The White House announced late Thursday that it is instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, claiming the CPB subsidizes "biased media."
President Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing CPB from funding NPR and PBS, as well as organizations that utilize NPR and PBS programming.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. About 70% of the funds it receives go to approximately 1,500 public television and radio stations in the U.S.
The organization receives about $525 million from Congress.
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PBS states that federal funding accounts for about 15% of the revenue for the public television system.
Katherine Maher, President and CEO of National Public Radio, said on "All Things Considered" in April that the loss of federal funds would have the largest impact on rural stations, which she indicated rely most heavily on government dollars.
"The big impact would be on rural stations, stations in geographies that are quite large or complex in order to be able to receive broadcast or infrastructure, costs are very high. You could see some of those stations really having to cut back services or potentially going away altogether," she said.
The Trump administration, however, argues that government funding of news media in "this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence."
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"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," President Trump wrote in the executive order.
Congress has already authorized the funds, raising questions about whether President Trump can stop the payments.
"CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.“
