NPR, PBS federal cuts: How Long Island, NYC stations are being impacted

Public radio and television stations with a vast Long Island audience say they are facing significant funding gaps and assessing ways to move forward after the Republican-led Congress' approval of more than $1 billion in cuts targeting NPR and PBS.

Neal Shapiro, president and CEO at The WNET Group, part of the Public Broadcasting System and the parent company to Long Island-based WLIW, said the cuts will have a “devastating impact on all public media stations.”

Last week, Congress approved a rescission package that pulls back funding for 2026 and 2027 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit that funnels upward of 70% of its resources to more than 1,000 community-owned public media organizations, according to its website. The package also claws back roughly $8 billion in funding for foreign assistance.

About 10% of The WNET Group’s operating budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, Shapiro said in a statement sent to Newsday on Monday, noting “we will not be able to make up the loss of all those funds.”

“We are currently assessing how we move forward in this new reality,” Shapiro said.

Experts fear the funding cuts to public media could be disastrous, leading to the closure of news outlets in places where local options are scarce and there are fewer emergency alerts. Funding from the federal government averages roughly 1% of NPR’s budget, about 8% to 10% of public radio stations’ and nearly 15% of PBS' along with its member stations, NPR reported.

Congress’ approval of the funding cuts comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May saying NPR and PBS were unfair and biased and calling for the CPB to stop funding them.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump's executive order stated.

Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, called the funding cuts “an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions.”

“If a station doesn't survive this sudden turn by Congress, a vital stitch in our American fabric will be gone for good,” she said in a statement after Congress approved the cuts.

At other public radio stations with significant Long Island viewers and listeners, the congressional cuts have left them trying to fill significant funding gaps.

WSHU in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which includes substantial news reporting on Long Island, gets about 7% of its budget from the federal government, according to station manager Janice Portentoso.

The clawback “affects us this current year — we will have to replace up to $500,000 that was already budgeted for this year,” she said in an emailed statement.

At New York Public Radio, which includes WNYC, the Gothamist website and several other media outlets, the cuts have meant a loss of roughly $3 million annually, which represents about 4% of its funding.

LaFontaine Oliver, president and CEO of New York Public Radio, said in a phone interview the organization had been preparing for the loss of funding and emphasizing fundraising, which has led to two overperforming campaigns.

Currently, New York Public Radio is not planning on cutting or changing programs, but Oliver remained concerned that smaller outlets could shutter. He’s also thinking about other aspects, such as the future of music rights that are paid through federal funding.

Despite the precarity facing New York Public Radio, the funding cuts do not “reduce the demand that our communities have for the type of educational information or cultural programming that we produce,” he said.

“We're going to prioritize really protecting those core services as much as we can,” said Oliver, who is shifting into the role of executive chair. “Certainly, there's kind of a canopy of uncertainty at this moment, and we are all still really trying to assess what [are] the full implications of this loss of federal funding.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith is a general assignment reporter for Newsday. She previously worked at USA TODAY and is an alum of Howard University.