Trump reduces the financing of public radio. Here is why he will strike the hardest rural communities

Every morning, Gwen Johnson, a resident of the small community of Jackhorn Appalachians, Ky., Wakes up on the voices and sounds of her favorite public radio station.

Johnson, 67, listens to FM during breakfast while she is preparing for work, driving in her car and throughout the day.

“Through the ups and downs of my life, it has always been real comfort for me – when you can simply return to the radio and perhaps get a human voice,” said the non -profit professional and former radio programmer. “It really added a lot of happiness in dark times.”

Johnson’s preferences are community radio station Mountain WMMT 88.7 and the Affilié NPR Weku. But now they are among the stations that should lose crucial financial support while the administration of President Donald Trump cancels the funding of the congress to public media.

Trump maintains that the cuts will allow the US government to the US dollars a year of unnecessary expenses.

Rollback, however, will have a serious impact on rural communities, where public radio is a dissemination of news and entertainment, and a rescue buoy during public emergencies and natural disasters, according to residents, the interests of the media and other people who spoke to CBC News.

Johnson thinks that public spending should probably be “coated” in certain areas.

“But it is an area that was very annoying,” she said. “I am very worried.”

She added that she was concerned whether this decision undermines freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

“I have the impression that one of our freedoms, our rights to the first amendment, is confirmed with the radio station.”

‘It’s quite overwhelming’

Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is part of the American value of $ 9.1 million in reductions described in the cancellation law, which cancels the funding approved by the congress allocated to public broadcasters and foreign aid.

The congress approved the cuts on Friday morning, sending the package to the Trump office for its final signature.

The CPB, a private company, broadcasts some $ 1.1 billion to television and radio stations NPR, PBS and local across the country, with most of its operating budget reserved for direct subsidies at local public radio stations.

Senator Mike Rounds said last week that he had obtained a cup for more than a dozen Native American radio stations in which they would receive funding from the Interior Department. But it is not clear if it has been approved or how much it would help.

Already, some community radio stations are considering different funding models and income sources to compensate for the cuts. One of them is the aforementioned Kentucky station, WMMT 88.7.

Based in the heart of the country of coal, it has been operating for almost 40 years. Apart from Kentucky, its signal extends to Virginia, Virginia-Western, in some parts of eastern Tennessee and a little from the Southeast of Ohio, reaching 18,000 people each week, according to data from the Nielsen survey of the station.

“It is difficult to imagine,” said Roger May, director of artistic programs at Appalshop, an independent media company in Appalachians. WMMM is its flagship radio station.

“I mean, I look at it through the objective of our community radio station, and when I stop and try to imagine what it is for all the other stations, it’s quite overwhelming.”

According to May, around a third of the station funding comes from the CPB, and a condition on this money would have a considerable impact on its operations in the next two years, according to May. He currently has a full -time employee and relies on a network of local record jockeys to execute his programming.

The station’s development team is looking for ways to get money from elsewhere. He has long received the support of the community – some small businesses, including a bakery that Johnson manages, serve as firm takers for the station.

“This is not a political problem. It is a community service problem, the one that everyone will be assigned by which is based on community radio stations and public radio in the country,” said May.

“We are just one example in the country of rural areas that really count on something as simple as community radio. It is really a vital key in the way we share the information.”

An emergency service

When the sudden widespread floods hit eastern Kentucky three years ago, WMMT – after being briefly offline – has become a vehicle to broadcast public service, news and “a slice of normality” while people have recovered from the disaster, said May.

When Hurricane Helene touched earth in the United States last year, parties devastating from North Carolina, another community radio station shared a constant flow of updates and government emergency advice.

“We hear stories about stories of people who said to us:” Ok, well, we had a crank radio or we had a crank radio, and we knew you would be “,” said Ellis, CEO and managing director of Blue Ridge Radio in Asheville, Nc

Some increased the volume and put the radio on a mailbox, and the neighbors gathered to listen, as the story tells, while the station was published on the water distribution sites – the Asheville water system had stopped. “This is what they had to do to get information that would help them live,” said Ellis.

Blue Ridge covers more than a dozen counties in the western part of the state, reaching around 90,000 listeners each week.

“We have struck all the valleys and all the mountains of this area of 14 counties. So there are people who would not get any other public radio if they did not,” she said.

The station should lose around 6% of its budget, or $ 330,000 per year, due to the cuts. This could cause job losses or elimination of signals in communities where it is more expensive to operate the signaling towers, said Ellis.

The United States uses an emergency alert system that flourishes on the AM and FM channels of the radio, preventing other programs to provide crucial information during a national emergency. But the integrity of this system is in danger without public funding, have argued the criticism of rating.

“If there is a tornado watch, a tornado warning, a flooded watch, a flood warning, a blizzard, all that Mother Nature could manage – people can know that it happens,” said Ellis.

It would change without funding, and if people do not notice a change immediately, they may not understand the role that public radio plays in a community, she added.

“But they do not think of what is happening in eight months, when one of our laps fails for a fairly repairable reason, that we will have to make a decision on the question of whether we want to spend money on this tower.”

Trump’s battle with public media

In May, Trump signed a separate decree calling the CPB to stop funding the NPR and the PBS, although the organization argued that it was not a federal agency subject to the authority of Trump.

The president also frequently criticized the NPR and the PBS for what he characterizes as a left -wing bias, supervising funding reductions at the end of “the subsidy of biased media taxpayers”. The leaders of the two organizations testified before a chamber supervision committee in March in response to the allegations of ideological biases.

The CEO of NPR has argued that the cuts would be a risk for public security, and the representative Lisa Murkowski – one of the two Republicans of the Chamber to vote against the Cancellation Act – argued that public broadcasting saves life.

The press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, did not agree, saying: “I do not know how NPR helps the public security of our country, but I know that NPR, unfortunately, has really become a propaganda voice for the left.”

Public radio plays a vital role in the small communities where these cuts would reach the hardest, both daily and in emergency scenarios, said Laura Lee, a former producer and editorial director of the local NPR of NC, a media organization on the level of the state in North Carolina.

“We are talking about communities where local media has closed, where there is no access to quality news and information, verified and independent about their school board, their municipal council, agricultural industry in their communities.”

While a PEW research document in 2023 has shown that public radio public had constantly decreased in previous years, he found that a fifth of American adults obtained local news from the radio.

“The word” new “has even become somewhat politicized, but people need information and these media are conduits very aware of this information for people,” added Lee, noting that many journalists and publishers who report on these communities also live there and understand their needs.

“The Trump administration was vocal in their explicit media criticism, and I saw that local journalists have somehow put it aside and continue to obtain the community they need. And therefore, I am encouraged by this diligence.”