DOGE sets its sights on public media: What you need to know

During his first term, President Trump repeatedly tried and failed to reduce or end funding for public broadcasting. Even when Republicans controlled all three branches of government — as they do now — funding for CPB survived due in part to some support from Republican lawmakers.

Public media leaders are not as hopeful for a similar outcome this time around. Emboldened by strong support from his base and Republicans in Congress, Trump and Musk’s DOGE have worked to axe government spending by ending funding for programs deemed incompatible with the president’s agenda. There are concerns the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is next.

Public broadcasting has long-enjoyed bipartisan support. In 2022, PBS was named the most trusted media organization in a nationwide survey. A Rasmussen Reports national survey from 2017 found that only 21% of Americans — including less than a third of Republicans — favored ending federal support for public broadcasting. However, the most vocal opponents to federal support for public media stations have been Republicans in Congress and other conservative officials in the Trump administration.

Recent critics have argued that NPR and PBS have an ideological slant and should therefore not receive federal funding.

“I want to hear why NPR and PBS think they should ever again receive a single cent from the American taxpayer. These partisan, so-called ‘media’ stations dropped the ball on Hunter Biden’s laptop, down-played COVID-19 origins, and failed to properly report the Russian collusion hoax,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said in a statement announcing Wednesday’s hearing.

Musk, the world’s richest man who is now serving as a senior adviser to President Trump, has made repeated calls on his social media site X (formerly Twitter) to “defund NPR,” accusing the organization of being a “hard left propaganda machine.” 

He also denounced PBS as being “the far left.” (PBS and NPR's primary accounts are no longer active on X, following Musk’s decision to falsely label them as "state-affiliated media," the same language the platform used to describe propaganda outlets in countries including Russia and China.)

In an April 2024 all-caps post on his social media site Truth Social, Trump — who has routinely demonized journalists — called NPR a “LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE.” The post came after former NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner, in an essay for The Free Press, accused workers at “every level of NPR” of coalescing “around the progressive worldview.” Berliner later resigned from NPR, and his essay was celebrated by Republican lawmakers and activists. 

It is true that NPR’s audience identifies as more liberal than conservative. A late 2019 survey from Pew Research Center found that of the respondents who identified NPR as their main source of political news, 87% identified as Democrats. But demographic data is independent from NPR’s editorial mission and journalism standards. The organization’s ethics handbook says NPR holds itself “to the core principles of honesty, integrity, independence, accuracy, contextual truth, transparency, respect and fairness for the people we serve and the people we cover.”

PBS, meanwhile, has reported a more conservative audience in the past. According to Nielsen-MRI data from 2016, 46% of PBS viewers identified as conservative. Thirty-one percent identified as moderate and 23% identified as liberal. Ad Fontes, which runs a popular media bias chart, rates PBS as “middle.” 

Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for the Trump presidency that the president’s actions have been closely aligned with, also calls for the end of federal support for public broadcasting.

Trump’s head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, earlier this year ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS’ underwriting announcements (e.g., “This program is brought to you by…”). PBS and NPR leaders said in separate statements that they were confident in their organizations’ non-commercial compliance.

"For my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS given the changes in the media marketplace," wrote Carr, who also authored a section of Project 2025.

Conservatives in Washington have been trying to strip public media of its federal funding for nearly as long as public media has been around.

Congress created in 1967 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent nonprofit that stewards the federal government’s investment in public media stations. Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has advocated for reducing — or ending — CPB’s funding.

In 1969, Fred Rogers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” famously advocated for federal support of public television. His testimony before a Senate subcommittee secured millions of dollars in funding for educational programming.

“I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health,” Rogers said.

Years later, President Ronald Reagan proposed cutting tens of millions of dollars from CPB’s funding in the 1980s. He called public broadcasting an “important national resource” but was opposed to its level of federal funding.

George W. Bush, during his second term, called for reducing the CPB’s budget by more than $100 million.

In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said during a debate against President Barack Obama that if elected, he would end federal funding for public broadcasting. “Thank goodness someone is finally getting tough on Big Bird,” Obama joked at a Denver rally later that week.

This year, CPB received more than $500,000,000 from Congress. That makes up roughly one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%) of the federal budget. CPB says the average cost per American for public broadcasting funding is $1.60 per year.

The majority of CPB money does not go directly to NPR or PBS. Instead, most of it goes to local stations across the country, whether they’re statewide outlets like Rocky Mountain Public Media, or tiny stations in Colorado’s mountain towns.

The level of federal funding varies by station. Federal funding tends to provide a larger portion of operating budgets for stations in smaller, rural areas that don’t receive as much support through membership or philanthropy.

Many public media stations fear that if federal funding dissolves, they will have to cut their programming.

[Related: Why the impact of CPB funding cuts may not be equal]

Rocky Mountain Public Media, which includes Rocky Mountain PBS, KUVO JAZZ (an NPR licensee) and THE DROP, receives approximately 10% of its operating budget from federal funding.

According to a federal funding fact sheet from RMPM, “loss of federal funding would hinder our work, especially in serving our neighbors in every corner of our state with journalism and programs that are freely accessible to all.” 

Colorado Public Radio, meanwhile, expects that about 5% of their projected revenue for this fiscal year will come from CPB.

“CPR would do everything possible to maintain our current level of service, but the entire public media system would be weakened and rural communities in particular would be increasingly underserved,” according to the station.

“I really want to rebuff this idea that in any way that public radio is anti-American,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in a podcast released Tuesday. “For starters, we are a uniquely American model. We are a public-private partnership. For every single federal dollar we get, local stations raise an additional seven.

“The future of a number of our stations across the country will be in jeopardy if this funding is not continued,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in an interview with The New York Times.

In a statement to the Rocky Mountain PBS journalism team, RMPM President and CEO Amanda Mountain said:

“Public media has earned steady bipartisan support from Congress for over five decades. Our audiences self-identify as equal thirds Republicans, Democrats and Independents. With 40% of Colorado’s kids missing formal preschool, it’s RMPBS who stands in the gaps to ensure our children have a head start in school and in life. The work of public media is not partisan. We strengthen the civic fabric for all of Colorado regardless how much money you make, who you vote for, or where you live. That’s worth fighting for.”

Colorado Public Radio CEO Stewart Vanderwilt previously told Colorado journalist Corey Hutchins that “we will definitely be communicating with our audience and supporters and letting them know what is at stake and how to participate.”

KDNK, the NPR station in Carbondale that relies on CPB funding for a significant portion of its budget, sent an email to their audience rejecting the notion that public media is biased: “Public Media outlets, including community radio stations such as KDNK, have recently been named as direct targets for funding cuts and threats of total dissolution by the federal government, under false pretenses that all public radio is “biased” or “liberal propaganda.” It’s important that we take a stand for public media and make our voice heard.”