When Hurricane Helene deluged Western North Carolina in September, Blue Ridge Public Radio journalists kicked into gear, providing crucial information not only for the city of Asheville, but also for dozens of rural communities scattered throughout the mountainous region, many cut off by flooding and blocked roads, and left without power, internet, or cell phone service. Regular programming was suspended for weeks as the station turned to critical reports including where to find food and water, emergency medical assistance, and supplies.
“We’ve heard in subsequent days of people who have written to us with stories of how they had no other communication, how they dug up an old radio and some batteries, or they had a hand-crank radio, and that we were their only source of any information for several days,” News Director Laura Lee told Inside Appalachia in December. “That’s a responsibility that this team took really seriously.”
The next time catastrophe strikes rural America, there may be no team of dedicated journalists available to keep survivors informed.
Late Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to cease, including “indirect” funding distributed through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
CPB provides funding for the nation’s public radio network, which serves all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as Native American and island communities. Across the country, 1,216 independent public radio stations reach 98.5 percent of the U.S. population.
The agency also provides grants that support 365 local public television stations, enabling those stations to operate independently and produce local content. The 354 stations that are PBS members operate in every state and reach nearly 94 percent of all US households.
More than 70 percent of CPB’s $545 million annual budget goes directly to these local stations through Community Service Grants, and provides essential funding – sometimes making up as much as half of an individual station’s budget.
Trump’s executive order dismisses the importance of public media, stating, “Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options.”
But the fact is that many communities, particularly rural communities, are actually news deserts: communities with limited access to credible and comprehensive news and information. As local newspapers and radio stations shut down, local public media stations are often the only sources of on-the-ground news reporting in their regions.
It’s also important to note that the reach of NPR and PBS is well above the 73 percent of rural residents who have internet access at home. Even if there is another credible local news outlet covering a given community, its work may not reach its intended audience, particularly during a crisis. And NPR and PBS programming is always free, while many of the outlets President Trump hails are available only to subscribers.
While the majority of CPB’s funding goes to local stations, NPR says 1 percent of its budget comes directly from CPB, and direct funding to PBS provides about 15 percent of its budget because television costs are higher. But federal funding goes to support public media in a variety of ways – including providing the funding to local stations, which are paid to NPR and PBS as program fees.
On its face, it might seem that the loss of federal funding wouldn’t cripple either the radio or television networks. But the indirect costs that Trump has targeted should raise alarms.
Along with programs that they produce themselves, public media stations typically air content produced by the two national broadcasters, like Morning Edition and All Things Considered on the radio and Sesame Street and PBS NewsHour on television. The stations pay for the rights to air these programs through member fees and programming dues.
In total, therefore, about 30 percent of NPR’s budget comes from program fees paid by member stations. At PBS, about 15 percent of total funding is provided through programming dues.
The executive order attempts to demand that local stations no longer be able to use CPB grant money to cover these costs, and directs the agency to revamp its grants provisions and eligibility criteria to prohibit “direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS.”
It seemingly also targets any collaborative reporting efforts that deploy local reporters for national news stories, and projects like Harvest Public Media, in which reporters from rural states partner with NPR to cover agriculture and the food system.
Rural stations already have a harder time raising money from individual donors than urban stations – typically pulling in just 28 percent of their total revenue through the time-honored (and dreaded) pledge drives every public media user is familiar with.
The executive order could force local stations strapped for outside cash to drop some of the national programming they now air, or pull back on contributing to national reports, if that’s paid for with money from CPB grants. That could result in a cascading crisis, if the loss of popular programming costs the stations listeners and viewers, and results in fewer donations that hamper local stations’ abilities to cover their own communities.
Yet, Trump is going a step further: he’s going after CPB itself, last week attempting to remove three of the organization’s five board members, an effort met with a lawsuit arguing he does not have the power to take such actions. Both NPR and PBS said Trump’s executive order is unlawful, because CPB was created by Congress as an independent agency and the president has no power to control its operations.
It’s not the first time Trump has targeted these outlets, just as he has targeted a range of independent media voices in the country. A newly weaponized Federal Communications Commission is investigating whether NPR and PBS violate laws banning commercial advertisements with their corporate underwriting spots, using its investigatory powers to bully and intimidate these independent outlets.
The executive order bases its attack on the premise that “Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.” This implies that neither NPR nor PBS do so.
In fact, one study suggested that NPR listeners are the best informed news consumers in the country. Gutting the national networks would limit programming choices in rural communities – the majority of which supported Trump in November’s election – and erode the value of public media nationwide.
“This is another targeted, vindictive overreach of executive authority that aims to silence news outlets that have not toed the line by unquestioningly reporting the president’s preferred narrative. The overreach is sweeping and is a clear effort to intimidate and chill speech,” said Tim Richardson, Journalism and Disinformation Program Director at PEN America.
“For nearly 60 years, Congress has recognized the vital role public broadcasting plays, especially in local communities and underserved rural areas, allocating funds specifically to support these efforts,” Richardson continued. “At a time when the White House is pressuring news organizations to conform to its political narratives and cutting support globally for independent news outlets, we’re seeing the dangers of an information environment where propaganda replaces journalism. Congress must stand firm in its commitment to defending a free and independent press and recognize the White House’s defunding efforts for what they are: a direct attack on truth, accountability, and democracy.”
