Importance of local public radio and television

Unfortunately, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have passed legislation to gut public media. The White House requested, through a process known as rescission, that Congress claw back the $1.1 billion it previously allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds public media, for two years. The House and Senate approved the cuts this week.

Hundreds of cities and towns, especially those outside major metropolitan areas, will be affected. Nearly one in five NPR member stations could close down without federal funding, one analysis found. Listeners in the Midwest, South and West will be the hardest hit, becoming less informed about their communities. An NPR station in Petersburg, Alaska, which was the subject of a recent episode of the Times podcast “The Daily,” is an example: It and a station run by a local Lutheran church are the only radio stations that residents reliably receive. It gets 30% of its funding from the federal government and will have to lay off most of its staff, if not shut down, without the money.

The cut will also hasten the decline of America’s once robust media ecosystem. The number of local journalists has declined by 75% since 2002, and a third of American counties don’t have a single full-time local journalist, a study this month found. The United States spends less per person on public media than other wealthy countries, but even that limited funding has helped make public radio a resilient part of local news. To abandon it is to accelerate a dangerous trend straining civic health.

Republicans complain, not always wrongly, that public media reflects left-leaning assumptions and biases. And they can fairly tell NPR and PBS to do a better job of reflecting the citizenry that is subsidizing them. Yet the “national” part of NPR (or National Public Radio, as it used to call itself) that chafes conservatives may well be just fine without federal funds. Only about 2% of its budget comes directly from the federal government, and it may have an easier time raising money from its many dedicated listeners if Congress punishes it.

The funding cutoff will damage valuable services that have little to do with ideology. Broadcasting local government meetings, as some public radio stations do, is neither liberal nor conservative. The same is true about public television shows like “Sesame Street” that help teach young children how to read and count. Local affiliates largely cover community and state issues that do not neatly fit national left-right divides, and they will suffer most. That’s one reason a number of conservative Republicans, such as Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, warned of the bill’s impact. (You can donate to your local stations through NPR’s and PBS’s websites.)

We are reminded of the excesses of the “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” movements on the other side of the ideological spectrum. They adopted a fatalistic view of vital government services, suggesting that their imperfections justified their elimination. They were wrong, and so are the conservatives who have defunded public media.

The same applies to separate Republican plans for shrinking Voice of America, the government service that broadcasts in other countries. In some places, it is the only source of news that is not hostile to the United States or democracy. In China and Iran, residents who hear Voice of America get news and views that they may get nowhere else. Already, some networks that previously broadcast Voice of America have replaced it with Chinese state media, The Wall Street Journal reported. It is telling that supporters of the Chinese Communist Party are celebrating cuts to Voice of America.

Public media, like every other major institution, is imperfect. But it improves the lives of millions of Americans, and it strengthens American interests. It should not become yet another victim of our polarized political culture. People in Hazard and Petersburg, along with hundreds of other places, should not lose valuable public services because of partisan anger.