A genius built Radio Bilingüe. Now Trump wants to harm public broadcasting | Opinion

Radio Bilingüe’s debut on July 4, 1980, was fueled by a Harvard graduate’s dogged pursuit of donations — including sales of menudo, a traditional Mexican dish featuring tripe — to launch a radio station for farmworkers.

When founder/co-executive director Hugo Morales sought federal funding to start Radio Bilingüe, his application was rejected by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “They didn’t see us as being financially viable or even relevant,” Morales said.

Today, Radio Bilingüe, with a $4 million budget, is the country’s largest Latino radio network with 29 owned-and-operated stations and 92 affiliates across the country, Puerto Rico and Canada. Its award-winning news programming, which focuses on Latino issues like health, immigration and education, reaches 500,000 unique listeners monthly.

The Trump administration is the big bad wolf in this non-fiction tale by taking away $1.1 billion that Congress had appropriated over the next two years for public broadcasting. That includes about $300,000 that Radio Bilingüe will lose.

Here is a genius — Morales was a 1994 recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and was given an honorary degree from Harvard in 2023 — who has devoted his life to serving the people whose work puts food on American tables, and a villain steps in to thwart those efforts?!

What Morales built is now threatened by the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the country’s public broadcasting. Last week, in a feckless capitulation, the Republican-led Congress abdicated its political power by clawing back previously allocated funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It cuts all federal dollars from NPR, PBS and member stations. There are more than 1,500 public radio and television stations in the country. The cuts were among $9 billion that Trump asked for, including for foreign aid.

Radio Bilingüe is an all-American story

In 1984, I was a reporter at The Modesto Bee when Radio Bilingüe launched KMPO 88.7 FM. I was immediately impressed by its programming, which was mostly in Spanish.

The bedrock of Radio Bilingüe’s programming is its musical offerings, ranging from mariachi favorites on midweek mornings to Tejano music on Saturdays to Oaxacan traditional sounds on Sundays. It has offered programming in Hmong, Filipino and Portuguese, and sponsored a popular mariachi festival that featured Mariachi Vargas de Tecatitlán and other greats while providing workshops for aspiring musicians.

In all the decades I’ve been listening to — and admiring — the network’s programming, I have yet to hear biased information. There is information for listeners about their rights, access to public benefits they qualify for, presentations by healthcare professionals, tips on how to make sure the Census counts you and summaries of new laws. Essentially, Radio Bilingüe has informed its listeners.

The clawback of dollars meant to help public broadcasters borders on meanness. Three months ago, Radio Bilingüe negotiated a $1.1 million grant from the CPB to upgrade its broadcasting equipment and was waiting for final approval before the grant was canceled.

“I was so confident we were going to get that grant because the priority was going to be non-English-speaking, rural services,” Morales told me from his office in southeast Fresno.

In 1996, CBP grants accounted for two-thirds of Radio Bilingüe’s budget. However, the radio’s board of directors felt so uncomfortable about relying too much on federal funding that it asked Morales to minimize that revenue stream.

That move was wise.

So was how Morales structured compensation for his employees. He’s paid just north of $100,000 a year, a fraction of what executive directors of similar public radio networks receive.

Morales is uncertain how much his radio stations will pay in music royalties that the CPB negotiates as a blanket licensing agreement. Plus, he has aging broadcast equipment that must be upgraded.

Trump’s war on “biased media”

“Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down,” said CPB President/CEO Patricia Harrison in a statement. “Parents will have fewer high-quality learning resources available for their children. “Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, counties and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives.

“Cutting federal funding could also put Americans at risk of losing national and local emergency alerts that serve as a lifeline to many Americans in times of severe need.”

Congress had appropriated the funds for CPB over the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years. However, Trump, in a May 1 executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” said neither NPR nor PBS present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” Trump did not offer any proof.

That perceived political bias will harm public radio stations such as Radio Bilingüe and Fresno’s KVPR 89.3 and 89.1.

“Public radio is an essential part of America’s civic infrastructure,” said Joe Moore, KVPR president/general manager, in a statement. He expects a shortfall of about $175,000.

Is the Trump administration concerned? No. White House Deputy Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told Politico, “Democratic paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don’t deserve taxpayer subsidies, and NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive on their own. Unfortunately for them, their only lifeline was taxpayer dollars, and that ended when President Trump was sworn in.”

Radio Bilingüe concluded its annual fundraising campaign this past weekend, and expects about $30,000 in contributions from its listeners who, unlike Trump, appreciate the value of a radio station that respects them.

You can pledge here: radiobilingue.org/en/pledge-drive-2025