As Trump Targets NPR and PBS Funding, Small Local Stations Brace for Fallout

Northern California public radio stations and journalism organizations are raising the alarm after President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday night aiming to cut off federal funding for NPR and PBS.

The order directs the board of the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and all federal agencies to withhold money for the nation’s primary public broadcasters, saying that government funding for the news services is “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

While the order does not call on CPB to halt funding for local member stations such as KQED, Trump has signaled his desire to ask Congress to rescind nearly all funding for CPB, which distributes funds to more than 1,500 locally owned stations across the country in addition to NPR and PBS. The loss of such funding could put local, rural news outlets in jeopardy and interfere with emergency and disaster alert systems that rely on broadcast partners.

At small stations like KZYX in Mendocino County, CPB money makes up about a quarter of the budget, leaving them especially vulnerable to federal funding cuts.

“We are tiny,” said Dina Polkinghorne, the interim general manager of KZYX. “There’s threadbare staff, threadbare operational funds, and a 25% [cut] to our revenues — it’s beyond devastating. There’s nothing to cut to make up for it.”

CPB leadership asserted that Trump’s executive order overstepped his authority, and both NPR and PBS have vowed to challenge it, leaving the actual effect of the order still unclear.

Still, if federal funding were to dry up for small local stations, they might be unable to keep up operations, threatening to exacerbate the growing problem of “news deserts” in rural areas across California and the country.

KQED also receives CPB funding, which made up 7.6% of the organization’s 2024 budget, but smaller stations like KAZU in Monterey County and KZYX collected 13% and 22% of their revenue in 2023 from CPB, respectively, according to financial statements.

“The backbone of our local democracy is smaller news outlets, local news outlets, particularly in far-flung parts of California, rural parts of California, suburban parts of California, where large outlets don’t necessarily have as much reach,” said Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter.

“All the research points to the fact that … more bribery, more scandal emerges from local government, state government, government in general, when you don’t have a robust press playing a check on them,” he continued.

Polkinghorne said Mendocino residents rely on KZYX to get news in isolated parts of the sprawling Northern California county, where there isn’t a dedicated public television station.

“We have people who call us, they don’t decide what to wear that day until they hear our weather report in the morning,” she said.

Trump has repeatedly accused NPR and PBS of left-wing bias, spurring a tense congressional hearing in March during which Republicans criticized the organizations’ CEOs over their news coverage. NPR CEO Katherine Maher was also asked about posts she made on social media criticizing Trump during the 2020 election, before she was the head of the organization.

Trump’s executive order not only targets direct CPB funding of NPR and PBS; it also instructs CPB to ensure local stations do not use any federal funds to pay the national networks. Under their current agreements, member stations contribute fees to NPR and PBS in exchange for access to their programming, like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Maher said that programming provided by NPR, which gets about 2% of its budget from the federal government through direct and indirect means, generates about 25% of local stations’ content and 50% of their listenership. Every $1 NPR receives in federal funding makes sevenfold in revenue from local sources, according to her statement.

“The local-national partnership between NPR and its Member stations is essential to maintaining the viability and strength of a nationwide public media network,” it reads.

In a statement, KQED said that it was disappointed by the executive action and concerned about the far-reaching impacts it could have.

“The order is at odds with the opinions of Americans who feel that public media is a worthy use of federal funds,” spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro said. “If executed, the order would impact the emergency alert system which helps keep our country safe; impair access to free educational programming and resources for our youngest and most vulnerable children; and would erode public media’s ability to tell the stories of the people, places and history that are the fabric of our local communities.”

KALW, another San Francisco-based station, called the order dangerous and shortsighted.

“Our station provides essential services to the Bay Area and beyond — from trusted journalism to music and cultural programming, to training the next generation of media makers,” executive director James Kass said in a statement. “Without federal support and a thriving NPR, we cannot continue this critical work — and our democracy is weaker for it.”

CPB said Friday that because it is not a federal executive agency, the president does not have the right to dictate how it spends money.

“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement, citing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which forbade government officials and departments from directing, supervising or controlling CPB or its grantees.

CPB is already suing the Trump administration over its attempt to fire three of its five board members earlier this week, which the corporation said is unlawful since it is not a government agency.

But the rescission package is still on the table, and stations like KZYX in Mendocino are looking even further ahead — considering the possibility that they might lose federal support in Congress’ next biennial budget and have to forgo CPB funds completely in the next four years.

“We’re going to work on a placeholder that assumes everything’s fine, if you will, and then behind the scenes, so to speak, we’ll be working on scenarios that address the 25% cut,” Polkinghorne said of preparing the station’s budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in July. “We have just begun that process, and it’s a conversation nobody wants to have, but starting with meetings next week, that’s on the table.”

This story was reported and written by KQED reporter Katie DeBenedetti and edited by KQED Senior Editor Jared Servantez. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.