'If I wasn't here, people could die': Trump public media cuts could hit rural US \ stacker news ~Politics_And

"Winter is not a joke here, it is life and death," she tells the BBC. "As a reporter I try not to make emotional statements like, if I wasn't here, people could die, but that is a reality."

BBC takes note of the rural radio stations and advocates that some of them are located in far-remote and extreme areas where people need these communication centres more than anyone else. BBC also cites the example of a snowstorm, also consisting a flood in Kotzebue in Alaska.

While the cuts will affect national broadcasters like NPR and PBS, more than 70% of federal funding goes to local media stations and about 45% of the stations that received funding in 2023 are in rural areas.

For half of those rural stations, federal grants made up a quarter or more of their revenue. At KOTZ in Kotzebue, public funding constitutes 41% of its income.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 14 Jul

Public media is inherently corrupt. I do think in some of these more rural jurisdictions that need local radio the counties and states could play a role in funding but not the federal gov. Federal funding for media just creates massively perverse incentives for that media to be biased towards whoever gives them the most money.

We saw this in the Canadian election where Pierre Poilievre said he would defund the public broadcaster CBC. The media coverage against him was terribly biased.