WBEZ, rural Illinois stations brace for major cuts after Congress slashes $1.1B from public broadcasting

CHICAGO — Public radio and television stations will lose some of their funding after Congress passed President Donald Trump’s request to cut $1.1 billion in public broadcasting spending.

Congress already committed the funding to public TV and radio stations over the course of the next two years. The Trump administration is employing a rarely used tool that allows the president to request the cancellation of previously approved funding.

The Senate approved the vast majority of Trump’s request in the early morning hours Thursday, 51–48. The House followed suit early Friday, 216–213. The measure now goes to the president to be signed into law.

“The decision to cut back on federal assistance for public broadcasting is going to be a reduction in opportunities to have more information,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said. “Now the question is: what is the future?”

Sen. Durbin spoke out against the cuts at WBEZ’s Navy Pier office.

“As difficult as this period has been, we are not going to waver in our mission, which is to deliver independent, local journalism that we think is really important for our democracy,” Cynthia Photos Abbott, Chief Legal Officer of Chicago Public Media, said.

WBEZ says it will lose 6% of its funding. When logging onto its website, a message currently pops up asking listeners to help make up the $3 million shortfall.

Heather Norman, president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council, runs a public radio station in rural Macomb, Illinois, which will lose 17% of its budget.

“How are we going to adjust for that 17% loss? Our population base cannot necessarily pick it up. That’s a heavy lift,” Norman said.

Other Illinois stations will lose even more — up to 50%. Norman says those communities will likely see more consolidation and less local coverage as a result.

“This is a huge disruption. And the public media that you knew yesterday will not be the public media that you know tomorrow,” she said.

Tim Franklin, director of the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, cites estimates that between 40 and 80 local public radio stations across the country could shut down.

“There’s research that shows that in what we call ‘news desert’ communities, the impacts are huge,” Franklin said. “There’s a loss of civic participation. Turnout in local elections goes down. The number of candidates running for local office goes down. Government spending goes up.”

To justify the spending cuts, the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers say public media is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

“This is legislation that is going to result in cuts in small rural communities, many of them Republican-controlled and Republican-dominated,” Franklin said.