“I never wake up in the morning thinking, “I might sue the President of the United States today,” said Tami Graham, KSUT Public Radio Executive Director. On Tuesday, May 27, at the invitation of National Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KSUT, with a unanimous vote of KSUT’s board of directors, did just that (Herald, May 28).
It’s a fight the Herald’s editorial board supports and wishes it didn’t have to. But in an already diminished media landscape, in this political climate, with this president – who with his budget director, Russell Vought, author of Project 2025, that has at its goal to privatize, defund, and reduce federal influence over information and culture – it needs a defense. All publicly owned assets do.
We’ve been writing about and featuring columnists and letter writers concerned about the sale of public lands, reduction in federal property holdings and increased corporate involvement in their use, notably the energy and timber industries, written into the budget reconciliation process, as the public gets written out. This, and defunding and dismantling public media, is also part of Project 2025, something Trump said he had no knowledge of while campaigning.
Yet, on May 1, Trump issued another Executive Order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” that directly targets NPR and the Public Broadcasting System stating that neither entity “presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
To that criticism, Graham responds,” NPR is one of the most respected, fact-based journalism outlets in the country as shown repeatedly by various reviews. When the media environment has become full of alternative facts and editorial commentary trying to pass as fact-based news, it may feel like NPR is biased, but it’s award-winning journalism that hundreds of millions of people have relied on for decades.”
The EO instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent nonprofit corporation Congress created in 1967, that distributes federal funding to over 1,500 locally managed public radio and TV stations, to withhold funding from NPR and PBS and restrict local stations, like KSUT, from spending CPB funding to acquire NPR or PBS programming. This is illegal on numerous fronts and the foundation of the lawsuit (see bit.ly/3SKPeOY)
In March, we wrote about the importance of public media and stations like KSUT Four Corners Public Media, KDUR Fort Lewis College Community Radio and KSJD in Cortez to our rural region (Herald, Mar. 5). And in April, in “Public media funds exist because of bipartisan support and will take it to preserve them,” Graham and KSUT Board Member Wade Griffith, (Herald, Apr. 27) did as well. In “What defunding public media would mean for the West,” High Country News reported Jun. 6 on the considerable hit rural, tribal and Western stations would take if CPB is defunded.
Although only 19% ($333,000) of KSUT’s budget comes from CPB, in contrast almost 60-70% of Alaska’s Native American public radio station budgets do, and over half CPB grantees are rural. The public media network affords most of the U.S. population access to public broadcasting for the equivalent of $1.60 per person per year in federal taxes, essentially for free.
KSUT uses CPB funding to acquire programming like NPR’s Morning Edition and the BBC and for staff. A diverse funding base – memberships, grants, foundations, underwriting, and generous local contributors all make resources go further. KSUT, and about two dozen other Colorado public radio stations, collaborates with the CPB-funded Capitol News Alliance to procure and air Capitol Coverage when the Colorado General Assembly is in session. KSUT also participates in NPR’s Mountain West News Bureau, a new local journalism center, to receive and transmit news enriching our region and nation.
This week, the House is likely to vote on the Rescissions Act of 2025 that Trump proposed and would rescind $9.4 billion of funding previously approved by Congress, stripping the state department, USAID and CPB of funding. Don’t let them. Contact Rep. Jeff Hurd and ask him to stand up for 50-years of bipartisan support for public media across CD3 and our nation.
