NPR and PBS to challenge Trump over public funding cuts

The CEOs of NPR and PBS said they’re looking into options to challenge the Trump administration following the president’s executive order to cut off public funding to the news and media organizations.

“We’re looking at whatever options are available to us,” said NPR CEO Katherine Maher on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” when asked if they would file a lawsuit. “I think it’s a little preliminary for us to be able to speak to specific strategies that we would take.”

“We have never seen a circumstance like this and obviously we’re going to be pushing back very hard,” said PBS CEO Paula Kerger.

As of May 2, at least 135 lawsuits had been filed to at least temporarily pause some of the Trump administration’s executive orders, according to New York Times reporting, including over issues such as the firing of thousands of federal employees, the Department of Government Efficiency, immigration policies, tariffs and others.

NPR’s Maher said potential funding cuts would hit local stations and their audiences the most. NPR has 246 member organizations with newsrooms in every state.

Federal funding cuts would be damaging to journalists covering their local communities, “especially at a time where we’re seeing an advance of news deserts across the nation,” Maher said. “Twenty percent of Americans don’t have access to another local source of news. The impact of this could really be devastating, particularly in rural communities.”

Kerger said PBS gets 15% of its funding from the federal government in aggregate, but some stations in small communities get 40% to 50% of their budgets from public funds. “To them, it’s existential, and that’s what’s at risk if this funding goes away,” she said.

Kerger said the executive order could impact PBS’s funding out of the Department of Education, a 30-year partnership that has supported the research, development and creation of educational children’s programming such as “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“Half of the kids in this country are not enrolled in formal pre-K,” Kerger said. “That’s why programming for children on public television was created.”

Programming in development would “skid to a halt,” Kerger said.

“We work directly with preschool providers and parents, and this funds those activities, so the immediate impact would be fairly significant,” she said.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to show that NPR has 246 member organizations with newsrooms in every state. An earlier version misstated the number of newsrooms.