Tolkkinen: Did I like public radio? It felt like a trick question.

During the pandemic, at a rural Minnesota gathering to air concerns about another impending widescale business shutdown, a MAGA supporter engaged me in conversation.

We were in an Ottertail restaurant, and I was there as a journalist.

During our talk, she asked me if I liked public radio.

The question gave me pause. It wasn’t an innocuous question, or a simple one. It wasn’t like asking if I liked baseball or gardening or scary movies.

It was like being an omnivore at a vegan gathering and asked if you eat hamburgers.

If I admitted to loving public radio, then I would confirm to her that I was the enemy — a godless leftist who hated the flag, private enterprise, and white people. If I despised public radio as she did, then there was hope for me.

I happened to enjoy public radio (as well as our flag, private enterprise and white people, for the most part), but I kept silent because I was there to document their concerns, not talk about myself.

The antipathy some in rural Minnesota feel toward public media may soon pay off. Now that Republicans control all branches of the federal government, they have once again launched an all-out assault on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for not just PBS, MPR and NPR, but a variety of programming and many small radio stations that use public airwaves in greater Minnesota. The House has already approved defunding CPB and the Senate is expected to vote this month.

On the brink are radio stations on White Earth Reservation and Thief River Falls, as well as others that might have to lay off workers and then become too small to qualify for state funding.

To be sure, there are plenty of rural Minnesotans who love and rely on public radio stations. Last month, protesters rallied around Lakeland PBS in Bemidji, holding “Save PBS” signs and singing the Sesame Street theme song.

But the majority of those who live in greater Minnesota voted for President Donald Trump, who issued an executive order May 1 to defund public airwaves, calling it biased.

This order lands greater Minnesota and much of rural America in a bind, as many commercial radio stations have consolidated, leaving many areas where public radio is the sole radio source of local content.

Joel Glaser, president and CEO of the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations, said broadcasters have been working harder to ensure that all voices are heard. A story about several Planned Parenthood clinics closing in Minnesota was delayed in order to include comment from abortion opponents, he said.

“We should be airing all voices,” he said. “It’s not our place to pick one side or another.”

Public media probably does tilt left in some of its content. Niijii Radio, the White Earth station, often airs the liberal program “Democracy Now!” for instance.

A year ago, then-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner shocked the journalism world by accusing the venerable organization of becoming increasingly narrow-minded and reflexively one-sided. Among his accusations was that they avoided covering the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop for fear it would help Trump win re-election.

Well, shame on public radio. I want the Hunter Biden laptop stories. Don’t air baseless conspiracy theories, but don’t pander to me, either.

Public radio’s unwillingness to dig into some stories is lamentable. But that’s not its biggest problem.

Its biggest problem is that instead of pushing for reform, conservatives want to defund it entirely.

“NPR has turned into nothing more than a one-sided leftist propaganda outlet,” NewsMax anchor Bob Brooks pronounced in May. The same month, a Breitbart headline called NPR “far left.” (I suspect President Ronald Reagan himself would be to the left of those organizations; he granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.) In June, FoxNews published commentary calling for pulling the plug on NPR and PBS.

While these attacks on public media are laughably hypocritical, given these organizations’ own shameless biases, they reach their base.

Anti-public broadcasting sentiment has been simmering for years among conservatives. More than a decade ago, two super smart Christian conservative friends told me they could hear political bias come through in the tone of NPR and MPR voices.

I hadn’t noticed, but then I hadn’t been listening for it, either. I started, but I still couldn’t hear it.

No doubt, public radio is flawed, but I can’t help but think that its own high-quality programming works against it; it is so superior to the endless commercial breaks, mindless chitchat and inflammatory commentary typical of commercial radio that it irks some conservatives to know that something funded with public tax dollars outperforms private enterprise.

Who else on the airwaves is providing in-depth looks at the origin of words, tool use among killer whales, or why we tell unnecessary lies? Certainly not commercial radio. There’s a whole world of programming on public media beyond politics, and it shows what can be done when a radio station is not beholden to private investors.

So, left-leaning? Sure, at times.

But taxpayers routinely pay for things they don’t agree with, like war, corporate tax breaks, private religious schools, ICE, and more.

We do it because we have give and take in this society. Alas, those who want to kill funding for public media seem to be all take and no give.