Lori Walsh was laid off and her public affairs show canceled following the loss of federal funding.She's now back at South Dakota Public Broadcasting as a podcaster, thanks to an outpouring of financial support from listeners.
Aaron C.Packard for NPR hide caption A year ago, President Trump drove a conservative backlash against NPR and PBS straight to Capitol Hill, where Congress stripped public radio and television stations of nearly all federal funding.
When his signature turned that bill into law, Trump ended nearly six decades of bipartisan support for funding public media.Since then, more than 500 public media staffers have been laid off, according to a tally by SemiPublic.And yet station officials across the country have reacted with a sense of urgency, hope and anxiety.Urgency because change is being forced upon them.Hope because listeners, viewers and philanthropists stepped up."All of this exists because of viewers like you," PBS CEO Paula Kerger said at an event at the Chautauqua Institution this summer.
"We have said this on the air for many, many years.And I think, until this year, people didn't quite fully realize what that means."Anxiety because station executives do not know how long that support will last.While NPR was the main target of conservatives' wrath, it had received less than 2% of its annual revenue directly from the federal government.
It was a different story elsewhere.Federal funding made up, on average, 8 to 10% of public radio stations' budgets; for PBS and public television stations, the share was even higher.
Rural stations, with the fewest donors, depended the most on government support.South Dakota Public Broadcasting was among the stations that paid the price immediately after Trump signed the law withdrawing federal funds.For years, host Lori Walsh of the weekly public affairs show In the Moment had s...