Republican lawmakers put PBS and NPR in the hot seat

A U.S. House subcommittee has called the chief executives of the nation's two largest public broadcasters to Capitol Hill testified on Wednesday, with an eye to wiping out the federal funding their institutions receive.

The two CEOs — PBS's Paula Kerger and NPR's Katherine Maher — appear in some ways to be a study in contrasts: Kerger, 68, worked her way up the ranks at New York City's WNET public television before becoming the longest serving chief in PBS history.

Maher, 41, was a tech executive who took over NPR one year ago this week in what was her first job in journalism, though she has no direct role in the network's newsroom. She almost immediately became engulfed in the uproar around an essay critical of the network by a veteran NPR editor and a subsequent dissection of her own past progressive political beliefs, posted online years before joining the network.

Even so, Kerger and Maher's fates are tethered together, as they seek to maintain long-standing bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for funding public broadcasters around the country. President Trump's allies have repeatedly assailed the two networks.

"This could be a perfect storm," Kerger said in an interview. "That's why this moment does feel different. It feels as if this is a time that we really do need to step up and make as clear a case as possible."

The hearing, titled "Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable," appears arranged more to score points than to find facts. It will be led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose subcommittee is named after Trump adviser Elon Musk's budget-slashing DOGE initiative. She has accused the two networks of profound liberal bias.

"I want to hear why NPR and PBS think they should ever again receive a single cent from the American taxpayer," Greene said in a statement ahead of the hearing. "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. Now, it is time for their CEOs to publicly explain this biased coverage."

The effort to cut funding to NPR has a strong supporter in Musk, who also owns the social media site X, previously known as Twitter. In 2023, NPR stopped posting on X, after Musk first designated the network as "state-affiliated," which is the same label given to propaganda sites in China and Russia, and then as "government funded." NPR considers that a broad overstatement and has not returned to the platform.

Public media chiefs point to public service

In the separate interviews, PBS's Kerger and NPR's Maher say they are proud of the coverage their networks offer — and of the service provided by public media outlets more broadly across the country.

PBS, for example, now has a new series called "Carl the Collector" focusing on a friendly racoon with autism. Kerger cites it as an example in which the network serves audiences of broad ranges of interests and challenges, as well as fulfilling its educational mission.

In addition to providing news coverage, such as through NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered and "PBS News Hour," NPR and PBS stations serve as a vital component of the emergency broadcasting system. NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts feature both aspiring and established stars — and are a sensation with listeners young and old. Stations across the two networks offer shows that sustain distinct musical and cultural traditions in regions across the country. And their news coverage remains free in perpetuity (though some network podcast series offer bonus episodes to paying members).

"We think of it as our local station but in reality we are one of the largest ... networks in the nation," NPR's Maher said in an interview.

The public radio ecosystem is sprawling and decentralized. NPR stations collectively reach 43 million listeners each week, the network said. Its programming is distributed by 246 member institutions operating more 1,000 stations around the country, which together have about 3,000 local journalists.

In addition to Maher and Kerger, the head of Alaska Public Media, Ed Ulman, is slated to testify Wednesday upon the request of subcommittee Democrats. A fourth panelist, Michael Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation, is a critic of public media.

How public broadcasters are funded

Congress allocates money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: $535 million in the current fiscal year. By design, three-quarters of the money spent on public media outlets are dedicated to television, one quarter to radio. In aggregate, local stations receive far more than the national networks.

NPR receives most of its approximately $300 million annual operating budget from corporate underwriting spots (about 36%) and station programming fees (about 30%). About 1% comes directly from federal sources. Considering NPR member stations draw about 8% to 10% of their revenue from CPB, NPR could be said to get close to 3% of its budget from federal funds indirectly, via the stations. In contrast, PBS receives 16% of its funds from the CPB.

The public media entities most dependent on federal funding tend to be in rural regions or depressed areas. They may draw as much as 50% of their revenues from the federal dollars.

"For them, a reduction in federal funding — or more importantly, the elimination of federal funding — would be an existential crisis," PBS's Kerger said.

"The work we do and the reporting that we do informs the national discourse," Maher said. "And you don't want that to disappear. You want to make sure that the service we provide remains something that is robust and vital to the country."

"It's easy to feel like public media has always been there and therefore will always be there," Maher said in an interview. "And in reality, it is a constant ask of our listeners and our readers to know that their support and their affirmation of our value make the case to Congress that this is the right use of taxpayer dollars."

"Public media is big in this country," she adds.

Conservatives' distrust is long standing

But public media has also drawn political fire. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., and Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., this winter introduced what they are calling the "No Propaganda Bill" to bar all funding for the CPB.

Trump's pick as Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, has signaled he supports their aim. He has also initiated inquiries of NPR and PBS, focusing at first on a handful of major stations, arguing those corporate underwriting spots violate federal laws and policies because they too closely resemble commercials.

Both networks have said they have scrupulously followed regulators' guidance over the course of decades to stay well within the law. Those spots cannot, for example, make a call to action, such as telling their audiences to buy a car or insurance policies.

This week features separate litigation in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan to prevent the Trump administration from dismantling the federally funded international broadcasters Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America. (On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order freezing any further action against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.)

The Associated Press is seeking a reversal of Trump White House rules barring it from some events for refusing to conform to the president's decree renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And FCC chief Carr has embarked on investigations of every broadcast network save Fox — whose controlling owner, Rupert Murdoch, is an ally of the president.

The Heritage Foundation's Gonzalez wrote the section of the group's Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump administration that has foreshadowed much of his agenda. He attacked the public broadcasters as leftists, writing, "To stop public funding is good policy and good politics."

Gonzales said others could pay for its programming: "The membership model that the CPB uses, along with the funding from corporations and foundations that it also receives, would allow these broadcasters to continue to thrive," he wrote. (The FCC's Carr is challenging the legality of those corporate revenues through underwriting — a pincer movement on the system's finances.)

Gonzales approvingly cited the conservative columnist George Will, who wrote in 2017, "If 'Sesame Street' programming were put up for auction, the danger would be of getting trampled by the stampede of potential bidders." Gonzales added, "Indeed, 'Sesame Street' is on HBO now, which shows its potential as a money earner."

That line lands differently now. Late last year, HBO dropped the deal for new episodes with Sesame Workshop, striking a far smaller licensing arrangement for back episodes. Sesame Street recently laid off roughly 20% of its staff as a result. No other streamer or broadcaster has yet stepped forward to pay for its new shows.

In a recent column, Will argued for the end of CPB funding: "CPB is like the human appendix: vestigial, purposeless and susceptible to unhealthy episodes."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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