Good afternoon!
Summer is in full swing, which means about two-thirds of the subscribers to this newsletter will actually read it. The rest will delete it after they put down their mai tais and dust the sand from their feet. As for me, I spent the last two weeks in the UK, where they still have honest-to-god broadsheet newspapers — and a public media system that, while imperfect, remains robustly funded.
Congress votes to cut public media funding
It’s official, pending President Donald Trump’s signature: For the first time in U.S. history, public broadcasting is losing its federal funding.
In a narrow vote just past midnight Friday, the House joined the Senate in approving Trump’s request to rescind $1.07 billion in funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The decision wipes out two years of support for NPR, PBS and the 1,400 local stations that rely on CPB grants.
As Poynter reporter Angela Fu writes, this marks a “striking deference” by Congress to the president’s will.
The impact will be felt far beyond “All Things Considered.” In Alaska, some stations receive over 90% of their funding from CPB. In Native communities, internet access is limited, and local public radio fills the gap. “The loss of nearly 20% of our budget will force us to make impossible choices,” one station director said in a statement, warning of cuts to emergency alerts and lifesaving public safety coverage. NPR CEO Katherine Maher put it bluntly: “Defunding this is a real risk to the public safety of the country.”
As senior media writer Tom Jones writes in his column, this is a “dark day for journalism, the free press and, perhaps most importantly, everyday Americans who are going to feel the effects.” He notes the irony that it’s not national news coverage being threatened most. It’s local stories, kids programming, weather alerts and wildfire updates. One senator called the cuts “particularly cruel.”
There’s more to come. With this first rescission package now a win, Trump is expected to propose additional cuts. If successful, the defunding of public broadcasting won’t just gut newsrooms. It will reshape the country’s information infrastructure.
As The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips put it, “Press freedom is freedom. Experts say this type of interference is a big step toward the government controlling the flow of information and, in an authoritarian state, much of the rest of society.”
