There is an urgent threat facing public media in the United States: a proposed federal budget cut that would not only threaten its future, but also "claw back" funding that's already been awarded to public television and radio stations across the country.

Read the transcript and notes for this episode on our website.

Adrian McIntyre opens with a personal anecdote about the impact of public media on his family, setting the stage for a critical discussion on the ramifications of potential funding cuts. Alice Ferris and Abbie Fink discuss the wide-ranging implications for communities that rely on the rich tapestry of content and services provided by public media.

Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have far-reaching negative effects. Alice explains how public media also provides educational resources for classroom teachers and the national emergency alert system. She highlights the importance of localized storytelling and the unique programming offered by regional stations in rural and tribal areas.

Contrary to the Trump Administration's claims, research shows that public media outlets like PBS and NPR are highly trusted and respected by the majority of Americans.

Alice urges us all to reflect on our personal connections to public media and the pivotal role it plays in community and cultural education, and then to take action to voice our support.

Here's what you can do RIGHT NOW: go to Protect My Public Media or the American Coalition for Public Radio, where you'll find fast, simple ways to contact your congressional representatives and urge them to save your public media stations.

Key Takeaways

• Public media faces a significant threat due to proposed federal funding cuts that aim to reclaim previously allocated budgets.
• Public media is a vital national resource, offering educational tools and content to enrich classroom learning experiences, as well as the emergency alert system.
• Local public media stations, particularly in rural and underserved areas, would be severely impacted, risking the loss of crucial community-based programming and services.
• The defunding proposal is part of a larger attack on fact-based news reporting by the current administration, which perceives NPR and PBS as biased against the President--despite recent scientific studies proving their trustworthiness and value.
• YOU can take action TODAY to help save public media, and we encourage you to contact your congressional representatives via ProtectMyPublicMedia.org

About the Guest

Alice L. Ferris, MBA, CFRE, ACFRE, is founding partner of GoalBusters Consulting with over 30 years of fundraising experience, specializing in strategic planning, campaign development, and public media support. She got her start at PBS Wisconsin, blowing bubbles during Lawrence Welk Show pledge breaks, and now appears on-air for Arizona PBS and national PBS fundraising programs, including Masterpiece. Alice teaches at the University of Denver and is an Associate Member of Rogare, the international fundraising think tank. She also hosts epic Chinese New Year parties, is a slow runner, and is a retired competition ballroom dancer.

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Credits

Copper State of Mind, hosted by Abbie Fink and Dr. Adrian McIntyre, is a project of HMA Public Relations, a full-service public relations and marketing communications firm in Phoenix.

The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm, and distributed by PHX.fm, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like the PRGN Presents podcast, hosted by Abbie Fink, featuring conversations about PR, marketing, and communications with members of the Public Relations Global Network, "the world’s local public relations agency.”

"It could be the end of public media as we know it." That's the banner I read just last night. I was sitting with my 10 year old son, and we were talking about the language in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. He wanted to listen to the audiobook.

I had never actually thought about what our "parent point of view" would be about that. There are racist slurs in the book. It's also a classic of American literature. And so I did what every good parent does: I Googled to find out if anybody was talking about an updated or modernized version of this book.

I ended up on the website for National Public Radio. There was a story from many years ago, 20 11, about whether or not Mark Twain's language should be changed. And my 10 year old and I listened to the story--on my smartphone, in 20 25--and we heard passionate arguments for and against. People called in. An English professor had one point of view. A person who had read the book in high school had another point of view. And we loved the story. We loved the opportunity to hear that information.

I scrolled down, and at the end of the page was this stark warning: "It could be the end of public media as we know it." And it went on.

"The White House has issued a memorandum asking Congress to claw back funds that have already been appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If approved, American taxpayers get little to no savings and at incredible cost. Communities with stations unable to survive these budget cuts would lose access to local news, national reporting, jazz and classical stations, local culture shows, food programs, coverage of local sports games, and crucial emergency alerting. Public media serves every American in every part of this country in so many ways and all for less than .01% of total federal spending."

Public media is on the chopping block. Abbie, what's on your mind?

I am stunned that we're having a conversation like this. I can't think of a single person that has not at some point quoted something from Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Electric Company, "I'm only a bill on Capitol Hill." I mean, I still sing that song when I'm talking about something to do with our elected process.

And yet the current administration is trying to take away what public broadcasting is. I think, for so many people, they take it for granted. They know that it's there. They may not completely understand how we have it, how it's funded. They might flip the channel and see the programming and the asking for financial support. But a lot of us probably just know it's always going to be there.

And as I am known to do in the late evening before I go to sleep, I'm scrolling through social media and I happened on LinkedIn to see a video about the importance of protecting public media. So I reached out to Alice Farris and said, "hey, would you join us on the podcast and talk a little bit about this?"

That was a very passionate plea for the importance of understanding it. So I'm thrilled that she was available and could join us to talk about it. Alice, thank you for coming on. To get the conversation started, if you could share a little bit about yourself and why this is such an important issue for you.

Well, thank you, Abbie, for the invitation. I really do appreciate it. And as you mentioned, I'm Alice Ferris. I am the founding partner of GoalBusters Consulting based in Flagstaff, Arizona.

I have been working somehow with public media for about 35 years. It has been one of those things that has been a lifelong passion of mine, but also has been kind of the one common thread of my entire professional career. I started at Wisconsin Public Television, which is now known as PBS Wisconsin, and I have never lost my affiliation with a station or 2 or 3 or 10. So I've been working in public media for a very long time.

And as Adrian said in the introduction, public media right now is on the chopping block. It's one of the things that our administration is looking at for elimination--reduction or elimination of the funding from a federal perspective, which is challenging in and of itself. It's going to put the onus on the local stations to fundraise and do other things.

But it is such an important part of our community and it is so much more than, "can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street," right? There is so much more to public media than that particular type of programming.

So because it's been part of your personal passion and your professional career for so long, tell us more about the role of public media and why it is so important for us to protect this important part of our communication channels.

Well, first of all, public media has been under attack before. There have been consistent periodic attempts to reduce or eliminate federal funding for public media. And every single time in the 35 year association I've had with public media, it has been defeated in the past because people just like the three of us would go out there and say, "wait, I love public media and here's how I've used it in my own life." And Congress, congressional representatives, have responded with, "of course, you're right. We like public media, too."

I think this time feels different. This is the first time that I really have felt that there is a possibility that federal funding would be eliminated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public television and radio stations across the country. And part of it is just the strategy that was used this time is far more focused, far more draconian--because they have never, ever suggested giving back the money that has already been allocated.

So before I get into the logistics of how funding for public media works, I want to address the other part of your question, which is, "hey, why is this important?"

And it's not just about the programming. Because I think that's one of the things that can be challenging, is that we have focused for so long about the medium that is public television or the medium that is public radio. So it's the, "oh, I heard that on NPR," or "my kids love Sesame street," or in this case, "my kids love Daniel Tiger" or whatever the other program is. I also hear, "hey, I listen or watch the PBS News Hour every weekday." So those are the kinds of things that we typically will hear that are very programming focused.

But what people underestimate is, first of all, public broadcasting stations tend to be that backbone for other services that are being provided. So, for instance, if you're a teacher in a classroom and you are teaching about a particular topic, say, for instance, the American Revolution and the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, where do you get the teaching tools to be able to share information about that in the classroom?

Well, I will bet that coming up this fall, there will be classrooms that are showing pieces of Ken Burns American Revolution documentary, which will be released in the fall. I've had the privilege of seeing the opening act, the preamble, as he likes to call it, of the American Revolution film. I got chills. It was amazing. It was Ken Burns, but it was... It's gonna be one of those pieces that Ken Burns does. It's like Civil War series quality.

And classrooms are gonna use that to have free teaching tools to dramatize the importance of the American Revolution to their classrooms that wouldn't be possible without public media. So there are those educational tools that are that backbone. But then there are also things like, as Adrian mentioned, the emergency alert system. Where does that signal come from? If you are getting an alert on your phone, you might think, "oh, well, that's just coming from my phone." But that system, the backbone of that system, is built predominantly on public media stations.

Alice, I grew up in a radio station--not a public media station, but an independent nonprofit station that was down in the low end of the FM dial, just a couple of clicks or analog dial twists away from the affiliate station in my area. And I grew up with the tone of the Emergency Broadcast System.

And you're so right. What people don't understand is that there is a national infrastructure that includes civil defense and preparedness, emergency response, and includes so many things. And it's more than just an outdated legacy aspect of our public safety and information. It is a critical part of the way we do things with nothing else to replace it. I just don't think we realize. I'm so glad you're bringing up this point that this goes beyond the programming. This isn't about Big Bird. This isn't about, you know, some lefty jazz program or the dulcet tones of an interviewer. It's about a phenomenon that is bigger than that.

Yeah, I agree with that.

And so much of, for those of us that grew up this way, it is so much a part of our history of how we learned certain things. And I, you know, your point about the use of this content and the programming in the classroom.

On our most recent episode, we were talking about the Arizona Media Association's investment in education reporters at our media outlets, you know, and specifically to talk about education solutions. And it's because we are not able to provide the types of things we need for our education system. So teachers have to find alternative ways to get information and teaching tools that allow them to share valuable information, documentary programs and other things.

What will move people to be compelled to call their legislators, write letters, you know, we have to find that particular button to push that's going to make them care about what this is. But the broadcasting system has been around for what, 30, it seems 40 years, 50 years?

Over 50 years.

Yeah. And so many of us have grown up with that being part of our after-school or our weekend programming. And yet we know there are other things that we just don't understand or didn't realize that it was there.

So what is driving this? There's been lots of discussions about budget cuts and other things, funding issues with, you know, that are being talked about across this current administration. But why do you think they're pinpointing public broadcasting? I mean, why is this such a ... and why has it been in the past such an easy mark? Why isn't it just sort of embedded and left alone at this point?

It's an interesting question. Fundamentally it comes down to a problem that in many respects public media, non-commercial stations, have created themselves, which is ... the target is actually PBS and NPR and this administration's irritation with what they consider "biased leftist media."

There have been national studies, scientifically based, from universities, as recently published as April of 20 25, that stated that PBS and NPR continue to be some of the most trusted news entities in the country and that these entities are perceived as being valuable to people's information consumption and also being trusted news sources. So this idea of trust and community trust and public trust is really embedded into public media journalism.

However, this administration has determined that it is not favorable to the president, and so that's part of the attack. It is the "I'm going to silence the media that continually points out things that maybe I don't want people to hear about."

And then back to the situation we've created on our own, is that the vast majority of public media stations, radio and television, are affiliated with either NPR or PBS. Not every, as Adrian already mentioned, not every nonprofit radio station or television station is actually affiliated with NPR or PBS. But they could potentially be getting federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Because the way the Corporation for Public Broadcasting works is that they are in an independent corporation that happened to be chartered by the United States government. However, they are an independent corporation, so they can function similar to any other nonprofit organization. And the way they are funded is that they get an allocation from Congress, from the federal budget, that is supposed to be forward-funded two years.

And this specifically was put into the incorporation, the declaration of creating the Corporation, because they wanted to insulate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from political influence. So if they had an ability to protect that money, essentially forward funding at two years, then in theory they could weather some of these challenges through various administrations.

And the times that the CPB has come under attack have almost always been under Republican administrations. And most of the time you had plenty of people who were on the Republican side of the aisle who would say, "No, I appreciate public media in my community," especially those districts that were very rural or just very disconnected from other major metropolitan areas, or had high levels of indigenous or diverse populations. Because they know how important the public media entity is in their community to share the stories of their local community.

What's different this time is that this is the first time it's been proposed to essentially claw back the money that's already been allocated. So what that practically means for public radio and television stations is that if you are planning on your Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant to arrive October 1st as scheduled, you can assume that's not coming.

If the clawback happens, then money that's already been budgeted for fall of this year would not be issued, and that would be devastating for the vast majority of the public media entities.

Well, and we've seen a similar thing happen in science research. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes for Health, researchers with grants funded in part, often a large part, but in part with government funds, have had their programs stopped abruptly, their research frozen.

And I just don't know that we have a way to think about the dimensions of the down-side impact here.

More than 20 years ago, I was living in the Middle East and Africa, working to try to bring awareness to poverty, war, as a media relations spokesperson. And particularly in Darfur, in western Sudan, the big challenge we had was to try to get people to just wrap their heads around the scale of this crisis. I mean, it was so big, so many people displaced by the conflict.

We were always looking for metaphors or analogies that would help people understand that, for example, the region of Darfur is as large as the state of Texas. We're talking about a vast landscape. Or one time I was speaking live on the BBC from the middle of a refugee camp, and I would say, this was BBC Radio Oxford, and I would say, "I'm standing in the middle of a camp, and there are more people living here in this two square miles of desert than there are in the entire town of Oxford, including the colleges." Things of that nature.

So we're always looking for ways to try to get the scale across. I don't think we have good language to talk about what's at stake, what's the risk here, how much gets lost if these things go away, with the science research, with the educational programming, with all the ancillary services. How do you, Alice, think about the scale of what's being threatened?

In many respects, I don't necessarily think about the national scale of it as much. I think about the personal impacts. And so, for instance, KUYI Hopi Radio in Kiqötsmovi, Arizona. The vast majority of their budget for operating the radio station comes from their Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant. And what KUYI does is that they are the local voice for the Hopi nation. If you are in a school bus as a kid driving to school, they are probably playing KUYI on that school bus. And they are learning their native language because they have the Hopi Lavayi program that talks about the Hopi language and teaches them, "here's the word of the day," and that's as they're driving on the bus to go to school. If the Hopi Foundation, which is their licensee, lost their CPB grant, I don't know where they would come up with the money to replace that money that keeps the station on the air.

KGHR Navajo Public Radio in Tuba City is in a similar situation where they're licensed to Grey Hills Academy. So it's a high school. Where would they find $100,000 out of thin air to replace the money that runs that station?

And then, you know, just the very practical matter of KAWC and KOFA in Yuma, Arizona, which is one of my clients, where I've been their development director as a fractional staff person for almost 20 years. The amount of money that we generate for KAWC is about $200,000 a year. Their Corporation for Public Broadcasting Grant is about $200,000 a year. So if you asked me, how am I going to double fundraising between now and October, I couldn't give you an answer. I mean, if I knew how to double fundraising, I would have done it by now.

True.

We know that we could keep the station on the air, because the station is licensed to Arizona Western College and they are very supportive of having a public radio station. We can keep KAWC on the air. But what immediately gets impacted if we lose the CPB grant is the quality of the content that comes out of that radio signal.

As you said, if you knew how to double the amount of money you fundraised, you'd have done it already, right? And there are large and small organizations that when you think about public broadcasting, you have some larger entities in the major metropolitan cities that maybe have a little bit more influence in terms of their fundraising efforts and their donation drives and some of those other things.

But even that, it's a very, in the larger context of fundraising in today's world, it's difficult regardless of what we're trying to generate contributions from. And that's a long term solution to what's happening right away.

And I think your earlier point about, you know, this has always been a forward thinking funding program, right. That right now in 20 25, we are looking at what monies we'd be getting in '27 and '28. So we have time to plan. We have opportunities to evaluate our resources, put fundraising plans in place, whatever that might be. If it stops, and then if there is this potential to have to give it back, which is heartbreaking to think about because it is ... It's going to impact the delivery of the product. It's going to impact the individuals that are working there. It is a much bigger discussion around, you know, what we as consumers see. This is a whole other thing that's going to be happening.

And so as we're thinking about this conversation and, you know, if we all agree of the importance of what public media is to our communities and the impact that it can have in large and small communities across our state, what do we do?

What is our role as consumers of public media, of those that value the content and the programming and the resources? How do we make a difference in this discussion? What is it that we can do to prevent or at least prolong what this might be while solutions are being evaluated?

I think, number one is to think about how you personally use public media. And I want to take the national programming off the table for you. I want to challenge you to think about what does your local station provide to you? Maybe it's, "I love watching Horizon on Arizona PBS, because Ted Simons is going to tell me something insightful about something that's going on at the Capitol." Or maybe it's, "hey, I listen to KJZZ and I am a big fan of The Show, and I heard this one feature on something going on in Tempe."

Or maybe it's like I mentioned the indigenous stations. Maybe it's, in KAWC's case, we're doing the KAWC student newsroom, where, because Yuma and La Paz counties are news deserts, we're trying to grow our own journalists. We're trying to train young people who have never even thought about journalism as a career to become reporters because they're already embedded in the community. They already understand what it's like to live in southwestern Arizona near the US Mexico border.

I want you to think about the local service that you are getting from your public media entity. And then if you go to ProtectMyPublicMedia.org, there is a link there to reach out to your congressional delegation and to say, here's what's important to me about public media, because they will--maybe--listen to their constituents when they say it's important.

But the reason I want to take the national stuff off the table is that that's been the focus, that national programming. The attacks on NPR and PBS have been the way that we've gotten this far with this threat, this existential threat against public media. If we can focus on the what's happening locally, and why it's so important to have, and why it's so different than what the national programming is but is still committed to making our communities a better place, the better chance we have to continue federal support for public media.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Copper State of Mind. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share it with a colleague who might also find this podcast valuable. It's easy to do, just click the "Share" button in the app you're listening to now to pass it along. You can also follow Copper State of Mind in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app. We publish new episodes every other Friday.

Copper State of Mind is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, the oldest continuously operating PR firm in Arizona. The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix, and distributed by PHX.fm, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona. For all of us here at Speed of Story and PHX.fm, I'm Adrian McIntyre. Thanks for listening and for sharing the show with others if you choose to do so. We hope you'll join us again for another episode of Copper State of Mind.