The stakes for public media

President Trump’s request this week that Congress rescind funding for NPR and PBS has injected new urgency into the debate over government support for public media stations across the country.

The stations most vulnerable to the cuts are those that serve rural areas and reach large minority populations, as Paul Farhi writes for the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. “Without Washington’s help, most would be diminished; some will no longer exist,” Farhi writes.

This contradicts the notion that public media outlets are “radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America,” as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) put it in March.

In fact, a new study from researchers who looked at PBS audiences found that most Americans “don’t subscribe to the notion of a biased PBS.” When people were asked to compare PBS to other U.S. news media, the researchers wrote in Current, they said they considered it least associated with political ideology. Moreover, respondents said they trusted PBS precisely because of its public funding.

In other words, the public media picture is more complex than the hardened rhetoric on Capitol Hill would suggest. Many places are probably like Minnesota, where, as Lev Gringauz writes for MinnPost, public media isn’t a monolith, “but a complex ecosystem being targeted on multiple fronts.”

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Can they do good and still do well? Local TV stations and communities’ information needs (Shorenstein Center)

A Harvard professor found that local TV news outlets can play a greater role in filling information gaps created by the decline of newspapers. “Yet they face significant hurdles, including entrenched editorial practices and tight budgets,” especially in small and medium-sized markets, writes Thomas E. Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard. Patterson suggests that TV stations can better contribute to their communities by “incorporating more enterprise, community, and investigative journalism in their news mix” — and gain a competitive edge in doing so.

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Culture & Inclusion

>> From despair to purpose: Six climate reporters on how to protect their mental health (Reuters Institute)

Journalists who cover climate change face a number of mental health challenges that can go unacknowledged by their newsrooms or even themselves. University of Toronto psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein surveyed 268 climate journalists from 90 countries and found that almost half of them reported moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety (48%) and depression (42%). Greg Cochrane rounded up insights from six journalists around the world on how they cope. Said one journalist, Seigonie Mohammed from Trinidad and Tobago: “It took me a while to strike that balance between empathy and professionalism. It was mentally draining.”

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> $10.5M Knight Foundation grant launches Knight Center for the Future of News at ASU’s Cronkite School (ASU News)

Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is launching the Knight Center for the Future of News, saying it is “a transformative new initiative designed to reimagine journalism in the U.S. and build a stronger, more trusted and financially sustainable news ecosystem.” It’s being funded with a $10.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and an additional $4 million investment from ASU. ASU said the grant is the single largest in the Cronkite School’s history.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Why Business Insider is axing 100-plus staff and who is leaving (Press Gazette) 

Press Gazette’s Dominic Ponsford spoke with former Business Insider employees to get a sense of what’s behind the company’s recent cut of 21% of its workforce. Among other things, he writes, the job cuts reflect “a scaling-back of Business Insider’s ambitions since its failed bid to become a general newsbrand in the years from the start of 2021 to the end of 2023 when it rebranded as Insider.”

  • Related: AI embarrassment aside, Business Insider faces huge challenges in the post-SEO environment (Media Nation)

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What else you need to know

🌵 Q&A: Press Forward’s Texas chapter is betting big on rural and local news (Poynter)

🎙️ Nearly all remaining Voice of America employees could be fired under plan (The New York Times)

🤖 Trusting News receives renewed support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation to expand AI transparency and education efforts (Trusting News)

🏙️ Gabrielle Jones Joins WNYC/Gothamist newsroom as director of digital news and audience (New York Public Radio)

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Weekend reads

+ Don’t mourn the death of alt-weeklies. They’re alive and well (CJR)

+ Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ could save our republic (The New York Times)

+ Opinion: A culture war is brewing over moral concern for AI (Undark)

+ Listen: Trump’s playbook to cripple “60 Minutes” and the press (The New Yorker)