Save public media

Battle hymn for the radio

I cried not for the first time this year. It was after watching Superman last weekend. There’s a scene where Superman/Clark Kent is visiting his adoptive family in Kansas — trying to lay low amid a smear campaign by Lex Luthor, who has portrayed Superman as a dangerous alien who wishes to “invade” and take over the country through selective breeding. Pa Kent reminds Superman that they didn’t take him in and raise him to fulfill some greater purpose, they raised him because they loved him. In fact, Superman is the person he is because of the values instilled in him by his humble upbringing — human values like kindness and decency. What a parable.

This morning, the House passed the final version of a $9 billion rescission package to seize already appropriated funds for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Defunding NPR has been a half-century grail quest by Republican lawmakers, and one foretold by the Project 2025 policy blueprint that Trump downplayed during the campaign. That public broadcasting is only the latest target of Trump’s scarcity agenda does not make it sting any less.

NPR frequently likes to say it gets less than 2% of its funding directly from the federal government. But that obscures the scarier reality that up to 30% of NPR’s funding comes from member station programming fees (your local station has to pay for “All Things Considered”). Those member stations get varying degrees of federal dollars through which to pay those fees, averaging from 8-10%, though higher in some places, and now that’s going away.

For more on how NPR’s funding model came about, this is an Indicator piece I produced in May… when I still held out hope that this would not come to pass: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/13/1250902337/npr-cpb-public-radio-funding-101

I’m proud of the work I’ve done through federal, state, and, yes, LISTENER support. From WUNC to WPLN to NCPR to KUER and KUNR, my career is quite literally built on the generosity of people who value credible, fact-based information. Many of my readers have supported public radio before, and I hope you will again during this transition.

For those who enjoy NPR’s podcasts (hello Indicator listeners!), the NPR+ Bundle is $8/month and revenue is shared with our network stations. To direct aid to more cash-strapped stations, the New York Times ran a helpful breakdown of which states rely most heavily on federal funding and this Redditor made a list of endangered stations, including my alma mater NCPR in northern New York. Directing dollars to those smaller, rural stations will be critical for stabilizing the entire network so it doesn’t wither and collapse like Superman in the presence of kryptonite.

So back to Superman. He spends a lot of the movie defending his actions and beliefs. He worries about what other people think of him and becomes self-conscious. Am I doing the right thing? It takes his dad (good old Pa) to snap him out of this self-pitying streak. I have been in a similar mood, really all year. My dad is gone now, but he did raise me with similar values to the Kent family. Kindness, decency and a sense of justice. I am ready to come out of my cocoon and stop worrying about what other people think of me, the work I do as a journalist or the network I do it for.

Maybe that’s the real punk rock.