Katherine Maher has been president and CEO of National Public Radio for just over a year. She was among several public broadcasting executives questioned by members of a new House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was examining the role of federal funding for public broadcasters in both radio and television.
Maher cited KCAW, which is known locally as “Raven Radio,” for the essential part it played in disseminating information during the 16-day internet outage in 2024.
The question was posed by committee member Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
Rep. Lynch: “Ms. Maher, I’d like you to focus on the work that public media is doing in relation to public safety communications. How important is this function of public broadcast media, particularly I’m talking about the most rural, most remote communities in this country?”
Maher: “Thank you so much, Congressman. We are part of the National Next Generation Warning System for which we’ve received a significant investment over the course of the last few years, and many thanks to Congress for supporting that appropriation. Our stations are busy implementing that across the nation. We also are part of the national or, sorry excuse me, the statewide emergency plans for more than 20 states. You’ll see the importance and value of public radio, in particular when we face climate, or, sorry excuse me, extreme weather. For example, weather in Ashland (sic), North Carolina, recently Blue Ridge Public Radio was the only news information source available for nearly two weeks as people struggled with outages of water and electricity, and certainly outages of cell phones and internet. Recently as well, my colleague from Alaska would be able to speak to Raven Public Media, which had a very similar experience of two weeks of outages in which the local media station was again the only source of information for that community. When everything else goes down, public radio is there available to first responders to be able to communicate directly about issues of harm, and to ensure the public has access to vital critical information.”
The “colleague from Alaska” referred to by Maher was Alaska Public Media CEO Ed Ulman – which likely explains Maher’s mashup of “Raven Public Media.” Ulman directed the attention of committee members to the unique role of public broadcasting in the state, where commercial media has limited reach.
“In many parts of Alaska and communities throughout the country, public media is often the only locally operated, locally controlled Broadcasting Service. We are more than nice to have. We are essential, especially in remote and rural places where commercial broadcasting cannot succeed. We provide professional, potentially life saving warnings and alerts that are crucial for Alaskans who face threats ranging from extreme weather to earthquakes, landslides and even volcanoes,” Ulman testified.
The 20 Democratic members of the committee were generally friendly to the public broadcasting executives, asking probing questions about the scope of services and the importance of freely-available nonpartisan news. Majority Republican members, however, were far more hostile to the panel, suggesting that NPR – in particular – had developed an editorial bias over the last three decades.
