Community Radio

Wounded Public Stations

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Public media is NOT state-controlled media

Article in The New York Times, 9/13/25 by Benjamin Mullin, et. al., 9/13/25

Headline:  “After Trump’s Cuts, ‘Crippled’ NPR and PBS Stations Must Transform”

Subhead:  “Radio and television stations, facing enormous budget holes, are pleading with NPR and PBS to lower their fees as they examine whether to drop national programming altogether.”

“On the windswept prairie of South Dakota, a tribal public radio station is selling off its old records to pay the bills. In Warm Springs, Ore., the NPR affiliate is considering dropping ‘All Things Considered” ‘o focus on tribal issues. . .”

“Some stations are beginning to go off the air, as Congress was warned before it went ahead and eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-backed company that supports public media, ultimately shutting it down. . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/us/politics/public-broadcasting-cuts.html

Community Radio Paying the Price

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Article in Indian Country Today by South Dakota Searchlight, 9/12/25

Headline:  “high cost for public media and rural America”

Subhead:  “Republican Mike Rounds’ vote was critical in cancellation of Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds”

“. . .as with many interactions with Trump, it was more transactional than genuinely moral or fairly reciprocal. A deal, in other words. But a very bad deal for rural Americans, it turns out.

“For the president’s end of the deal, he wanted Rounds to vote “yes” in the Senate on a bill to cut $9 billion in previously congressionally approved funding that included $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. . . ”

Read the full article at:

https://ictnews.org/opinion/trump-endorsement-of-south-dakota-senator-comes-at-a-high-cost-for-public-media-and-rural-america/

Democracy Now! Documentary

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Article in Democracy Now! by Nermeen Haikh, 8/29/25

Headline:  ” ‘Steal This Story, Please!’: Documentary on Democracy Now! Premieres at Telluride Film Festival”

“A new documentary, Steal This Story, Please!, which tells the personal story of Amy Goodman and her decadeslong career as an independent journalist, is premiering this Sunday at the Telluride Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. The film highlights some of the monumental stories Democracy Now! has covered throughout the years and the importance of independent journalism. . .”

Read this article at:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/29/steal_this_story_please

Available on Hulu

Tribal Radio Stations Need Funding

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Article in Indian Country Today by Jenifer Shutt, 8/29/25

Headline:  “Tribal radio stations wait on $9M pledged in congressional handshake deal”

Subhead:  “South Dakota Republican Sen. Rounds is trusting the Trump administration to move $9.4 million in funding from an undisclosed account to more than two dozen tribal radio stations in rural areas”

“Tribal radio stations that are supposed to receive millions to fill the hole created when Congress eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting haven’t heard anything from the Trump administration about when it will send the money or how much in grants they’ll receive.

“Unlike most government spending deals, the handshake agreement South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds negotiated with the White House budget director in exchange for Rounds’ vote on the rescissions bill wasn’t placed in the legislation, so it never became law. . .”

https://ictnews.org/news/tribal-radio-stations-wait-on-9m-pledged-in-congressional-handshake-deal/

Grassroots Radio in Trouble?

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Article in The Washington Post by Maddy Butcher, 8/25/25

Headline:  “A reality check for NPR stations in Trump country”

Subhead:  “Will rural affiliates see through the politicization and adopt a more all-embracing approach?”

“. . .People in Montezuma County [Colorado] voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. And yet KSJD — an affiliate of NPR, that longtime target of Republican ire — has grown from an entirely volunteer operation running out of a trailer a few decades ago to a staff with four full-timers, an adjunct performing arts venue and a $580,000 budget. It is the only independently operated radio station or media outlet in the county, and it is one of hundreds of rural radio stations whose budgets will be slashed by the recent White House-requested congressional rescission of $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/25/npr-defunded-rural-stations-fundraising/

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Article in AP by Gabriela Aoun Angueira, 8/25/25

Headline: “After Trump and Congress spending cuts, public media stations wait on money for emergency alerts”

“Warning: This may be an actual emergency — as far as emergencies about emergencies go, at least.

“The recently defunded nonprofit corporation that distributed federal money to public media stations across the United States is warning of another casualty when it shuts down next month: the resilience of the nation’s emergency alert systems.

“In 2022, Congress created the Next Generation Warning System grant program, meant to help stations in rural, tribal and otherwise underserved communities repair and improve the warning systems that tell people about evacuation orders, Amber alerts, tornado warnings, and more. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-fema-cpb-npr-public-radio-emergency-alerts-warning-systems-99a5a37b6a62e0e01b9ee99b39cfe457

Some Support for Indigenous Media

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Article in Indian Country Today by Loris Taylor, 8/19/25

Headline:  “Gratitude in crisis: a spark for sustainable Indigenous media resilience”

“On August 4, 2025, Native Public Media and the Public Media Company made an appeal to foundations in support of vulnerable public media stations following the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by Congress. On August 19, 2025, the Knight Foundation, Pivotal, MacArthur, Ford, Schmidt Family, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations stepped forward in a powerful display of solidarity, announcing an infusion of $36.5 million in emergency funding to safeguard public media stations, especially those serving rural, Indigenous, and underserved communities, from imminent closure after steep federal cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.. .”

Read the full article at:

https://ictnews.org/opinion/gratitude-in-crisis-a-spark-for-sustainable-indigenous-media-resilience/

A Trail of Radio Tears

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Article in Indian Country Today by Lyric Aquino, 8/8/25

Headline:  Tribal radio stations hit hard by federal broadcasting cuts”

Subhead:  “KWSO in Warm Springs is set to lose 40 percent of its budget, while other rural tribal stations across the U.S., which play essential roles in disseminating information such as emergency alerts and natural disaster updates, are facing similarly large shortfalls”

“More than $1 billion in cuts to previously allocated federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has left the fate of 59 tribal radio stations nationwide in question, including in the Pacific Northwest.

“Station managers note the integral role that tribal radio plays in the communities they serve, which are often rural, including delivering essential information such as emergency alerts during natural
disasters. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://ictnews.org/news/tribal-radio-stations-hit-hard-by-federal-broadcasting-cuts/

No News Media for Rural Areas?

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Public Media are NOT state-controlled media

Article in Common Cause by Staff, 8/6/25

Headline:  “Trump’s Funding Cuts Are Already Gutting Rural Public Media Stations Across the Country”

Subhead:  “Trump signed a bill cutting $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, putting local NPR and PBS stations at risk, especially in rural areas.”

“Trump just signed a bill to cancel $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in a move that jeopardizes local NPR and PBS stations across the country, especially in rural areas.

“In their latest attack on public media, Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have cancelled over a billion dollars in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR and PBS.

“While federal funding makes up 2% of NPR’s annual budget and 15% of PBS’s, some stations will be hit much harder by these cuts. Member stations in rural areas disproportionately rely on federal funding, since they have fewer donors and sponsors that can contribute to their operating budgets. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commoncause.org/articles/trumps-funding-cuts-are-already-gutting-rural-public-media-stations-across-the-country/

Impact on Native Americans

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Article in Indian Country Today by Kevin Abourezk, 8/2/25

Headline:  “Radio silence? Public media braces for impact of federal budget cuts” 

Subhead:  “Tribal communities will be impacted by $1.1 billion in federal budgets cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding to dozens of tribal community radio stations, plus funding cuts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency “

Article ins waves of snow battered the Rosebud Indian Reservation in December 2022, John Miller went to work alerting his community about closed roads, closed tribal programs and places where people could take shelter. Residents learned about the storm’s extent from the radio, which broadcast National Weather Service alerts, from people they knew and trusted.

Many residents of the South Dakota reservation lived in remote places that had become cut off by impassable roads, and some were cut off for as long as two weeks and ran out of propane to heat their homes. Miller, station manager for KOYA 88.1 FM, answered phone calls from people seeking help and directed them toward programs that could help. . .”

“Even though there were other ways people learned about the storm and where they could find help, many still relied on their local radio station, KOYA 88.1 FM, to provide them with constantly changing weather information and resources. . .”

“ ‘People may see media such as radio as something that is very dated, but it’s absolutely not,’ Edsitty said. ‘They are the first and foremost for these communities providing news and community updates, cultural programming, emergency alerts given circumstances that a lot of Indigenous communities experience’. . .”

” ‘Most of our stations are going to lose most of their funding’ he said. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://ictnews.org/news/radio-silence-public-media-braces-for-impact-of-federal-budget-cuts/

Losing Public Media

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Public media are not state-controlled media

Article in Daily Kos by Eclift, 8/4/25

Headline:  “Mourning the Loss of Public Service Media”

“. . .Following PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in an act of Congress. Its mission, along with that of PBS, was to provide quality programming often overlooked by commercial broadcasters. It focused on education, history, culture, nature, science, public affairs, and children’s content. PBS has been going strong all these years, and the thought of losing it is painful. . .”

“In July the Trump administration declared that it was ending funding for CPB, which funds PBS and NPR. The Senate passed the measure supporting that goal immediately. Followers of public broadcasting, editors, and journalists were stunned, and deeply troubled, at the thought that over a billion dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress for two years, would disappear. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/8/4/2336835/-Mourning-the-Loss-of-Public-Service-Media?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web