Trump's Plan to Defund Public Media Threatens Critical Programming in Spanish and Other Languages

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s plan to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be extra damaging to non-English-language media that rely on federal funds to inform and educate their audiences, according to public media leaders contacted by Free Press Action. On April 14, the Trump administration leaked to the press a plan to eliminate more than $1 billion in already-approved federal funding for the CPB. The White House will be pressuring Congress to move quickly and vote to claw back funding that both chambers approved during an earlier budget vote. 

This action will impact hundreds of local NPR and PBS stations across the country — and will be deeply felt across Spanish-language programming and other non-English content, public-media leaders tell Free Press Action.

Local news, cultural programming, educational shows and public-service broadcasts are essential to millions of people who either don’t speak English fluently or prefer to receive information in their native languages. According to the CPB, at least 77 public-media stations in 30 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia offer Spanish-language programming. There is also programming in Haitian Creole, Navajo, Vietnamese and many other languages. The United States is now the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, with more than 57.4 million people who form part of this community.

Julio Ricardo Varela, award-winning journalist and senior director of marketing and communications at Free Press Action, said: 

“Cutting funding for public media directly impacts communities that already face barriers to accessing reliable news and information. Too often, political leaders forget that we are a multilingual nation. Programming in Spanish and other languages is not a luxury. It’s an essential public service. These voices cannot be left out. Defending the public-media system means defending the multilingual democracy we already are.”