The New York Budgets

Tag: NPR

  • President Trump signed an executive order designed to cut federal funding to NPR and PBS

    President Trump signed an executive order designed to cut federal funding to NPR and PBS

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening seeking to prohibit federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order, which could be subject to legal challenge, called the broadcasters’ news coverage “biased and partisan.”

    It instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease providing direct funds to either broadcaster. It also orders CPB to cease indirect funding of the services through grants to local public radio and television stations.

    CPB is the main distributor of federal funds to public media. It receives about $535 million in federal funds per fiscal year, which it mostly spends on grants to hundreds of stations nationwide. The stations spend the grants on making their own programming or on buying programming from services such as NPR and PBS.

    CPB, created by an act of Congress in 1967, also sometimes provides direct grants to NPR and PBS to produce national programs.

    Thursday’s order instructs the CPB board to ensure that stations receiving its grants “do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”

    The board must “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” to NPR and PBS and “decline to provide future funding,” it says.

    It also instructs all federal agencies to “identify and terminate” any funding to the two broadcasters.

    Trump and his allies have long accused NPR and PBS of favoring progressive positions. The heads of each network were grilled in March over alleged liberal bias at a congressional hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves,” led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). Both executives rejected the accusation.

    “Each month, over 160 million television and online viewers explore the world through our trusted content,” Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, said during the hearing.

    DNARFP7R2ITE7OCMNBBNLU6P7A size normalized
    People rally outside the NPR headquarters in Washington on March 26 to demand Congress protect funding for public broadcasters. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    In an emailed statement, an NPR spokesperson said early Friday that “NPR’s editorial practices and decision-making are independent and free from outside influence.”

    “For more than 50 years, NPR has collaborated with local nonprofit public media organizations to fill critical needs for news and information in America’s communities,” the statement said, adding that “millions of Americans depend on NPR Member stations for rigorous, fact-based, public service journalism.”

    “Federal funding is essential to the work of public media and all public media stations,” it said.

    This week, CPB sued the Trump administration after it sent a letter to three board members attempting to terminate their positions. The lawsuit argues that the White House does not have authority over CPB because it is a nonprofit private corporation, not a federal agency. The lawsuit is ongoing, and Thursday’s order could be subject to a similarlegal challenge.

    Last month, White House officials said the administration would ask Congress to rescind funding that had already been allocated to CPB. In a statement at the time, the White House provided a list of examples of what it called biased content, such as an NPR article with facts about “queer animals” and a PBS documentary about a transgender teenager. It also accused the broadcasters of having “zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.”

    PBS and CPB did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment.

    Last month, Kerger said in a statement in response to Trump administration threats to rescind federal funding that “there’s nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress.”

    CPB contributes about 1 percent of NPR’s budget and funds a portion of the hundreds of stations that license NPR content, according to the broadcaster. PBS is owned by its local member stations, which are usually partially funded by CPB grants. About 16 percent of its funding comes from the government, the service told The Washington Post in January.

    An average of about one-eighth of local public-station funding comes from CPB, according to the corporation, with the remainder coming from sources such as donations and sponsorships.

  • The President’s Office Wants Congress to Take Away Funding From NPR and PBS

    The President’s Office Wants Congress to Take Away Funding From NPR and PBS

    The White House is planning to ask Congress to claw back more than $1 billion slated for public broadcasting in the United States, according to two people briefed on the plan, a move that could ultimately eliminate almost all federal support for NPR and PBS.

    The plan is to request that Congress rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-backed company that funds public media organizations across the United States, one of the people said. If Congress agrees, that will amount to about two years of the organization’s funding, nearly all of which goes to public broadcasters including NPR, PBS and their local member stations. The Trump administration isn’t planning to ask Congress to claw back about $100 million allocated for emergency communications.

    Government money accounts for a small part of the budgets at NPR and PBS, which also generate revenue through sponsorships and donations. Most of the government funding goes to local stations, which rely on it to finance their newsrooms and pay for programming.

    The proposal would be part of a broader rescission package, a formal request to Congress to rescind previously approved funds, that would also eliminate billions allocated to foreign aid, the two people said. The process is established under law, which gives the House and Senate 45 days to vote to approve the request after it is submitted. The White House plans to submit this rescission request in the coming weeks, the people said. If Congress does not approve the rescission request, the money must be spent as originally intended.

    The Trump administration’s proposal to defund public broadcasting comes amid sustained pressure on NPR and PBS from Republicans in Congress, who have intensified long-running attacks on the broadcasters. The chief executives of both organizations testified before Congress last month in a fiery hearing that played out along mostly partisan lines: Republicans assailed the executives for what they saw as liberal bias, and Democrats argued that the proceeding was a waste of time.

    The ask would also be the latest move by the Trump administration to exert pressure on media organizations. The administration is waging a legal battle with The Associated Press over its decision to exclude the wire service from the presidential press pool, breaking decades of precedent. Mr. Trump is also personally suing CBS News and The Des Moines Register, and the Federal Communications Commission has launched investigations into Comcast, PBS and NPR.

    Spokespeople for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR declined to comment.

    The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is “forward-funded” two years to insulate it from political maneuvering, and a sizable chunk of the money for 2025 has already been paid out to public broadcasters in the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    Public media executives have been planning for the possibility of having public funding clawed back for months. According to a document prepared by station directors this past fall, the immediate elimination of funding, while unlikely, would be “akin to an asteroid striking without warning.”

    “It is the highest risk scenario especially in a time in which the media ecosystem is rapidly changing,” the document said.

    Public media defenders say rural audiences would be hit the hardest if funding was cut from NPR and PBS stations. In very remote areas without broadband access, public radio and TV are among the few sources of news and entertainment.

    But those in favor of defunding say advances in technology have made those services obsolete. In an interview last month, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said residents in rural parts of her district had enough access to cellphone and internet services to keep them informed.

    “The bottom line here: NPR and PBS only have themselves to blame,” said Mike Gonzalez, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has argued publicly for defunding public media. “For the last 50 years, every Republican president has tried to defund them or reform them.”

    In 2011, NPR executives produced a secret report that explored what would happen if government funding was eliminated. According to the report, up to 18 percent of roughly 1,000 member stations across the United States would close, and $240 million would vanish from public radio. Stations in the Midwest, the South and the West would be most affected, and roughly 30 percent of listeners would lose access to NPR programming.

    One potential upside, according to the document: Cutting off federal funding would galvanize public radio supporters, leading to a sudden surge in donations to stations across the United States.