Congress cut public media funding. Now what?
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The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
KYUK is the oldest Native American-owned radio station in the country. It broadcasts morning newscasts in both English and Yup'ik, the local Indigenous language, to 56 remote communities in Southwest Alaska. When there’s a weather emergency or even just a local basketball game, these communities turn to KYUK for information. But soon, that could all change.
Late last week, Congress passed a rescissions bill that claws back the money set aside for public broadcasting for the next two years. For KYUK, this money represents close to 70 percent of its entire budget. Without it, the station could go dark.
Host Elahe Izadi speaks with KYUK’s interim general manager, Kristin Hall, about what the loss of public media funding could mean for her community. Later, Elahe speaks with media reporter Scott Nover about how after decades of talking about defunding public media, Republicans finally made it happen.
Today’s episode was produced by Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Sam Bair.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What you're hearing is a lifeline for a community in Alaska. |
| 0:09.8 | It's a newscast from the station KYUK. |
| 0:15.1 | The station is based in Bethel, Alaska. |
| 0:18.3 | It broadcasts in two languages, English and Yupik. That's the local indigenous |
| 0:24.0 | language you're hearing there. |
| 0:29.2 | KYUK is a small NPR member station. KYUK is a small NPR member station. It also has a TV side, a PBS member station. |
| 0:39.9 | And they've been doing this, |
| 0:41.4 | broadcasting in both languages |
| 0:43.1 | for decades. |
| 0:44.9 | Yuk in the Yupic language actually |
| 0:47.3 | means real person, |
| 0:49.5 | real people. That is why we chose |
| 0:51.5 | our call letters. So |
| 0:53.2 | we have yuk to yuk on Mondays, which is a call-in show. |
| 0:57.7 | Kristen Hall is the interim general manager of KYUK. |
| 1:01.4 | One of her favorite things to listen to on the station are there broadcasts of high school basketball games? |
| 1:07.5 | I'm not a fluent UPEC speaker, but the bilingual calling of basketball, it is like a very |
| 1:13.9 | cool experience. KYUK also provides essential information for people in this remote place, |
| 1:20.6 | like how to stay safe when getting around. The river that we lie on actually becomes almost like a U.S. highway in the wintertime when it freezes. |
| 1:31.1 | But in the spring and fall, the ice is thawing or still in the process of freezing. |
| 1:37.0 | So it can be dangerous to drive on. |
| 1:40.0 | So there are often holes or spots that we during our call-in shows will mark for each other to let each other know, hey, don't use this path, don't go near here. |
... |
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