Undergraduate Law Review at Florida State University

Public Media Stolen from the Public: The Importance of Public Media Broadcasting in an Era of Misinformation

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by

Undergraduate Law Review at FSU
in

Writer: Kyla Hickcox

Article Editor: Larissa Todd

Associate Editors: Alaina Babb & Kelsie Fernandez

Over the past several generations, many children have shared the experience of learning from public radio and television stations like Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and National Public Radio (NPR) in their living rooms. Such programs have educated children and informed adults, regardless of background or demographic, while consistently maintaining the authority to meet local communities’ needs. The wide reach of these services is evidenced by bills such as the Independent Television Service Inc. Articles of Incorporation of 1989, which required program servicing to expand diversity and address the needs of underserved audiences.1 The public broadcasting industry has appealed to large audiences in the United States since the 1930s. 

Even further, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 established a system of publicly available, free programming, called the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB).2 This Act enshrined the federal government’s obligation to support public broadcasting in its effort to provide educational, cultural, and emergency services across the nation. The recent federal defunding of public media programs made possible by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, including NPR, CBS, and local stations across the United States, has serious implications for the accessibility of news and information. Public media should be federally protected because it guards against misinformation, safeguards rural communities, and shields them from disaster impacts. 

Public media broadcasting provides an important barrier against rampant misinformation. Over the past few decades, rhetoric dismissing the validity of news and media has grown exponentially. Distrust of media has become an increasingly salient issue for political candidates, with particular bias shown against the biggest organizations, such as Cable News Network (CNN), The New York Times, and Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company (MSNBC). Instead of encouraging neutral or moderate coverage, these sites can push many of their viewers into adopting more extreme beliefs in line with their existing views, which can lead to distrust and, therefore, avoidance by a potential audience. Although some believe that large networks appear biased or inaccurate, public media has been found to generate more trust with citizens. In a national poll done in July of 2025, 53% of people felt they trusted the impartiality and accuracy of public media; however, only 35% felt trust in national news.3 In a polarized time, public media inspires trust from audiences regardless of fears of national news credibility. 

In an era where trust in the media is fragile, protecting public media broadcasting that inspires increased trust from viewers is vital. Since local public broadcast stations operate far more independently than private firms, they largely have control over their content, allowing them to cover what is most relevant to their communities.4 Thus, citizens have established trust and security in the coverage public broadcasting provides, providing a service that cannot be easily replicated or replaced. In this way, public broadcasting is critical to reducing misinformation and engaging civic communities.  

Beyond informing local communities, public media also serves a critical part in protecting rural communities. Nearly 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural communities, including farmland and reservations, where there is often limited or comparatively less access to national news coverage than Americans in urban demographics.5 Such resources include services like emergency warnings, evacuation instructions, and emergency weather reports, which are often critically delivered through public media channels. Since public media broadcasts’ influence extends to 99% of Americans, it can be dangerous to limit or interfere with public media, especially for places like rural communities where locals may only have access to one to two stations.6 

In these rural areas, local public broadcasting is not simply important but can be critical for survival. Public media channels and radio stations provide emergency alerts in reservations for severe storms and missing persons.7 In 2024, there was a two-week outage of internet and cell service in Sitka, Alaska, but a local, publicly funded radio station, KCAW, expanded emergency service to keep citizens safe and informed.8 In the case of remote areas like Sitka, local news is not supplementary to national coverage—it is the entirety of what whole communities can rely on. Cases like these show that publicly funded local stations serve to publicize safety protocols, shelter resources, and connect communities separated by dire conditions. 

The impacts of defunding vital emergency service resources have historically led to tragedy, as seen in the case of the Camp Mystic flooding in Texas. An all-girls youth summer camp suffered the horrific loss of 27 people, 25 of them being children, after severe flooding of the Guadalupe River in July of 2025.9 In the aftermath of this tragedy, many emergency protocol oversights became clear, primarily that defunding of the National Weather Service likely prevented local weather stations from making accurate forecasts on the severity of flooding anticipated.10 Indiscriminate and broad cuts to local services have proven to disastrously impact on proper response in emergency situations. Local media have the proximity and reliability to protect their communities as long as their funding allows them to, and limits to that funding should be taken with as much severity as the dire impacts of their loss. 

Despite a long history of funding and the necessity of public broadcasting, significant budget cuts threaten the survival of vital stations nationwide. In July of 2025, House Republicans approved the Trump administration’s proposal to cut $1 billion from the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public broadcasting stations such as NPR and PBS.11 This reduction proves threatening to the many Americans who rely on public broadcasting for their news, cultural preservation, and survival. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting stated that this decision would likely have “profound, lasting, negative consequences for every American,” with even some members of Congress who voted for the measure expressing similar concerns about emergency alerts in rural areas.12 Despite the talking point that media misinformation presents in the current political climate, there remains bipartisan support for public media and the vital services it provides. 

Public media is an indispensable resource for diverse people and communities across the nation. Its value can be diminished on the basis of perceived cost burdens or merely a lack of understanding of its function. However, public media provides vital protection against misinformation, providing accessible news reporting regardless of income or geographic location. The trust viewers place in public media is proven to be unreplicated by national stations, most of which cannot possibly meet the individualized needs of diverse communities. Furthermore, rural communities often lack access to a majority of national stations, heavily relying on local public news to deliver the information that becomes isolated and unreachable without protected public media. Public media is both a preserver of widespread and widely utilized information and an advocate for all those who rely on this information to survive. Substantial cuts to public media funding jeopardize the millions that rely on their coverage, and deprive viewers of a tool that has informed and protected them for nearly a hundred years. Public broadcasting must be protected and supported, or lawmakers risk leaving millions left in the dark. 

  1.  Independent Television Service, Independent Television Service Inc. Articles of Incorporation, 1989, Current (Sept. 1989), https://www.current.org/1989/09/independent-television-service-inc-articles-incorporation-1989/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU).  ↩︎
  2.  Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, 47 U.S.C. §§ 396–399 (1967). ↩︎
  3. Stephanie Martin, PBS and NPR Are Generally Unbiased and Independent of Government Propaganda, Alaska Beacon, (July 2025), https://www.alaskabeacon.com/2025/07/22/pbs-and-npr-are-generally-unbiased-and-independent-of-government-propaganda/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  4. Id. ↩︎
  5. U.S. Census Bureau, America Counts. One in Five Americans Live in Rural Areas, United States Census Bureau, (Aug. 2024), https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  6. Alex Tekip, Ask The Expert: Why Federal Funding for Public Media Is Critical for Communities, Michigan State University, (May 2025), https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2025/05/ask-the-expert-why-federal-funding-for-public-media-is-critical-for-communities (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  7. Kennedy Satterfield & Morgan Gray, Public Radio at Risk: What’s at Stake for Tribal and Rural Communities, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, (July 2025), https://aipi.asu.edu/blog/2025/07/public-radio-risk-whats-stake-tribal-and-rural-communities (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  8. Id. ↩︎
  9. Dominic Walsh, New Details about Camp Mystic Flood Response Could Play Role in Wrongful Death Lawsuits, Houston Public Media, (Jan. 2026), https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/flooding/2026/01/17/541032/911-camp-mystic-lawsuit-texas-hill-country-flood/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  10. Mike Beasley, The Silence Before the Storm: How Budget Cuts and Denial Are Killing Americans, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, (July 2025), https://www.fusee.org/fusee/camp-mystic (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  11. Cailtin Yilek, House Passes Trump’s Request to Rescind Foreign Aid, Public Media Funding After Epstein Fallout Delays Vote, CBS News, (July 2025), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-rescissions-foreign-aid-public-media/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  12. Id. ↩︎

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