cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6189669
Every summer, the media executive Jaclyn Sallee travels from Anchorage to south-west Alaska to harvest salmon and share it with her Indigenous Alaskan, Inupiaq community. On that annual trip this July, Sallee was standing on the bank of King Salmon River when she received a distressing text message from one of her employees at Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, an Alaska Native media organization.
Donald Trump had signed into law the rescission of $1.1bn to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a non-profit corporation that funds more than 1500 local public television and radio stations around the nation. Shortly after, CPB announced that it will close most of its operations on 30 September. As the president and CEO of Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and the urban Indigenous radio station KNBA, Sallee has programs that depend on CPB funding.
Public radio offers a critical lifeline for rural Indigenous communities, many of whom lack access to landlines or cellular service. Native stations provide local news, emergency alerts about the weather, and language preservation.