Trump Cuts to Public Media Threaten Native Stations That Protect Culture & Public Health, Issue Alerts

AMY GOODMAN: We stay on this issue of defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will impact the entire public media ecosystem, built up over decades. But some local stations and communities depend more on CPB funding than others.

For more, we’re joined now by Loris Taylor. She’s the president and CEO of Native Public Media, a member of the Hopi Nation. Her recent article is headlined “When a Station Goes Dark, We Lose.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Loris Taylor. I want to thank you for being with us. Nearly 60 tribal stations are a part of Native Public Media. Almost 36 of those stations have CPB community service funding. Can you talk about what this means for the country, this complete ending of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?

LORIS TAYLOR: Well, this news has been really devastating to Indian Country. We have tribes in Arizona — Navajo, Hopi, the Tohono, White Mountain Apache — the Alaska Natives in Alaska and our relatives in the Midwest who are impacted by this decision. These stations provide news, emergency communications, educational content and other information to really fulfill the information needs of tribal citizens. And to have a sweeping decision that’s this profound and this impactful is going to really hurt Native communities.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what exactly these stations provide for their communities — for example, early warning systems?

LORIS TAYLOR: Well, let me talk about the alerting system capability of stations. Our stations are able to send out emergency alerts over the radio and television. They’re able to connect to the wireless emergency alert system, as well. And one of the things that’s going to be impacted in this case is the new missing and endangered persons alert that was just approved by the FCC on August 7, 2024. It’s scheduled to go live September 7, 2025. And to have 36 stations taken out of the system is going to be a hit. As you know, Native Americans suffer twice as much to violence, and there are a lot of missing and murdered women and Indigenous person’s cases, over 10,000 right at this time.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote a letter to the South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds, urging him not to vote for the rescission package. Senator Rounds did vote in favor of the package, but in a statement wrote, “In order for me to support this legislation, we had to find a way to continue support for these radio stations which offer potentially life saving information in some of the most rural parts of our nation. These stations play a vital role in South Dakota, delivering critical emergency alerts and public safety information, and they needed to be protected. I worked with the Trump administration to find unused climate change money that will be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations. I’m pleased we secured $9.4 million to make certain the dozens of tribal radio stations receiving CPB community service grants across 11 states can continue operating without interruption.” Can you talk about the significance of this, how you responded to this?

LORIS TAYLOR: Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge, I’m thankful to Senator Rounds for placing tribal stations on the national agenda. But here’s the deal. We’ve heard about this deal after it was posted on X. I’m not a subscriber of X, so it came to me through other means. We have not spoken with Senator Rounds.

I did write a letter expressing my concern that Green New Deal moneys are climate and energy dollars, and it’s a visionary framework that has no funding ability, that I know of, and it does not authorize funding for public broadcasting. So, I wanted to know: How is this going to work? As you know, CPB is explicitly designed to manage appropriations from Congress on behalf of the 1,500 stations across the country. There are mechanisms that are already in place. There are compliance requirements that we have to abide by. So, my question was: Give me details. How is this going to be accessible? Is it? Does it need congressional authority? Are there other legislative measures that need to be taken? I don’t have any answers to this day.

AMY GOODMAN: Loris Taylor, can you talk about the importance of Native Public Media during the height of the COVID pandemic?

LORIS TAYLOR: Native Public Media was called into action during COVID. And if there’s any time or crisis that has demonstrated the need for local information systems, it was COVID-19. COVID-19 hit Native American communities. We were devastated by it. Hundreds of individuals died across nearly every single tribe. Some tribes were hit so much that they worried that they would become extinct.

And so, what we learned was that people want to be informed in real time when a crisis hits. During COVID, they wanted to know about hospital protocols, where to find equipment or PP safety gear, where to find food, whether or not there were roadblocks. And so, there was a lot of information. And as you may recall, this information need was really fast-moving.

And so, we learned from COVID-19 that our stations are there. They’re our safety hubs. They’re about our public health and our — they’re also about our civic health. And now to have that stripped away, I’m afraid that with the climate crisis increasing, that we are going to be operating on the margins of information and are not going to have real lifesaving information available to our citizens when they need it most. And that’s disheartening.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we just have 20 seconds, but the preservation of Indigenous languages spoken on your stations?

LORIS TAYLOR: Well, that, along — language-speaking programs by Navajo, Hopi and all the tribes that are — that were once stakeholders in public media may go silent. And I just want to say that public media is for everyone. But I’m not going to let this moment silence Native American voices. We’re going to move into recovery and see what we can do to stabilize the system.

AMY GOODMAN: Loris Taylor, thank you so much for being with us, CEO and president of Native Public Media, a member of the Hopi Nation, joining us from Flagstaff, Arizona.

I want to end today’s show congratulating our producer Hany Massoud and his wife Ayesha on the birth of their daughter. Welcome to the world, Safa! And a fond farewell to Tami Woronoff, who’s worked with us as a producer since 2018 as part of our amazing headlines team. We wish you all the very best. You are now a part of our DNA — that’s Democracy Now! alumni.

We are hiring for multiple positions. Find out more at democracynow.org/jobs. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.