The president said that providing funding to NPR and PBS runs counter to the ‘principle of impartiality.’
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1 seeking to end federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) over what he called “biased and partisan news coverage” from the news outlets.
The order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to end all direct funding for the news outlets and ensure that “licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS.”
The CPB board of directors was urged to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” and “decline to provide future funding” for the news outlets.
The order also instructs other federal agencies to terminate funding and identify “any remaining grants, contracts, or other funding instruments” entered into with NPR and PBS that are noncompliant with the administration’s policy.
“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump stated in his order.
Trump said that providing funding to NPR and PBS runs counter to CPB’s principle of impartiality, which states that it must not contribute to or support any political party.
“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” he stated. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Neither NPR nor PBS responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.
NPR and PBS have previously said that cutting the funding would disrupt their operations and affect American communities that rely on public radio stations for news and public safety information.
The news outlets had anticipated the funding cuts after Trump, in a Truth Social post last month, called for defunding NPR and PBS.
The White House issued a statement on April 14 citing several examples of content from NPR and PBS that it deemed promoting “woke propaganda,” including NPR’s 2024 Valentine’s Day report that featured “queer animals.”
