STATEMENT | PMA SECRETARIAT

The order instructs the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) – a private, nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government – to cease the distribution of federal funding to the country’s national public broadcasters, alleging that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.

It continued: “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 tax-paying citizens.”

The order comes despite the CPB having secured congressional approval for its budget through to September 2027, a longstanding two-year advance funding mechanism designed to protect and insulate public media from political influence.

In a press release, Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of the CPB emphasised the protections afforded to the corporation: “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government. In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors…’.”

According to NPR, it receives around 1% of its funding from federal government while its stations received 8-10% from CPB. PBS and its stations receive around 15%. A total of $535 million was allocated to the CPB this financial year. Together PBS and NPR reach 99% of the US population.

“The president’s blatantly unlawful executive order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” said Paula Kerger, President and CEO of PBS. “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”

An NPR statement on 2 May read: “We will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public. We will challenge this Executive Order using all means available”.

The Executive Order comes at a time of considerable peril for public media in the US. On 3 May, a federal appeals court effectively shutdown a plan to reinstate over 1,000 employees of international broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) just days following a preliminary injunction to restore funding to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

The Public Media Alliance offers its full support to PBS, NPR and CPB. It places the public broadcasters and the availability of trusted news, information and education services for diverse audiences across the country in a precarious position. The act of a president interfering in the affairs and decisions of an independent entity like the CPB is of grave concern and will have significant repercussions on the state of press freedom in the US more broadly.