01-08-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
The value of Barbie ad-free media: Indiana public TV, radio are far from woke, leaders say
Travis Pope remembers his dad was flipping through channels on the family radio in 1997 when he found the NPR affiliate in Richmond, Virginia. He has listened ever since.
Pope didn't grow up with a lot of money or access to resources, but through public media, he learned about classical music, mortgage-backed derivatives and church burnings in the South.
"Public media is a thing that I have listened to, consumed, watched or read since I was roughly 7, 8 years old," said Pope, who is now the leader of Fort Wayne's WBOI. "And the idea that it might not be around for another 7- or 8-year-old is the thing that I take very seriously."
Indiana public media leaders told IndyStar they are concerned that the mission of public radio and television is being misunderstood amid Republicans' intense attacks on NPR and PBS nationally. And, following crippling government spending cuts, they said, these misunderstandings could debilitate access by rural communities that rely on public broadcasting the most.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has sought to defund public media, asserting it has a liberal bias that thwarts fair coverage. NPR and PBS have repeatedly refuted these claims, and NPR is suing his administration on First Amendment grounds.
Over the next two years, Hoosier stations combined will lose nearly $9.4 million in federal dollars and $7.4 million in state funding. At least four stations will lose over 50% of their revenue.
Public media leaders said their noncommercial funding structure was a feature, not a detriment, to their mission. However, as critics demand that public media outlets support themselves without tax dollars, that structure means that budgets are harder to balance.
"It is just putting the news out there without a monetary gain," said Amanda Miller Kelley, president and general manager of WNIT - PBS Michiana. "It has served so many people to have a place where they're not worried about who's funding it, who's benefiting from it."
NPR and PBS have long acted as noncommercial news gatherers and educational outlets, stemming back to the reason the federal government started funding public media as an impartial information source.
When Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, it injected local and national news, educational programming, and emergency alerts into areas that often went without, usually due to cost.
"We are sometimes the only ones in the county to get out the information," Harmon-Baker said. "If something happens to rural stations like us, people aren't going to get the information they need and they're not going to get it in a timely manner."
At the time, President Lyndon B. Johnson and lawmakers agreed that this new swath of local radio and television access would serve 'instructional, educational and cultural purposes.'
In the half century since, over 1,500 National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service affiliates grew to reach 99% of Americans.
Indiana is home to 17 stations, including in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Fort Wayne, Evansville, Vincennes, Muncie, West Lafayette, South Bend, Merrillville and Elkhart. Many of those stations cover and reach about two dozen counties each.
That's why the federal government saw the value in funding public media, Miller Kelley said. Their reach extends into the corners of the country where commercial and nonprofit news is not financially feasible. A Muck Rack analysis found local journalism is declining across the country, and news deserts in Indiana and elsewhere are expanding.
"It is an equalizer," she said. "That has been the intent of public media since the beginning. It was to make the content that you can find on PBS and NPR available to everyone."
Public media leaders interviewed by IndyStar said the funding structure of public media meant stations don't need to worry about clickbait headlines or selling advertisements.
That means, they said, that viewers are able to obtain information free of any commercial motives or sway. They can cover stories solely due to their importance to residents, Pope said, rather than for their commercial value.
"We have the ability to not ask ourselves how many clicks this gets," he said. "We get the ability to first ask ourselves: 'Is this the right thing? Is there a story here?'"
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Communication found that viewers, regardless of their political leanings, largely consume public broadcasting because they feel it's unbiased and they trust it because it's publicly funded.
The study also found 47.4% of respondents thought it was an "excellent" use of tax dollars. Prior to this month's rescissions bill, the federal government allocated about $545 million annually, amounting to about 0.0073% of federal spending.
In line with their FCC license, public broadcasting stations cannot run traditional commercials that seek to sell a product or are overly promotional. Instead, these stations have corporate sponsorships that vary in message and delivery.
Part of what makes NPR and PBS special is the complete divorce from commercial interests, said Shelli Harmon-Baker, WVPE news director and local host. She said she doesn't have to worry about angering sponsors, like she did in commercial radio, for reporting out sensitive stories.
"That's not something we think about here," she said. "You do the story for the sake of the story so that people know what's happening in their community."
The lack of advertising is also critical for PBS's vast number of children's programs, Miller Kelley said. All of the shows are educator-vetted and based on curricula, she said. That programming is not sustained by ad buys, she said.
"When your kid is watching PBS Kids, they're not going to come to you and say, 'I want that new Barbie,'" she said. "They are focused on learning, which is a gift to a parent in the moment because your kid isn't coming to you and making a laundry list of demands."
Opponents cite a departure from public media's impartial mission as their reason for defunding public media. In May, the White House published a list of stories it said were "trash that has passed for 'news' at NPR and PBS."
Trump and his conservative base argue NPR and PBS should not receive tax dollars to "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"
When asked about concerns that public media is too liberal, station leaders said that national narrative is one they largely don't hear from their patrons and that they believe is a misrepresentation of local news.
"I don't think that woke narrative applies to us at all," Harmon-Baker said. "In fact, I think we go out of our way to make sure that we're just covering things that people are interested in and of local importance."
Miller Kelley, Harmon-Baker and Pope told IndyStar about how their small staffs cover their local communities. Harmon-Baker spoke about her staff's coverage of an animal cruelty case involving a major local business. Miller Kelley said her station airs six weekly shows covering news, local talent, food, arts and culture. Pope said local artists have an outlet through his station.
"It is hard for me as a GM to see the incredible work that the staff here does to lift up voices and bring attention to stories that might otherwise go unheard," Miller Kelley said. "It's very difficult as a general manager to hear all of that brushed aside under the politicization of media."
When Pope encounters people with the opinion that public media is biased, he said, he tries to understand how a person came to their opinion and see how he can do better to address any local concerns.
He doesn't buy that people like himself in public media are trying to push a political narrative. Instead, he said they are covering city council meetings, organizing volunteer DJs and covering high school sports.
"We are always trying to make sure that we are being a voice for everyone's perspectives," he said, "because what we want to create is a broadcast that gives you the information you need and then allows you, respects you enough, to think about that, to marinate about what we've talked about and make a conclusion."
The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
