The public media magazine Current and other news outlets report President Donald Trump's proposed budget seeks to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund public media outlets such as Tri States Public Radio.
Current also has an article on five things you need to know about threats to CPB funding.
Shop Talk panelist Will Buss said this is not the first time Republicans have tried to reduce or eliminate funding for public broadcasting. He believes past attempts have failed because Americans have told their representatives in Congress that they value NPR and PBS.
Buss feels public broadcasting is an integral source for news, information, and the arts. He said it has a proven track record and nothing like it can be found in commercial media.
Panelist Jason Parrott said he encounters more and more people who tell him they rely on the journalism done by public radio. He said they find the reporting accurate and reliable.
Parrott questioned whether lawmakers want to be held accountable for killing the children’s programming on PBS – programming that many people, including some lawmakers, grew up watching.
Panelist Rich Egger said the elimination of CPB funding could be especially harmful to stations in rural parts of the country. He said many rural stations rely on the CPB funding assistance because they don’t have a large population base from which to generate financial support. And he said some rural areas have already lost commercial news sources so they can’t afford to lose another source of information.
Will Buss is the Director of Student Publications at Western Illinois University and Jason Parrott is TSPR’s correspondent for Southeast Iowa.
