President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1 seeking to end federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) over what he called “biased and partisan news coverage” from the news outlets.
The order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to end all direct funding for the news outlets and ensure that “licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS.”
The CPB board of directors was urged to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” and “decline to provide future funding” for the news outlets.
The order also instructs other federal agencies to terminate funding and identify “any remaining grants, contracts, or other funding instruments” entered into with NPR and PBS that are noncompliant with the administration’s policy.
“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump stated in his order.
Trump said that providing funding to NPR and PBS runs counter to CPB’s principle of impartiality, which states that it must not contribute to or support any political party.
“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” he stated. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Neither NPR nor PBS responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.
NPR and PBS have previously said that cutting the funding would disrupt their operations and affect American communities that rely on public radio stations for news and public safety information.
The news outlets had anticipated the funding cuts after Trump, in a Truth Social post last month, called for defunding NPR and PBS.
The White House issued a statement on April 14 citing several examples of content from NPR and PBS that it deemed promoting “woke propaganda,” including NPR’s 2024 Valentine’s Day report that featured “queer animals.”
The presidents of both news outlets responded to allegations of liberal bias during a March 26 hearing by the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.
During the hearing, PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger said that her station looks to appeal to all Americans, although she did not go into depth about allegations of bias.
NPR CEO and President Katherine Maher told the hearing that NPR has processes to ensure that its content is “fair and comprehensive” and that diverse issues and viewpoints are aired.
“We have a responsibility to serve Americans across the full political spectrum in a trustworthy, nonpartisan fashion,” she said.
Several Republicans confronted Maher about NPR’s coverage of the 2020 story of the laptop of former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The laptop consisted of information related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings that have included work in China and Ukraine, where he was on the board of energy company Burisma. Maher said that NPR’s attitude over the laptop story was a “mistake.”
The move to terminate the news outlets’ funding comes amid the Trump administration’s push to eliminate non-statutory components of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
The funding cuts affected organizations under USAGM’s umbrella, including Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order on April 29, directing USAGM to immediately disburse more than $12 million in funding for the month of April to Radio Free Europe.
The judge said Radio Free Europe had shown it would suffer irreparable harm absent a restraining order, noting that USAGM’s actions to terminate the grants “threaten the very existence” of the news group.
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.
Long overdue. The American people should NOT be funding the Propaganda Wing of the Dem Party.
Just like CBS, NBC or the like, IF THEY CAN’T survive on ADVERTISING REVENUE, shut them down!
“The CPB board of directors was urged to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” and “decline to provide future funding” for the biased and partisan outlets.”
There! Thats better.
Using Government funds to finance biased political parties and ideologies IS what Hitler and his henchmen did, right after giving people free healthcare and taking away of their guns. If I hear them call Trump and the Republicans NAZA’s one more time I will vomit something even my dog won’t want to eat. “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly”, so the Democrats return to financing their miseducation indoctrinations with honest taxpayer money. If NPR and PBS cannot survive in an American free market competition of ideas, they deserve to freely perish in their own stupidity that they have no right to shove down the throats of undeveloped sane American minds who become their victims in life failure that even immigrant’s envy to the point of embracing their proffered. Illegalities. No Free American taxpayer should be forced to contribute their hard earned expended life force in the form of taxes to support an opposing political position that enslaves them to a government of Biden brained idiots. It is just more democrat death of by a thousand cuts, of workable American life force turned into impotency, where like OscarThe Grouch, your favorite thing consumed, is designed to become the trash they put out.
“We have a responsibility to serve Americans across the full political spectrum in a trustworthy, nonpartisan fashion,”
Indeed they do. Actually delivering on that responsibility is a separate matter. Of the people at NPR who decide what programs to play and what stories to discuss, how many are Democrats/Progressives, and how many are Republicans/conservatives?