Protesters rally at Lakeland PBS in Bemidji to reject Trump’s attack on public broadcasting

BEMIDJI - Supporters holding “Save PBS” signs and singing the Sesame Street theme song were met with the near-constant honking of drivers at a busy intersection in Bemidji on Tuesday.

Lakeland PBS in Bemidji recently joined the national PBS organization as a plaintiff in its lawsuit against President Donald Trump for his executive order killing federal funding for public broadcasting. It is the only station in the country to join the suit.

“We know how important the station is to the locals here, and without that funding, it will go away,” said Nancy Haugen of the organization Indivisible Bemidji, which hosted the protest. “So we are really wanting to tell Lakeland that we’re proud of them for joining in the lawsuit.”

Lakeland PBS, formally known as KAWE, began operating in 1979 and also owns KAWB in Brainerd. Between those two stations, viewership is over 490,000 people in a 7,500-square-mile region across north-central Minnesota spanning from Little Falls to International Falls.

“There are no towns or cities with a population greater than 20,000 people in Lakeland PBS’s service area, which includes some of the poorest counties in Minnesota and several tribal reservations,” the lawsuit states. “Without Lakeland PBS, many residents in its coverage area would have no access to television covering local issues.”

Sixth-grader Zaley Carlson said she would really miss PBS and her favorite shows like “Arthur” and “Molly of Denali.” She said PBS Kids “is probably the only thing I watch on TV.”

“I really care about PBS Kids, and I think it’s a good cause,” the 11-year-old said at the protest she attended with her grandma, Jean Weyer.

Betty Hanson, 98, a former photographer who studied and researched journalism at the University of Minnesota, attended the protest in a wheelchair.

“When we moved up here from Twin Cities, we could just barely get public television and public radio,” Hanson said, adding that public radio usually cut out around Brainerd. “We hung onto it in our cars as long as we could.”

But for the past 45 years, she’s had Lakeland PBS to provide her with programming and essential information, as well as MPR and NPR.

PBS and NPR are suing Trump for his May 1 executive order killing public broadcasting funding. The order, titled Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media, states that unlike in 1967 when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was founded, the media landscape today is “abundant, diverse, and innovative,” and claims that government funding of news media is “outdated and unnecessary” and “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

“... Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage,” the order said.

Trump on social media has called NPR and PBS “THE RADICAL LEFT MONSTERS.” He is asking Congress to take back $1.1 billion it has set aside for public broadcasting over the next two years.

The PBS and Lakeland PBS lawsuit challenges “an unprecedented presidential directive attacking PBS and its member stations in a manner that will upend public television,“ the lawsuit states.

Lakeland PBS operates on an annual budget of $2.7 million. Of that, roughly $1 million, or 37%, comes from federal grants awarded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Jeff Hanks, the CEO of Lakeland PBS, started working for the station 32 years ago as a producer. He said his small crew of four reporters covers a vast area for nightly newscasts.

For the past 25 years, “Lakeland News” has been the region’s only program covering local news, weather and sports, Hanks said. Reporters attend city council and school board meetings and uplift otherwise overlooked stories like the Blackduck High School softball team reaching the state tournament for the first time this spring.

“Those type of stories, they matter to people, and we’re consistently bringing that to them,” Hanks said. He said the station can’t afford to lose “irreplaceable” federal funding.

Hanks couldn’t comment on the lawsuit but said he was thankful for the show of support Tuesday.

“This event was not sanctioned or organized by Lakeland PBS in any way, but we greatly appreciate [them] getting the word out about how important public media is to north-central Minnesota,” he said.

“We’ve had support from all sides of the aisle helping us support what we’re doing here at Lakeland PBS,” Hanks said, adding that the station was built a decade ago with a state bonding grant.

Legal counsel to PBS and Lakeland PBS, Washington-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, did not respond to requests for comment.

PBS and Lakeland argue in the lawsuit that Trump’s executive order violates the First Amendment and “smacks of retaliation for, among other things, perceived political slights in news coverage.”

For more than half a century, PBS has provided award-winning educational, cultural, scientific and public affairs programming like “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Sesame Street,” “Nova,” “Frontline” and numerous Ken Burns films.

“Yet ... the President declared that government funding of private sources of non-commercial media is ‘corrosive,’ and singled out PBS (alongside National Public Radio) as failing to provide ‘fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news,’” the lawsuit states.

PBS and Lakeland PBS dispute those assertions “in the strongest possible terms,” according to the lawsuit.

“But regardless of any policy disagreements over the role of public television, our Constitution and laws forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS’s programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.”