Politics
JUST IN: Trump Drops The Hammer On NPR And PBS, Ends Taxpayer Subsidization
One day after left-leaning public media outlets NPR and PBS reported generating significantly more revenue from the federal government than originally claimed, President Donald Trump dropped the hammer on Friday, declaring he is moving immediately to end their taxpayer-funded subsidies.
A new executive order, signed Friday, calls out both public broadcasters for skewing to the left after losing focus of their original intent, which was to provide unbiased national news coverage in a landscape that had not yet been dominated by opinion journalism.
“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,” states part of the order.
The Center for Public Broadcasting, which provides public funds to NPR and PBS, has failed to “abide by these principles” by continuing to fund the stations even as whistleblowers have come forward alleging there are no guardrails within the organizations to strip prejudice from their reporting.
“The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage. The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding,” the order also reads.
Other federal agencies are now instructed “to the maximum extent possible” that they identify and remove any indirect subsidization of both channels.
“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,” Trump adds.
Paula Kerger, CEO and president of PBS, responded in a wrathful statement Friday, telling NBC News, “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. We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”
According to its own estimates, NPR claims that it receives less than 1% of its annual revenue from taxpayer subsidies, a number that has been challenged by critics. Both NPR and PBS have received more than half a billion dollars since the CPB’s inception in 1967.
An OpenTheBooks investigation revealed on Thursday that both stations have received significantly more taxpayer subsidies than they claimed on past tax returns.
Republican ire toward both news outlets reached a zenith in March when NPR CEO Katherine Maher testified before Congress and was forced to defend severely anti-Trump statements made as a private citizen before she took the role. Maher also backpedaled about failing to adequately cover the Hunter Biden laptop story, instead uncritically accepting the debunked claim by allies of former President Joe Biden that it was a product of Russian disinformation.
“I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively or sooner,” Maher told the Republican-led committee.
She also admitted to killing coverage about the COVID-19 lab leak theory, which today is the leading hypothesis for the start of the pandemic.
“We recognize our reporting at the time, but we recognize that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it,” she replied at the time.
