Liberators in Action: Public Media Benefactors
When the President and his allies in Congress pulled the plug on $1.1 billion in federal funding for public media, local public radio and TV stations, especially those in rural and underserved areas, suddenly faced extinction. For many communities, these public stations are lifelines and trusted sources of local news, children’s programming, emergency alerts, and cultural programs that can’t be found anywhere else.
Thanks to the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Schmidt Family Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, who stepped in and pledged nearly $37 million in emergency funding to keep trusted news and stories flowing. "This is an urgent moment that calls for bold action," said Knight Foundation CEO Maribel Pérez-Wadsworth.
Public Media Company has created the Bridge Fund, distributing the money through grants, low-interest loans, and advisory services. The goal is to stabilize at-risk stations now and lay the foundation for long-term sustainability. Their target is to raise up to $100 million over two years to keep the airwaves alive and preserve the civic threads that hold communities together.
In the end, the outpouring of support from foundations and individuals will send a clear signal to lawmakers: when something is worth saving, people will find a way to save it. Public media has always been much more than programming—it’s a public trust. And while politicians may try to quash it, the determination of communities and institutions working together shows that these voices, and the connections they foster, will not be silenced.
Slipstream
As far as funding goes, I read that when Americans pay their taxes, an average of $1.60 per person annually is allocated to public media. PBS and NPR produce a lot of "bang for the buck." I hope more foundations contribute and individuals kick in a few bucks annually to keep stations going. However, we probably won't have the quantity or variety of programming. I feel bad for the underserved rural communities; they always get hit the hardest by government cuts.
Evangel
We were warned about this when Project 2025 was first published months before the election, but upon revealing such info, those of us who had concerns were dismissed by disbelievers as having "TDS". Here is just one warning from the Charles Kettering Foundation:
Also within chapter 8 (246–248), Project 2025 calls for defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which channels resources allocated by Congress to PBS and NPR stations around the country, many of which reach underserved communities. Defunding the CPB has been a long-standing goal of the conservative movement (246). According to Project 2025, “Cutting off the CPB is logistically easy. . . . The 47th president can just tell the Congress that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB” (247).
Well Street
Did the architects of Project 2025 not consider the volume of Republican voters within the rural communities affected? Could it be that, in addition to the funding cuts, a political framework to ensure electoral victories and make voters irrelevant has been crafted?