With public funding to NPR and PBS in the Trump administration's crosshairs, a group of philanthropies has announced it's got nearly $37 million to help keep public media above water, per the Hill. According to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the organizations involved, $26.5 million will be funneled toward a philanthropic "bridge fund" run by Public Media Company that will offer grants and low-interest loans to the nation's most vulnerable public TV and radio stations. The MacArthur Foundation, meanwhile, will pony up another $10 million for "direct support to public media stations, programs, and organizations."
Other groups involved include the Ford Foundation, Schmidt Family Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Pivotal, a venture led by Melinda French Gates, per the Washington Post. "Local public media stations are trusted community anchors that connect people to vital news, culture, and civic life," Knight Foundation CEO Maribel Perez Wadsworth says in the group's statement. "This is an urgent moment that calls for bold action."
The move comes after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds PBS and NPR, lost more than $1 billion in federal monies. That loss "will have dire impacts on the nation's more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations," the Knight Foundation says in its release, noting that about 115 stations that serve 43 million people will lose more than 30% of their budget due to the cuts. The Public Media Bridge Fund says grant eligibility and other criteria should be hammered out by late next month, at which point local leaders will receive word of funding opportunities, per the Hill.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
