From The Nation
Stations that serve rural areas neglected by corporate media would lose their funding.
For the better part of two years, Donald Trump has waged a war of words against serious journalism and freedom of the press in the United States. Now his words have been weaponized. The president's first federal budget proposal seeks to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting -- zeroing out the $445 million annual allocation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the not-for-profit entity created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to keep local public radio and television stations on the air.
Trump's attacks on journalism often target national cable networks, newspapers and other commercial media outlets that chronicle and investigate his abuses of office. One of his favorite arguments is that "much of the media in Washington, DC, along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular, speaks not for the people but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system."Yet Trump's assault on CPB funding targets the essential source of revenue for media outlets that are far from Washington and New York and Los Angeles -- like KCND-FM Prairie Public Radio, which broadcasts along the North Dakota border with Canada; KRTS-FM Marfa Public Radio, which broadcasts along the Texas border with Mexico; KEMC-FM Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana; and WMPN-FM Mississippi Public Broadcasting on the Gulf Coast.
Fifty years ago, the Public Broadcasting Act established a "universal service" mandate to provide all Americans with free, over-the-air access to public broadcasting's programming and services. Today, according to the CPB, "more than 95 percent of the US population is able to access public broadcasting's over-the-air signals. This reach could not have been achieved without a significant federal investment in rural communities throughout the country, as well as the efforts of the thousands of Americans employed by local public television and radio stations in those communities." Of the 575 public television and public radio stations across the United States that receive CPB grants, 248 of them serve rural regions of the country. For the rural stations, the CPB money is far more vital than for urban stations because, as the CPB notes, "many of these small stations operate in communities with limited financial resources and high poverty and out migration rates."
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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
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