Congress last month approved a Trump administration plan to rescind all funding for NPR, PBS and their member stations.
Locally, it was reported that PBS Kansas would lose about $1.1 million and KMUW about $225,000 per year as a result of the cuts.
Voting in Congress was nearly totally along party lines, with all Democrats, two Republican senators and two Republican House members opposing the cuts.
Polls have shown that a majority of U.S. residents support funding of public radio and TV, but some conservatives have long charged that those outlets are biased toward liberal viewpoints.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told Fox News that public media outlets “are getting out a leftist message. These public broadcasts have been turned into another tool of the leftist socialists. Yes, they’ve got some good programs, but we don’t want to use government funding for such a program as this. There are better things to do with the money.”
Victor Hogstrom, president and CEO of PBS Kansas, said in an interview with KWCH that the station “has done nothing wrong to deserve this. We have not produced one-sided programming because that is against our philosophy and our policy.”
KMUW, in a Facebook post, said it is “fighting back” against the cuts and urged listeners to support it. “For many stations, this means going dark. Not KMUW. We’re still here, because of you.”
