On Thursday, President Donald Trump took a step that conservatives had hoped for through many presidencies by issuing an executive order to end taxpayer funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
The directive directs the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop all federal funding to both outlets.
In mid-April, the White House released a report outlining its complaints about the two nonprofit public broadcasting organizations and proposed eliminating taxpayer funding for them.
“For years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news,’” the report stated.
Trump’s executive order says: “Unlike in 1967, when the CPB [Corporation of Public Broadcasting] was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options. Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence. At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.”
“The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality: the CPB may not ‘contribute to or otherwise support any political party,’” the order added. “The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS. 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. I therefore instruct the CPB Board of Directors (CPB Board) and all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”
In 2021, Katherine Maher, who had recently stepped down as CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, later became the CEO of NPR, stated during a TED talk: “Seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done. I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting things done.”
In April 2024, former NPR Editor Uri Berliner published an essay in which he admitted, “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. … At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, [then] Representative Adam Schiff.”
