The Fight for Public Broadcasting

...and why it matters

The House is now scheduled to take up the “rescission bill” tomorrow, so I am publishing this weekend’s newsletter a few days early. If we want to save public radio, it is imperative that we let our Congressional Representatives know how we feel about it. Please use the this American Coalition to Save Public Radio link to contact your Representative.

June 14, 2025 ~ Vol. 28

For some of us, the Trump White House’s amplification of the culture wars will reach a crescendo this month when Congress is tasked with responding to Trump’s “rescissions request” to defund public broadcasting.

The request applies specifically to federal dollars previously appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which re-allocates those dollars to two hundred forty six regional public radio stations and over three hundred fifty public television stations around the country. The rescission request would claw back $1.1 billion of funding that Congress had previously approved. It is worth noting that funding for public broadcasting is typically appropriated two years in advance, specifically to avoid the politics of Congressional changes. This rescission request was part of a larger claw back that also included previously approved funding for the US Agency for International Development, another MAGA bogeyman that the Trump White House has in its sights.

Right wing activists and Republicans in Congress cheered the White House initiative.

According to FOX News:

Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, “is celebrating President Donald Trump's leadership in sending a DOGE cuts package to Congress that he believes will finally defund NPR and PBS, which he said have become ‘nothing more than fake news.’” Jackson claimed the outlets, which receive millions of dollars in federal taxpayer funding, "have become taxpayer-funded propaganda arms of the radical Left."

Defunding NPR and PBS ‘finally’ within reach, says House Republican

NPR and PBS 'are now nothing more than another fake news media' outlet, Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson says

The White House is expected to include cuts to both NPR and PBS in the $9.4 billion federal spending cut proposal – called a "rescissions" package – it is sending to Congress on Tuesday.

Public monetary support for the arts and humanities in general, and PBS and NPR in particular, has its genesis in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs which hoped to advance the cause of health and welfare, voting rights, and education. The Trump White House has already demanded the defunding of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I wrote about these attacks on the arts earlier this year.

When President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law in 1967, he described its purpose:

“It announces to the world that our nation wants more than just material wealth; our nation wants more than a 'chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act.^[9]

It will give a wider and, I think, stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities. It will launch a major study of television’s use in the nation’s classrooms and its potential use throughout the world. Finally — and most important — it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

It is that institution, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), that is targeted by Republicans in this measure. Many Republicans, particularly Freedom Caucus Republicans, see public broadcasting as a tool of the left and as a “woke” liberal voice that should not be funded with taxpayer money. The battle to defund the CPB has been raging pretty much since President Johnson signed the legislation. Fred Rogers appeared before Congress in 1969 to implore them not to cut funding for children’s educational programming. Mr. Rogers won that battle, but the war rages on.

NPR has challenged the President’s executive order, filing a suit in federal court. In a recent statement, Katherine Maher, NPR’s CEO explained the challenge:

The Executive Order is a clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press. It is an affront to the rights of NPR and NPR's 246 member stations, which are locally owned, nonprofit, noncommercial media organizations serving all 50 states and territories. Today, we challenge its constitutionality in the nation's independent courts.”

Republicans have long argued that public broadcasting’s programming and its news coverage in particular have a liberal bias. Even here in the north country of upstate New York, Republican Congressional Representative Elise Stefanik has a long-standing grudge against North Country Public Radio going back to when Brian Mann, now at National Public Radio, was the Adirondack reporter for North Country Public Radio (NCPR). It has been years since Stefanik has agreed to an interview with the station.

NPR’s challenge to the proposed defunding insists that their news coverage is not biased, but importantly that the Supreme Court has ruled on numerous occasions that the federal government cannot be the arbiter of what is or what is not biased. President Trump’s completely arbitrary labeling of “fake news” compounds the problem exponentially. If reporting the truth about who won an election is now considered “fake news” and “liberal bias”, how do you even have that debate? You cannot, so the Republican’s method to shut down that debate is simple: silence the offender.

NPR’s Katherine Maher elaborated on the importance of public broadcasting in the lives of NPR listeners, and the intent of the Public Broadcasting Act.

The Act, which provides for the creation of programming of "quality, diversity, creativity, excellence, and innovation," is a testament to Congress's foresight. It created the infrastructure for a public radio system that reaches nearly 99% of the U.S. population over the airwaves. It provides for the resources for local newsrooms to serve their communities, children's shows that educate and inspire, arts and cultural programming that preserves and celebrates national heritage, and storytelling that challenges and connects.

The quality of NPR’s programming can be documented by their numerous awards and accolades, from Peabody Awards to Pulitzers. Last year NPR was awarded eight Edward R Murrow awards for excellence, including investigative reporting and news documentary. Our local public broadcasting station, North Country Public Radio, was also recognized last year for the excellence of its local news team, winning nine regional Edward R Murrow awards for journalistic excellence. Emily Russell, NCPR’s Adirondack reporter and assistant news director was recognized with an Edward R Murrow Award for investigative reporting for the podcast that she produced with NCPR contributor Zach Hirsch, If All Else Fails. The podcast chronicled the rise of right-wing extremism in New York’s north country. I suspect that the White House was not a fan—of the podcast, or Edward R. Murrow.

The loss of federal funding for public broadcasting would be devastating for everyone but would be felt most acutely in sparsely populated rural areas—predominantly Republican districts. Here in the Adirondacks of northern New York, 125,000 inhabitants are spread out over six million acres in one hundred towns and villages. That scale – or lack of scale – makes it extremely difficult to support some things that urbanites take for granted. School systems search for teachers and students, and towns combine student rosters to field enough players for a soccer team. The same lack of scale makes it difficult to field a volunteer EMT squad, or to make the math work to support a health care center, or a hardware store or – a radio or television station.

So you adapt…..

Member supported North Country Public Radio (NCPR), is a charter member station of NPR, broadcasting from the St. Lawrence University campus in Canton, New York. Its listening area stretches from Kingston, Ontario and the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation on the St. Lawrence River, east across New York and Lake Champlain to Burlington, Vermont, and south to Glens Falls, NY. Imagine trying to provide coverage to that expanse of territory—which is also home to the Adirondack Mountains rising over 4,000 feet to block your signal. Ergo, thirty-four transmitters and an engineer with four-wheel drive and a sense of humor. On-line internet broadcasting has improved coverage, but many remote areas are still waiting for fiber optic to reach them, and satellites are often blocked in mountainous areas.

(Full disclosure: I am a member of the NCPR Executive Council.)

Public radio has been home to iconic programming like All Things Considered and Morning Edition for decades, and is typically the only source for classical and jazz programming in many communities. Saturday afternoon opera from the Met has been a staple on our kitchen radio long before Alexa figured out how to do find NCPR. Importantly, beyond the wealth of cultural programming that public radio provides, NCPR’s community focused programming like North Words and Northern Light, NCPR's morning regional newsmagazine with Catherine Wheeler and Monica Sandreczki, are increasingly only found on our local public radio stations. As local print news media continues to contract, local public radio has stepped up and stepped into the void with expanded quality reporting. All of this is now in jeopardy.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting reallocates 95% of their government funding to public radio and television stations around the country. On average, approximately 13% of a local radio station’s total revenue is dependent on the CPB. According to NCPR station manager Mitch Teich, over $300,000 of annual funding would be lost if this measure passes in Congress. Local listeners might remember that the recent spring fund-raiser generated just over $400,000, so losing that amount of CPB funding—every year— would be devastating to the station’s budgeting.

Our local public radio and television stations provide essential services like local community news and programming – and importantly, weather and emergency alerts. The NCPR transmitters are the backbone of the north country’s federal emergency broadcast system. They provide the local programs that entertain and inform our north country communities in exactly the way that the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 intended and encouraged and aspired to. They provide a resource for quality news—importantly and uniquely, local news—that is integral to a functioning democracy.

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More on this issue, from the Washington Post:https://wapo.st/4jMMBHF

“Rural Republicans used to back NPR. Then MAGA changed everything.”

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I refuse to believe that our values as a nation have changed that much in one lifetime. If you agree, it is time to speak up, loudly! Let your congressional representatives know what public radio and television mean to you. Do whatever you can to support your local stations. Become a member. If this measure actually passes, we will all have to do a lot more.

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