11-05-2025
Pacific Northwest broadcaster braces for cuts as Trump aims to defund NPR, PBS
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Amid efforts by the Trump administration to defund public media, one broadcasting organization in the Pacific Northwest is facing an uncertain future.
For more than 100 years, Northwest Public Broadcasting has delivered news to the Pacific Northwest. Today, NWPB reaches more than three million people across 44 counties in Washington and parts of Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia.
NWPB offers a variety of television and radio programs including local news and PBS shows from 'This Old House,' to 'Sesame Street.' They also provide emergency alerts, informing communities of wildfires and earthquakes.
Access to those programs could be at risk in the future after President Trump signed an executive order on May 1, directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to defund PBS and NPR. The president has also proposed cutting funds for CFB — a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967. Their mission is to provide universal access to public media, and they offer critical grants to organizations such as NWPB.
The president is aiming to slash federal funding for PBS and NPR, citing 'bias' in their reporting. The White House has also posted on social media that the outlets 'receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.''
'My reaction was sadness,' NWPB Director of Audience Sueann Ramella said when she found out about the executive order. 'This is a service created for and by the American people, and I believe that the American people have a voice and the power to save it.'Part of NWPB's funding model relies on grants from the CFB.
'Each taxpayer pays about $1.60 for PBS and NPR material, but it's also for local station programming,' Ramella told KOIN 6 News. 'Some of that funding is used for what we call the operational and programming costs of the overall station, but the single largest source of our income is still from viewers like you and also local business support.'
In the last fiscal year, 20% of NWPB's funding came from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.
'To somebody thinking 20% is not that big of a deal for your operational costs – it actually is,' Ramella said. 'We're looking to raise an additional $2 million a year for the next three years because of the potential hit our station alone is going to have.'
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Grants aren't the only way CFB supports organizations like Northwest Public Broadcasting, Ramella explained.
'The other important thing for people to recognize is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting negotiates music broadcasting rights, meaning my station is able to afford to play the music that we have — the classical music, the jazz, the contemporary music — because it's already been negotiated for us. We don't pay a huge amount that you have to for those rights,' Ramella said.
Without CFB's help negotiating those rights, Ramella added, 'It's a daunting task to think about trying to call Sony and BMI and Columbia (Records) individually and try to negotiate those rights when we are a rural station and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think we're going to have the ability to pay to play the music.'
On top of negotiating music rights, CFB also works with the Department of Education to develop children's programming for stations.
'I don't think the American people realize it's not just about the federal funding. It's everything the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does on behalf of every station in the nation, everything from creating children's educational programs, and paying those producers, to working with the Department of Education to make sure that those educational programs are up to speed with the latest research and understanding of the way children learn and read,' she added.
'If this funding is rescinded, I believe NWPB will exist in some form,' Ramella hypothesized. 'But it isn't going to be as strong as it is right now. It's going to take us a while to build back up.'
Ramella is calling on community members to reach out to their representatives to ensure support for public media.
'Public media was created because when we had this new thing called TV and the radio spectrum, everybody knew in a capitalist society you could make money off those signals, but what doesn't make money is educational programs, programs and documentaries about really difficult things in our history for us to understand,' Ramella explained. 'It's not like you go to the movie theater to see Ken Burns' documentary on the Civil War for eight hours. It has a home on PBS precisely because we are a non-commercial, nonprofit station.'
'If public media across the whole nation is defunded the way that it is, if the executive order to defund public media goes through, if the rescission package is completed by Congress, it means that folks in rural areas will not have access to high quality shows, because we simply cannot afford to pay for them,' Ramella warned. 'What is not understood is the depth at which it takes to bring you that type of programming. It's not magic. It's a lot of bills, it's a lot of paperwork and a lot of staff time and energy to make it happen. All of that will be hurt at the least and devastated at the most, if we have this federal funding rescinded.'
Despite efforts to defund public media, Ramella is optimistic.
'I want to believe in the American people that they will call and protect what they value, that they'll call their representatives and express they value public media, and they want to see it continue,' Ramella said.
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The audience director continued, 'But it's not just us on the table. It's AmeriCorps, it's humanities Washington, it's all these cultural programs that you have valued all your life that are at risk. So it's maybe asking a lot, but what we would love is for the American people to call their representatives daily and tell them to protect these important programs, and I hope to God, public media is one of them, because we work collaboratively with a lot of organizations and schools and libraries to enhance the lives of people who can't afford internet connection or cable connection, and that's the whole mission.'
The Trump administration's efforts to defund public media also poses a risk of creating news deserts, or places with limited access to news, in NWPB's coverage area, Ramella said.
'I'm very concerned these areas will become news deserts. I'm one of the people on the staff who looks at the big budget and picks what shows we can afford to air and I have a map above my office that shows me where our signals are in the towns. One of those places is the (Goldendale, Washington and The Dalles, Oregon) area. We just built a new transmitter there to bring a stronger signal and that signal is going to reach even further into that highway, where you don't always get a clear radio signal, of news and information,' Ramella explained.
'I would love to keep the news there. The funding matters. It allows us to afford to do these things. So, when you look at places that no longer have a local newspaper or people are only getting their news from social media, the news desert problem is real. It means your neighbors, your grandparents, even your young kids are not getting trusted information that they need in order to understand their world and what's happening in their region,' she continued.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aiming to protect that mission, filing a lawsuit challenging President Trump's efforts to fire three of CFB's five board members — arguing the president does not have the authority to remove the members, as reported by NPR in late April.
'I think it's important for people to understand that while a lot of young folks are moving into the internet realm, there are so many millions of people who don't and they still get their news from the radio in their car and on old fashioned bunny ear TV and public media is not going to leave them behind,' Ramella said. 'That's also why we need to continue this funding, because your little two-year-old niece to your 88-year-old grandma need trusted cultural information, and that's where they get it. They get it from public media, and it deserves to be protected for them.'
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