Experts comment on Congress’s elimination of $535 million a year in federal funding for PBS, NPR, and local stations across the country.
Last week, the House voted to cut roughly $535 million a year in federal funding for PBS, NPR and local stations nationwide. Annenberg experts explain how this sweeping move could reshape the landscape of public broadcasting:
Victor Pickard, Ph.D.
C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. His work is particularly concerned about the future of journalism and the role of media in a democratic society.
"The U.S. was already a global outlier for how little funding it allocated toward its public media at the federal level,” said Pickard. “After these latest cuts, the U.S. is now poised to become unique among democracies for failing to federally fund its public media system at all.”
Pickard went on to note that these cuts will have profound consequences, especially for smaller, local stations in rural areas, leaving these communities without a vital resource: “These cuts will disproportionately harm smaller individual stations which tend to be located in more rural areas — some of which may be forced to close down altogether, creating news deserts in their absence with no viable emergency communications system for these communities."
Victor Pickard, Ph.D.
“The U.S. was already a global outlier for how little funding it allocated toward its public media at the federal level. After these latest cuts, the U.S. is now poised to become unique among democracies for failing to federally fund its public media system at all.”
Louisa Lincoln, Ph.D.
A recent doctoral graduate from the Annenberg School for Communication, her research examines funding models for nonprofit news and public media organizations in the United States.
“The American public media system has provided a valuable public service for nearly six decades: news, information, and programming in the public interest, which is critical to the health of our communities and democracy writ large,” said Lincoln.
Lincoln also commented on how this will affect other media models in the United States, such as non-profit journalism: “The clawback of public media funding will have ramifications throughout the nonprofit media industry. There will be greater competition for philanthropic resources, from both foundations and individual donors. Many local public media stations also collaborate with digital-first nonprofit news organizations to report, produce, and distribute stories — with these cuts, these kinds of collaborations with outlets outside of the public media system will likely be severely reduced.”
Last year, Pickard and Lincoln co-authored a study that drew on in-depth interviews with leaders throughout the public media system to examine how it could better serve as a source for local news and information.
“One of the takeaways I’ve been returning to in recent days,” Lincoln said, “is that the American public media system as we’ve known it — networked, cooperative, and deeply interconnected, but also locally-operated — couldn’t be built today. Which means that once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Louisa Lincoln, Ph.D.
“The [public media] system has provided a valuable public service for nearly six decades: news, information, and programming in the public interest, which is critical to the health of our communities and democracy writ large.”
