A Bridge for Public Media
Public Media Bridge Fund Offers Support to Public Media Stations Most at Risk in the Wake of MAGA-Nazi Defunding.
To celebrate summer 2025, I am offering a paid support special. Until Labor Day, all paid support is 50% off forever. You can sign up for paid support or upgrade your current free subscription below. All paid support goes toward my teenage daughter’s future higher education.
Bad enough MAGA-Nazis and TACO have come for Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Ken Burns, All Things Considered, Fresh Air, PBS News Hour, Masterpiece and Antiques Roadshow. Their philistine and evil ways have also hit my undergraduate alma mater Eastern Illinois University (EIU).
On September 30 of this year, WEIU, the EIU public and student-run television station, will end its relationship with PBS. The MAGA-Nazi Reich’s financial slashing and burning of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the fiscal channel for public media that has already shut down, PBS and NPR have now impacted the Charleston, Illinois PBS college television station—one of many rural PBS stations now at risk of shuttering.
WEIU like The Daily Eastern News that I wrote for as an EIU print journalism major is a learning lab for student journalists, television producers and radio producers. Like alumni of The Daily Eastern News that have written for major publications and won notable awards, WEIU alumni have gone on to productive broadcasting careers. One of my ex-boyfriends from EIU worked for WEIU as a reporter and anchor and decades later won a local Emmy for his producing work at Chicago’s CBS station.
EIU did not want to stop its partnership with PBS. It found itself forced to make this difficult decision so its broadcast students will still have access to the production learning the WEIU-TV studio provides. To make up the financial loss of PBS funds, WEIU and EIU will turn toward grants and fundraising.
I am sure many of my fellow bluestockings like me feel sick about the MAGA-Nazi Reich destroying the United States’ public media. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR have existed for almost 60 years.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson as part of his Great Society initiative signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This created the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR. Gen Xers like me born in the 1970s have never known a world without PBS or Sesame Street. The callousness and harshness of ending the U.S.’s most profound societal contribution to education, culture, news, the humanities, history, literacy and the arts feel overwhelming and hopeless.
But Fred Rogers, whose Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood ran on PBS for 33 years and who testified before Congress about the need for funding PBS, said that in times of uncertainty and cruelty, always look for the helpers.
A helper right now is Public Media Company (PMC). In addition to individuals increasing their donations to PBS and NPR or starting new membership plans to sustain both entities, PMC has created the Public Media Bridge Fund (PMBF). PMBF aims to offer a lifeline, a “bridge”, to vulnerable local public media stations in rural and underserved urban communities.
Already the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation and Pivotal Ventures founded by Melinda French Gates have already pledged close to 37 million dollars for PMBF. These foundations encourage other foundations and individuals to donate as well. PMC continues to grow its bridge fund that would provide grants for local public media stations most at risk.
According to Emily Burack of Town & Country, PMC CEO Tim Isgitt stated that the fund will need at least 100 million dollars to be fully effective. As demoralizing as it is to live in the United States now, it is good to know helpers remain to offer life preservers and safety in this raging ocean of cruelty and ugliness.
If you are financially able, you can also donate to the PMBF here.