Eli Crane Votes to Gut Funding For Tribal Radio Stations In His District [Arizona Daily Star]

Vulnerable Republican Eli Crane is in the hot seat after voting to gut funding for tribal radio stations that can serve as “the sole source of news and information,” including public safety and emergency alerts, for indigenous communities in his district.

Multiple stations in Crane’s district, including KUYI on the Hopi Reservation and KGHR on the Navajo Nation, rely on the funding Crane voted to gut for roughly half their revenue.

Crane’s decision to “jeopardize” tribal radio comes just weeks after he cast the deciding vote to rip health care away from native communities to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Two counties that Crane represents, Apache County and Navajo County, have among the highest shares of seniors on Medicaid in the U.S.

From DCCC Spokesperson Lindsay Reilly
“Eli Crane consistently votes against what tribal communities in his district need, threatening their access to affordable health care and crucial public broadcasts that save lives and could help solve cases of missing and murdered indigenous people. Arizona’s native communities deserve a leader who will fight for them, and they’ll hold Crane accountable next November.”

Arizona Daily Sun: Tribal radio stations and a new emergency alert threatened by possible cuts to public broadcast funds in Northern Arizona

• A bill to revoke already allocated federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) could jeopardize northern Arizona radio stations serving tribal communities and undermine the effectiveness of a new national alert system intended to help address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
• Among those are 36 radio stations broadcasting to tribal lands — including four in Arizona — receiving community service grants to support their work.
• For those stations, CPB funding makes up anywhere from 30% to 70% of their annual budget, and a withdrawal of federal support could be a huge setback.
• Many Native American reservations face connectivity gaps — limited broadband internet access, patchy cell phone service or both — and radio broadcasts provide a free source of news and information with minimal technological barriers.
• That includes urgent public safety notices such as flash flood or severe weather warnings, updates on the COVID-19 pandemic and missing person alerts.
• KUYI Radio, which transmits from Antelope Mesa on the Hopi Reservation… has “heavily relied on CPB funding since the beginning,” Molina said.
• This year, CPB grants comprise 48.3% of KUYI’s revenue.
• “Other than a local, smaller newspaper that just services three out of 12 villages, KUYI is now the sole source of news and information for the Hopi community,” Molina said.
• “Quite frankly, KGHR [broadcasting from Tuba City on the Navajo Nation] would not be in existence without the CPB funding,” the most recent station activity summary states.
• [KGHR] received approximately $138,000 from CPB in 2022 and $148,000 in 2023. In both years, those grants made up slightly less than half of the station’s total revenue.
• “We are in news deserts,” she said. “We operate because there’s nothing else out there.”

New emergency alert could be undermined

• Taylor is particularly concerned about how cuts to Native-operated radio stations would compromise the effectiveness of the new Missing and Endangered Persons (MEP) alert, set to debut across the U.S. and its territories this fall.
• Adding that code to the system was intended to provide a uniform method for alerting the public and law enforcement about missing persons, similar to an Amber Alert.
• In a 2023 survey of Native voters’ priorities, the problem of missing and murdered persons was the highest-ranked issue.
• All six Republicans – David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Abraham Hamadeh and Paul Gosar – voted for it.

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