NPR and PBS push back against Trump's order to cut funding: 'This could be devastating'
Source: The Guardian
Sun 4 May 2025 14.57 EDT
Last modified on Sun 4 May 2025 17.23 EDT
The heads of embattled US public broadcasters, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), defended themselves against efforts by the Trump administration to cut off taxpayer funding, with both telling a Sunday political talk show they were looking at legal options.
PBS’s chief executive, Paula Kerger, told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are “different this time”. Kerger said: “They’re coming after us on many different ways … we have never seen a circumstance like this, and obviously we’re going to be pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.”
Donald Trump last week issued an executive order blocking NPR and PBS from receiving taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The White House said that unlike in 1967, when the corporation was established, the media landscape is now filled with news options and the concept of government funded news media was “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence”.
The order added: “Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” On Sunday, Kerger warned that some stations in smaller communities across the US could lose 40 to 50% of their funding. “And for them, it’s existential, and that’s what’s at risk if this funding goes away,” she said.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/04/npr-pbs-funding-trump-order
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