Why is public media under threat?
Despite the overwhelming trust people of all political stripes place in public media, lawmakers have long threatened to gut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides essential financial support to NPR and PBS stations across the country. And in July 2025, Republican members of Congress implemented President Donald Trump’s recommendation to strike $1.1 billion from the previously approved federal budget for the CPB. These cuts are a senseless attack on essential educational programming, invaluable journalism and lifesaving emergency alerts.
Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has launched a trumped-up investigation of the underwriting practices at NPR and PBS. This is all part of the administration’s broader attack on independent journalism that holds the powerful accountable.
A vibrant public-media system is essential to a healthy democracy. We need to channel our outrage into creating the kind of locally grounded and controlled publicly funded media that’s fiercely independent of political and corporate meddling and resistant to propaganda.
