For Scott Smith, the cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are existential.
He is the general manager of Allegheny Mountain Radio and runs the radio with program manager Heather Nidry. The funding was cut as part of President Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts and spending bill signed into law in July. As a result, the station, which had been on the air for more than 40 years, lost 65 percent of its funding.
“We are here to serve the community, to fulfill our mission of providing news to the community, providing entertainment, disseminating emergency alerts, closing schools. We do lost and found pet notifications. We do funeral announcements. We have a list of community events, which is read multiple times a day. We also do weather forecasts. We are an important part of the community,” Smith told Al Jazeera.
The repeal bill signed by President Trump authorizes the U.S. Congress to withdraw previously approved funds, including $9 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CFB). At the end of September, those funds were officially depleted.
This money had already been appropriated by the previous Congress to fund public media in 2026 and 2027. Now, broadcasters are scrambling to find ways to fill the void.
The Trump administration is pursuing media outlets that have published critical reports on Jeffrey Epstein, including the Wall Street Journal, after reporting a suggestive letter that Trump allegedly wrote to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his birthday. In September, he tried to sue the New York Times for being the “de facto mouthpiece” of the Democratic Party.
His influence over public media is significant because it is partially funded by federal tax dollars. The White House first signed an executive order defunding public media in May. The plan was quickly blocked because funding decisions are made by Congress, not the White House.
President Trump then pressured Republicans in Congress to introduce legislation to rescind the mandate of the previous executive order. To justify his request for cuts, the White House in May released a list of NPR and PBS programming that it said had liberal bias, including many segments about the experiences of the trans community.
The White House also cited a report that found PBS favoring Democrats. The report came from the openly partisan Media Research Center, which has a stated goal of promoting conservative values.
An important but overlooked problem with the cuts is that they overwhelmingly hurt broadcast stations that don’t cover the White House or much of national politics at all.
Allegheny Mountain Radio (AMR) is one of them. Consisting of three affiliate stations in three counties that straddle the West Virginia-Virginia border, listeners can hear gospel, folk, and country music, as well as live coverage of local football games and town hall meetings.
AMR carries NPR’s national newscasts and, more importantly, serves as the voice on the ground when severe weather occurs.
Unlike other parts of the county, there’s no other way to get real-time local news. The nearest local news stations are hours away, separated by winding country roads. In the event of severe weather, AMR is the only way for local residents to receive important information such as flood road closure announcements.
“Just a few years ago, there was heavy rain and parts of the county were flooded. When something like that happens, radio stations are the only way to quickly get information to listeners and let them know what’s happening where,” AMR program manager Nidri told Al Jazeera.
AMR is located in a part of the country where cell phone signals and wireless access are sparse due to its proximity to the so-called National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) near Green Bank Observatory. The NRQZ restricts the use of radio frequencies and other signaling methods to prevent interference with equipment. This requires special equipment to direct the radio signal away from the observatory.
The area has a low population density, so the business case for the station is limited. However, it can also be a public service. Communities rely on AMR for emergency alerts, even at the individual level. Smith said that during major storms, people with cellphones that stopped working showed up at the station and asked if AMR could broadcast a message to let family and friends know they were safe.
Despite their strong community focus, these stations may not benefit from the same level of donor support as larger public broadcasters across the country due to limited local businesses and resources.
It’s an effort. In order to survive, the department is actively soliciting donations on its website.
Smaller community stations, such as those serving Bath and Pocahontas Counties in West Virginia and Highland County in Virginia through AMR, do not produce national news programs or programs that would disrupt Washington, but they are still the ones most at risk of being hit.
“It’s the small stations like ours that are going to suffer with these cuts. We feel like we’re a baby thrown out with the bathwater because there’s so much emphasis on NPR and PBS talking points. It’s like the rest of our small community stations are completely forgotten in this equation,” Smith told Al Jazeera.
But the cuts also affected broadcasters in large markets across the United States. WNYC in New York City lost 4 percent of its funding. WBUR in Boston, KLAW in San Francisco, and KERA in Dallas, Texas, all saw reductions of 5%.
Such stations have large donor bases, or, as organizers say during swearing-in drives, “listeners like you.” Alex Curley, a former NPR product manager who recently launched a platform called Adopt A Station that shows which public media stations are most at risk of losing funding, says larger-market stations may be able to close the gap.
“If you think about broadcasters that rely on federal funding for more than 50% of their income, it’s not because they’re asking for handouts. It’s literally a public service for those broadcasters,” Curley told Al Jazeera.
But in sparsely populated counties with limited industry, the donor base is not as deep. The same is true for AMR.
“We’re in a very rural area, where there aren’t a lot of businesses, so that amount of revenue can’t be supplemented by additional donations or additional underwriting,” Smith added.
In a July post on Substack, Carley, who was involved in the finances of NPR stations until he left the network in 2024 amid layoffs, said 15% of the stations were at risk of closure. His website provided some respite.
“We didn’t expect maybe a few dozen people to visit the site. My biggest hope was that we would get a few donations for a station in crisis. (The website) has been shared thousands of times. We’ve also heard from stations that have been identified as being at risk of closure. They’ve told us that donations are pouring in from out of state through the site. It’s been an incredible response,” Curley said.
However, he insists this is a temporary solution.
“The real danger is six months, a year, two years from now, when people forget about public media. These stations are basically losing federal funding forever. Short-term donations are really great, but long-term they need to find a way to keep their donors interested and money to keep flowing to them, or they might shut down,” Curley added.
“Public radio is a lifeline that connects rural communities and the nation, providing lifesaving emergency broadcasts and weather alerts,” NPR’s Katherine Maher said in a July 18 statement after the Senate vote. “Nearly three in four Americans say they rely on public radio stations for public safety alerts and news.”
“In fact, while the Senate was considering the amendment, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake occurred off the coast of Alaska, and three stations along the coast began broadcasting live tsunami warnings, urging communities to seek higher ground,” Maher said.
Maher declined Al Jazeera’s request for an interview.
PBS is facing similar pressures, with many stations at risk of closure, according to data from Adapt A Station.
“These cuts will significantly impact all stations, but especially those that are smaller or serve large rural areas,” PBS President and CEO Paula Karger said in a statement after the Senate vote. “This will be a devastating blow to our stations. Many of our stations, which provide access to free, unique local programming and emergency alerts, will have to make difficult decisions in the coming weeks and months.”
Kelger did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for further comment.
Calls to defund public media are not new to Republicans. Republicans have long argued that the media is not a core function of government. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced during a debate, ironically moderated by then-PBS News Hour anchor Jim Lehrer, that he would eliminate subsidies for PBS.
In the 1990s, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich promised to “zero out” funding for the CPB and argued that it should be privatized. And in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan tried to cut $80 million (about $283 million today) from public media, a move blocked by Congress.
Following global cuts
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting cuts are the latest in the White House’s wave of cuts to government-funded media departments, including cuts to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, led in part by senior adviser Kari Lake.
Lake is a former newscaster in Phoenix, Arizona, who is known for denying the results of the 2020 election, in which Trump lost the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. She is also known for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and refusing to admit her defeat in the 2022 and 2024 Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, respectively.
She was involved in the station’s virtual shutdown of Voice of America (VOA), which has not published any new articles or uploaded new videos to its YouTube page since mid-March.
Last month, a federal judge in Washington blocked VOA’s layoffs, affecting more than 500 employees. The Trump administration called the decision “outrageous” and said it would appeal.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts in 27 languages in 23 countries, faced similar challenges to VOA. However, the European Union provided $6.2 million in emergency funding to help maintain and operate the network.
Representatives from the U.S. Agency for Global Media did not respond to requests for comment.
Threats to freedom of expression
These cuts come alongside other threats to freedom of expression in the private sector. Shortly after the funding bill was signed, Paramount announced the cancellation of The Late Show. Days earlier, comedian and host Stephen Colbert, a longtime critic of the president, had called on the show’s parent company, Paramount, to settle a lawsuit with Trump.
The lawsuit stems from Trump’s claims that an interview with his 2024 presidential rival, Kamala Harris, was doctored. The network initially claimed the lawsuit had no merit, but ultimately settled it for $16 million. Colbert called the settlement a “huge bribe,” noting that Paramount was at the time pending a merger with Skydance Media, owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a key Trump ally. The merger was subsequently approved. Paramount said the decision was purely financial in nature.
Months later, in response to stand-up comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s death, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr appeared on a right-wing podcast to criticize the comments and urge Disney, the parent company of ABC, which broadcasts Jimmy Kimmel Live, to cancel the show.
Nexstar Media Group, one of the largest television station operators in the United States and awaiting FCC approval for its merger with Tegna, announced it would no longer broadcast the program. Disney subsequently suspended the show, but this decision did not last long and it resumed airing within a week.
The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
