CONNECTION
Stations have been sounding the alarm for months. Prairie Public Broadcasting, which has served North Dakota for 60 years, estimates it could lose 26 per cent of its budget between combined cuts in state and CPB funding.
For Vermont Public, a broadcaster in the US Northeast, US$4 million in funding is at stake.
“We’re going to be forced to make some really difficult decisions about what local programming stays and what local programming we have to cut,” said Ryan Howlett, who heads the financial arm of South Dakota Public Broadcasting, which oversees a dozen local radio stations and as many local TV stations.
In this rural and conservative state, “you’re going to lose a connection point that binds us together”, he told AFP.
Trump has made very public his hostility to the media, which he often brands “fake news” and the “enemy of the people,” a driving force behind his political rhetoric.
In early May, Trump issued an executive order requiring an end to the subsidisation of NPR and PBS, saying “neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.
“These are partisan, leftwing outlets that are funded by the taxpayers, and this administration does not believe it’s a good use of the taxpayers’ time and money,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.
Howlett emphasised that there is little such criticism in local communities in South Dakota. “We’re part of people’s everyday lives,” he said.
