When an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 hit southern Alaska on Wednesday, officials were worried about a possible tsunami. It was the local public media that helped transmit a tsunami alert, said Senator Lisa Murkowski.
But now, the imminent clippings of funds led by the Republican party refer to the allies of the media that local public issuers would be forced to reduce the size or closure, damaging the news operations and harming the capacity of the locals to obtain timely emergency alerts such as the one issued in Alaska.
“His response to today’s earthquake is a perfect example of the incredible public service provided by these seasons,” said Murkowski, from Alaska, one of the two Republican senators to oppose the cuts, he said Wednesday in X. “They deliver local news, weather updates and, yes, emergency alerts that save human lives.”
More than 50 years after NPR and PBS first reached the waves, the two public stations with hundreds of member stations face millions in budget cuts after the Republican senators voted to raise previously appropriate funds for the Corporation for Public Transmission (CPB), which finances public media such as NPR and PBS. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the legislation in law when he reaches his desk.
Republicans have framed the bill of expenses of expenses as part of an effort to address the supposed “waste, fraud and abuse” in programs financed by the Government. The legislators of the Republican party have accused NPR and PBS of having a liberal bias, and in March, the Republicans said they were “anti -American waves.”
But media defenders argue that the cuts would have devastating effects on the landscape of US media and a specially harmful impact on rural Americans, which can trust more in the local NPR and PBS stations for local news.
“I think that unfortunately this is cutting the noses of its voters to take off NPR’s face,” the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, on CNN on Wednesday. “It does not help anyone to remove this financing.”
The president and executive director of PBS, Paula Kerger, said in a statement after the vote that the “significantly” cuts would affect the PBS stations, saying that “they will be especially devastating for the smallest stations and those that serve large rural areas.”
“Many of our stations, which provide access to a free local programming and emergency alerts, will now be forced to make difficult decisions in the coming weeks and months,” he said.
‘Death sentence’ for local stations
According to the company, more than 70% of government funds were assigned to the Corporation for Public Transmission for 1,500 Public Television and Television stations. (In contrast, NPR says it receives approximately 1% of its annual government funds, although it also obtains approximately one third through the member stations, which are partially financed to the government to varying degrees. PBS says that it obtains about 15% of its government funds).
Patricia Harrison, president and executive director of CPB, said in a statement that eliminating the funds for the CPB would force many local stations to close.
“Millions of Americans will have less reliable information about their communities, states, countries and world to make decisions about the quality of their lives,” he said.
The cuts would reach the number of local points of sale in the United States continues to constantly decrease. A report last year for the news initiative Medill News of the University of Northwestern discovered that the newspapers were disappearing at a rate of more than two per week and that 3.5 million people live in counties without local media that produced content constantly.
“This could be a death sentence for several local stations,” said Tim Franklin, director of the initiative.
NPR and PBS trust a combination of federal sources, including government and private donations. Media experts warned that local stations in rural areas could support the worst part of the cuts.
The stations in rural areas “depend more on federal funds because there is a smaller population to raise additional funds and there are fewer commercial incentives to be there,” said Kate Riley, president and executive director of the non -profit public television stations in the United States.
Some stations are already reduced in advance of fund cuts.
Shawn Turner, general manager of WKAR PUBLIC MEDIA in Michigan, said he has already had to fire nine employees in advance of federal cuts. About 16% of Wkar’s budget comes from federal funds, he said.
The cuts, Turner said, would affect the capacity of the drafting room to dedicate resources to deep dives in problems such as the impact of rates on Michigan’s manufacturing industry.
“We have been able to ask them to begin to make a deep immersion to really understand how it will affect the community to have that ready report,” Turner said. “Our ability to do it in the future will be limited.”
Local public broadcasters also play a key role in the dissemination of emergency alerts and timely updates during natural disasters, defenders say.
There are no viable alternatives in some communities, and the locals cannot trust social networks for precise updates, said Clayton Weimers, executive director of reporters without borders in the United States.
“Going online is not a viable alternative because it is a false information well, and that Cesspool becomes even more murky in times of crisis,” said Weimers.
The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, demolished concerns about the impact of public media cuts on security.
“I am not sure how NPR helps our country’s public safety, but I do know that NPR, unfortunately, has really become a propaganda voice for the left,” he said.
Trump signed an executive order in May that ordered CPB to reduce funds for NPR and PBS, framing them as “biased means.”
Maher, CEO of NPR, said Thursday that national programming constitutes a quarter of the programming of all stations, and the other 75% represents “local programming, local needs and other national programmers.”
“We want to make sure that we are available and relevant to the entire American public, regardless of where it feels and regardless of their political beliefs, and we have been taking the steps from an editorial point of view to better understand what the audience is and have more voices in the air,” said Maher in “Meet The Press now” of NBC.
The local leaders of the station are also rejecting the administration, some of them arguing that they are interfering with a free and independent environment.
“I think that the Corporation for Public Transmission was created to be independent and free of political interference and that the United States government does not take place in editorial decisions or punish the editorial decisions of NPR and PBS,” said Sage Smiley, news director of the Alaska Kyuk public media station.
Tim Richardson, the manager of the journalism and misinformation program in the Free Expression Defense Group Pen America, described the new Punitive Republican Party.
“These cuts are not tax responsibility. Once again, it is about punishing independent journalism, the independent points of sale that do not adhere to the narrative of the events of the administration,” he said. “It is a discrimination of point of view with the ultimate goal of, you know, undermine editorial and editorial independence.”
The White House Secretary, Harrison Fields, responded in a statement on Thursday that “NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive” without “taxpayers’ subsidies.”
Public media have faced threats from Republican presidents before, even during Trump’s first mandate. Richard Nixon, for example,, “he was pounced almost immediately,” said Victor Pickard, a media professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I think it is fair to say that each Republican president, except perhaps for Gerald Ford, has had an adversary position towards public transmission,” said Pickard.
