Washington — PBS CEO Paula Kerger said Sunday that “we have never seen a circumstance like this” after President Trump issued an executive order last week aimed at cutting federal funding to the two major public broadcasting systems — PBS and NPR.
“This is different. They’re coming after us on many different ways,” Kerger said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
On Thursday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit that serves as the steward of the funding to public media, to cease federal funding for PBS and NPR. The executive order dictates that the government “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.”
Kerger said it’s one of a number of avenues where the administration is “coming after us,” including with a possible rescission of already appropriated funds, and an effort to challenge sponsorships from corporations through the Federal Communications Commission, among other things.
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“Obviously we’re going to be pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations, across the country,” Kerger said.
Kerger said PBS gets 15% of its funding from the federal government, but said that figure is an aggregate number, with some stations in small communities receiving up to 40% or 50% of their funding from the government. For them, she said “it’s existential,” adding “that’s what’s at risk if this funding goes away.”
Among the funding that Kerger said she expects to be impacted is funding from the Department of Education, which she said has supported the creation of children’s programming and the research behind its educational components. Kerger said the programming was created because not all children have access to formal pre-kindergarten.
“That was the idea with Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, and everything that’s followed since is to make sure that children that do not have access to a full array of resources have the opportunity to learn and to develop skills that they’ll need the first time they enter preschool,” Kerger said. “That’s what’s at risk.”
NPR CEO Katherine Maher also appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday and said “we’re looking at whatever options are available to us” to challenge the executive order. Maher echoed that the “immediate damage is to local stations,” while noting that other scenarios, like a clawback of already appropriated funds, or if stations were no longer able to participate in their membership dues, would be “damaging.”
“The impact of this could really be devastating, particularly in rural communities,” Maher said, noting that there are 246 stations throughout the country, and for some Americans, they provide the sole local source of news.
The executive order says “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,” while arguing that government funding for news media is “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” The order claims that neither PBS nor NPR present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Maher, who noted that she doesn’t personally make editorial decisions, said in response to the suggestion that NPR is not fair and non-partisan that “I think our newsroom would really take issue with that.”
“We have been on air for more than 50 years. We have been covering news as it occurs across the nation, in local communities, overseas,” Maher said. “We have an extraordinary Washington desk, and our people report straight down the line, and I think that not only do they do that, they do so with a mission that very few other broadcast organizations have, which is a requirement to serve the entire public. That is the point of public broadcasting.”
