornadoes and flash floods and things like that,' Doughtery said. If funding cuts drive smaller stations off the air, people in remote areas would be left without that critical safety net when other communication channels are down, she said. 'That's really scary.' Getting a break on KKFI About 80% of KKFI's programming is devoted to music, Dougherty said. Its offerings run the gamut from blues and jazz to hip-hop and world music. 'We play a lot of local, and we play a lot of people that tour, and when I say tour, I'm talking about they're doing the little bars here and there and all of that,' Dougherty said. 'So giving access to musicians and to community — it's basically, access matters and that's what we're about.' Many Kansas City area artists now touring the country got their start on KKFI. 'Giving local artists a place to showcase their music and get it in front of listeners of the radio station is a big opportunity,' said Ernest Douglas, known professionally as O.M.E., who helps manage the Unlabeled Music studio in Westport. Not everyone understands the value of potential in emerging artists. KKFI does, according to Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear, a mother-and-son folk duo from Independence that has gone on to tour internationally and on major televised programs including 'Today' and 'BBC Breakfast News.' 'In the early days when an artist is probably at their most vulnerable, KKFI can help guide that artist into the professional world of radio in a way that's comforting and helps to build confidence,' the band said in a message to The Star. 'When you hear your music played on their station, it shows us local artists what's possible, and gives us the fuel to keep going.' Community programming KKFI's public affairs coverage is also geared towards elevating perspectives that aren't often centered on other platforms. 'You're talking about 'Heartland Labor Forum' and you're talking about the 'People Power Hour,' which is the KC Tenants Union here that has been helping people stand up against slum lords basically,' Dougherty said. 'Cowtown Conversations' delves into local social, political and everyday topics from property taxes to aging. Congressional Republicans who led the charge to cut public broadcasting funding railed against stations that they said have been weaponized for political purposes. 'For us, this is not a right or left thing. It's a civic thing,' Dougherty said. KKFI highlights important work being done and publicizes community engagement opportunities, said Malek Azrael, an artist who has performed on KKFI. Underserved communities stand to lose if programming is scaled back, Azrael said. 'So you're essentially taking more resources away from, especially the inner city, 18th and Vine district. It affects every community that needs that kind of voice,' Azrael said. KKFI's summer pledge drive is scheduled to end Thursday. Dougherty said they're not planning to extend the fundraising effort, although they always accept donations. 'Our sister stations — KCUR, The Bridge, Kansas Public Radio — they're all kind of doing little fundraisers as well. We're very concerned about taxing our listenership,' she said. KKFI staff and volunteers are well aware of the fact that many of their listeners don't have much extra money to spend, Dougherty said. 'That's why this is even more important to make sure that they have access to music, they have access to information that we can share.' Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
6 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Trump signs rescissions package clawing back public broadcasting funds
President Trump on Thursday signed legislation to claw back roughly $9 billion in previously approved congressional spending, with much of it affecting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Trump signed into law a rescissions package that passed the House and Senate last week, making the spending cuts official. The $9 billion package targets money for global aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds National Public Radio and PBS, organizations Trump and his allies have accused of liberal bias. The White House agreed to an amendment to remove from the package $400 million in cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief global anti-AIDS initiative in the face of GOP pushback. White House budget chief Russell Vought told reporters last week that the administration is likely to send another rescissions package to Congress, though he did not provide details on timing or what would be in the next request. The Trump administration has targeted government spending for cuts it has deemed wasteful or that does not align with the president's 'America first' agenda. But some lawmakers have expressed reservations about ceding the power of the purse to the administration to revoke previously approved funding.
Toronto Star
6 days ago
- Business
- Toronto Star
Trump signs bill to cancel $9 billion in foreign aid, public broadcasting funding
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed a bill Thursday canceling about $9 billion that had been approved for public broadcasting and foreign aid as Republicans look to lock in cuts to programs targeted by the White House's Department of Government Efficiency. The bulk of the spending being clawed back is for foreign assistance programs. About $1.1 billion was destined for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR and PBS, though most of that money is distributed to more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the country.
