The end of federal funding for NPR stations cuts deep in Trump country

In the winding mountain roads of Pocahontas County, W.Va., a reliable cell signal is a myth and broadband internet is a distant promise. Here, the radio isn’t for background noise; it’s a lifeline.

For decades, Allegheny Mountain Radio has been the connective tissue for this sprawling, isolated community. It’s where you hear about a water main break, a missing pet, or the funeral time for a neighbor you didn’t know had died. It’s the sound of home.

As Jay Garber, the mayor of Monterey, Va., told NPR, which has covered the threat to local NPR stations in Trump country, “We have a newspaper that’s printed once a week, so without the radio station, we’re kind of in the blind here, locally.”

On Oct. 1, that essential service and hundreds like it across the nation faced an existential threat. The elimination of all federal funding for public broadcasting, a policy championed by President Donald Trump, officially went into effect.

It’s beyond bizarre that Trump’s fanatical zeal to end federal funding for NPR is going to devastate local rural radio stations that are a lifeline in Trump country. But here we are.

Why did Trump and the GOP end federal funding for NPR? It’s liberal propaganda, Trump and GOP members of Congress said repeatedly.

The reality is a cruel irony: The policy’s most devastating impact is not being felt in the coastal cities of its political caricature but in the small towns and rural counties of Trump’s own heartland. It is a self-inflicted wound on the some of the communities that delivered him the presidency.

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-end-of-federal-funding-for-npr