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FCC Probe Into NPR, PBS Denounced as 'Attack on the Freedom of the Press'
"The FCC chair is clearly undertaking an effort to bully and intimidate independent journalism, which is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes where democracy is under siege," said one critic.
Jan 31, 2025
U.S. press freedom advocates this week forcefully condemned Republican Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr's investigation into National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service that could lead to stripping them of government funding.
"If they weren't ringing already, alarm bells should be going off loudly," said Tim Richardson, program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America, in a Thursday statement. "By using its investigatory powers, the FCC chair is clearly undertaking an effort to bully and intimidate independent journalism, which is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes where democracy is under siege."
"The Trump administration is clearly embracing such tactics and putting independent media at risk by undermining accountability of elected leaders and risking a less informed public," Richardson added. "We call on the FCC to dispense with such politically motivated investigations."
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, was similarly critical, saying that "the commission should not bring frivolous investigations into media outlets simply because they do not like their coverage. Investigations like this can chill coverage and threaten the independence of the press, making it harder to hold the government accountable and keep us all informed."
I told @nytimes.com that Carr's claim that NPR and PBS broke sponsorship disclosure rules is an obvious pretext to attack their funding and independence. Carr was appointed to do Trump's censorial bidding. All his moves should be viewed through that lens.This “investigation” is a sham and meant to terrorize NPR and PBS. They have *rigorous* oversight on vetting the “this program brought to you by” statements and literally pages of documentation about it that they give to filmmakers like me. Support your local stations, they’re going to need it.
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— Ariel Waldman (@arielwaldman.com) January 30, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron declared that "his seat as FCC chairman is barely warm, but Brendan Carr is already abusing his power and harassing public broadcasters with a sham investigation designed to scare journalists into silence. This is all part of Carr's far-right, Project 2025-inspired agenda."
"This bogus investigation is an attack on the freedom of the press and a bungling attempt to bash public broadcasters and further weaken their resolve to question the extremism, corruption, and cruelty of the Trump administration," Aaron warned. "This unjustified investigation isn't based on any genuine concern about whether there's too much advertising on public media. It's a blatant attempt to undermine independent, rigorous reporting on the Trump administration."
"Carr may not like public media—and that's no surprise given that he isn't a fan of journalism that holds public officials and billionaires accountable. In this, as in so many other areas under his purview, Chairman Carr is far out of step with the American public and their needs," he continued. "Communities all across the country rely on their local public radio and TV stations to provide trustworthy news reporting and a diversity of opinions. In every survey, the American public indicates it wants more support for public and community media, not less."
Aaron added that "in a healthy democracy, we would be investing enough in our public-media system that it wouldn't need to seek any corporate underwriting. Unfortunately, Carr's cronies in Congress and the Big Media barons they serve have instead for decades tried to zero out funding for public media. They have repeatedly failed because millions of viewers and listeners opposed them."
Carr—whom President Donald Trump first appointed to the FCC in 2017 and recently elevated to chair after he contributed to the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025—announced the probe in a Wednesday letter to NPR president and CEO Katherine Maher and PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger.
"I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials," Carr wrote. "I have asked the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, with assistance from the FCC's Media Bureau, to initiate an investigation into the underwriting announcements and related policies of NPR, PBS, and their broadcast member stations."
The chair added:
I will be providing a copy of this letter to relevant members of Congress because I believe this FCC investigation may prove relevant to an ongoing legislative debate. In particular, Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming. 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 since the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.
To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for-profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars.
Some federal lawmakers have already responded on social media. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said that "the letter from Chairman Carr announcing a new FCC investigation into NPR and PBS member stations is baseless. He cites no evidence at all. Instead, this investigation is a dangerous attack on public media and local journalism."
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) said that "public television and radio are essential for their local communities. The FCC must not be weaponized to intimidate and silence broadcast media. We should be supporting, not undermining, their contributions to journalism and the marketplace of ideas."
I told @nytimes.com that Carr's claim that NPR and PBS broke sponsorship disclosure rules is an obvious pretext to attack their funding and independence. Carr was appointed to do Trump's censorial bidding. All his moves should be viewed through that lens. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/b...
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— Seth Stern (@seth-stern.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 5:27 PM
The two Democratic members of the FCC have also responded critically to Carr's move. Commissioner Anna Gomez said that "this appears to be yet another administration effort to weaponize the power of the FCC. The FCC has no business intimidating and silencing broadcast media."
Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said that "public television and radio stations play a significant role in our media ecosystem.
Any attempt to intimidate these local media outlets is a threat to the free flow of information and the marketplace of ideas. The announcement of this investigation gives me serious concern."
Maher said in statement that "NPR programming and underwriting messaging complies with federal regulations, including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters, and member stations are expected to be in compliance as well."
"We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR's adherence to these rules," she added. "We have worked for decades with the FCC in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States."
In a statement to NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, who reported on the probe, Kerger said that "PBS is proud of the noncommercial educational programming we provide to all Americans through our member stations... We work diligently to comply with the FCC's underwriting regulations and welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that to the commission."
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Why Elon Musk's Plan to Defund Public Broadcasting Must Be Stopped
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
Nov 26, 2024
Buried deep in the 10th paragraph of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Wall Street Journal screed on their new Department of Government Efficiency is a line that should worry anyone who cares about the accountability role media must play to sustain the health of any democracy
“DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended," they write. One of the items in topping their list of targets is the $535-million annual congressional allocation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that allocates federal funds to public-media outlets across the country
Zeroing out federal funding for public media has long been a dream of Republicans. But it’s one that’s never come true. Past efforts have run up against a noisy public, including people of every political persuasion, that believes federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.
If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media.
In 2005, I stood in front of the Capitol Building alongside Clifford the Big Red Dog and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to protest a George W. Bush-era push to strip public broadcasting of nearly half its funding. “What parents and kids get from public TV is an incredible bargain,” then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the event. “The question is not, ‘Can we afford it?; but rather, ‘Can we afford to lose it?’”
Millions of people wrote and called their members of Congress to defend institutions like NPR and PBS, a mass mobilization that succeeded in saving public broadcasting from the ax.
The high cost of losing public media
Twenty years later, we face similar headwinds. In 2025, Republicans will control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. They will be acting on the false belief that the November election delivered them a mandate to disassemble the federal government and remake it in Donald Trump’s authoritarian image.
But the actual numbers tell a different story. Trump won by a razor-thin margin, securing less than half of the popular vote (a mandate denying 49.9 percent to Kamala Harris’ 48.3 percent). And the Republican majority on the Hill isn’t large enough to dictate such drastic cuts to federal spending; only a fraction of their members would need to defect for Musk and Ramaswamy’s extreme cost-cutting proposals to fail. Having Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lead the effort in the House is a move that could easily backfire as well.
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media. According to several polls, Americans routinely rank PBS among the most trusted institutions in the country, and a “most valuable” service taxpayers receive for their money, outranked only by national defense. Moreover, large majorities of the public believe the amount of federal funding that public broadcasting receives is just right, or even too little.
Comparatively, this is true. The United States already has one of the lowest levels of federal funding of public media in the developed world—at approximately $1.50 per capita. That’s nothing next to the United Kingdom, which spends more than $81 per person, or France, which spends more than $75. Head further north and the numbers head north as well: Denmark's per-person spending is more than $93, Finland’s more than $100, and Norway’s more than $110. And it isn’t just a European trend: Japan (+$53/capita) and South Korea (+$14) show their appreciation for publicly funded media at levels that put the U.S. outlay to shame.
It’s about accountability journalism
Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, and their ilk don’t just want to freeze out Frontline and foreclose on Sesame Street, but to pull the plug on every network, station and program that gets public support—from Gulf States Newsroom to the Mountain West News Bureau, from Pacifica Radio to New Jersey Spotlight News.
And that’s the point. The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires like Musk will have no obligation to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms, including the sorts of journalism that hold our country’s rich and powerful responsible for their misdeeds. (Republicans are also pushing legislation that would empower President Trump’s Treasury Department to falsely label any nonprofit news outlet as a “terrorist supporting organization” and strip it of the tax-exempt status it needs to survive.)
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires like Musk will have no obligation to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms...
A 2021 study co-authored by University of Pennsylvania professor (and Free Press board chair) Victor Pickard finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country’s democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage and lower levels of extremist views.
Moreover, the loss of the quality local journalism and investigative reporting that nonprofit outlets provide has far-reaching societal harms. The Democracy Fund’s Josh Stearns, who’s also a former Free Press staff member, has cataloged the growing body of evidence showing that declines in local news and information lead to drops in civic engagement. “The faltering of newspapers, the consolidation of TV and radio, and the rising power of social media platforms are not just commercial issues driven by the market,” Stearns writes. “They are democratic issues with profound implications for our communities.”
For now, Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy are leveraging a lie about a popular mandate to redefine the “public interest” as anything that Trump wants. Trump’s totalitarian dream will not be possible with a thriving, publicly funded and independent media sector. To save this kind of accountability journalism we need people to make as much noise today as they have in the past, and deliver our own mandate for a public-media system that stands against Trump’s brand of authoritarianism.
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What I Told House Republicans About Their Dangerous Attempt to Defund NPR
We need more—not less—public media.
May 09, 2024
Here we go again. Every couple of years, conservative members of Congress launch highly partisan attempts to root out alleged “bias” at NPR and PBS—which remain incredibly popular and trusted among the American public—and threaten to slash funding that supports local nonprofit radio and TV affiliates nationwide.
This year’s so-called outrage? A contentious and inaccurate critique of NPR published by a disgruntled editor. In it, then-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner claimed that NPR ignores conservative viewpoints and storylines.
GOP members of Congress claim that Berliner’s essay proves that “NPR suffers from intractable bias,” arguing that “it is time Congress investigates how federal dollars are being used at NPR and what reforms may be necessary.”
While I don’t represent NPR, PBS or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I was called to testify on May 8 before a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee to offer my views about public funding for local news and information, a pillar of Free Press’ work over the past 20 years.
In testifying, I hoped to provide a voice for NPR’s tens of millions of weekly listeners, who rely on the service for fact-checked journalism, local viewpoints, and international coverage. But I also hoped to paint a picture of the possibilities of an expanded public-media system, one that receives more robust public funding for the kinds of local news and information that have gone missing in local communities.
Inquiries like the House hearing will likely make NPR leadership more timid, and I imagine that’s the point.
Over the past two decades, I have been both an advocate for and a critic of the public broadcasting system—which I believe can do more to live up to its mandate and mission. This won’t be accomplished by tarnishing the reputation of NPR’s accomplished journalists, tearing down the institution, or starving it of funds.
But inquiries like the House hearing will likely make NPR leadership more timid, and I imagine that’s the point.
Defunding threats don’t just harm NPR executives—they endanger the work of more than 1,000 local radio stations providing essential information to communities large and small.
While I always welcome Congress’s interest in public media, especially given the crisis in local journalism, I’m perplexed that an essay by one disgruntled editor at NPR is cause for a congressional inquiry.
The United States spends a pittance per capita on public media when compared to other healthy democracies.
Berliner’s essay (which was published, confusingly enough, in a Substack publication called “The Free Press”) is riddled with fuzzy math and cherry-picked evidence. For example, he inaccurately describes several stories as going uncovered, when NPR did extensive reporting or publicly interrogated its own editorial decision-making about them.
That said, public media’s purpose should be to tell stories not already told by commercial media and serve audiences not represented elsewhere.
Berliner laments NPR’s increased focus on racial diversity since 2020. If in 2024 you’re still questioning whether systemic racism exists, you should probably spend more time listening to the experiences of your colleagues from different backgrounds.
If Berliner had done so, he would have found many people of color inside and outside of NPR and PBS who consistently and repeatedly criticized public media’s failures to reach and serve new and diverse audiences. Numerous NPR and PBS employees and associates also raised concerns about the workplace environment for people of color at NPR and PBS, editorial decision-making, and budgeting and funding priorities when it comes to media makers from marginalized backgrounds.
Berliner’s supposed bombshell that D.C. residents in NPR’s newsroom are all registered Democrats—in a city where just 5 percent of voters are registered as Republicans—doesn’t withstand scrutiny either. As NPR journalist Steve Inskeep points out, NPR has 662 people in its newsrooms around the world, including far more in D.C. than the 87 Berliner tallied. The numbers don’t add up.
While Congress has a role in overseeing the operations and financial management of NPR, threats to defund it based on a perceived failure to cover certain topics or hire certain people strike at the heart of journalistic freedom.
Yet these rickety claims have sent a GOP-controlled House subcommittee down a precarious path. I’m deeply concerned about the request the House majority sent in a letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, asking her to track and report to Congress on the political affiliations of NPR’s newsroom employees.
This dangerous overreach, which came at the urging of House Speaker Mike Johnson, raises serious First Amendment concerns and smacks of a political loyalty test. While Congress has a role in overseeing the operations and financial management of NPR, threats to defund it based on a perceived failure to cover certain topics or hire certain people strike at the heart of journalistic freedom.
Yes, there also must be a firewall between NPR executives and the newsroom. NPR’s new CEO may have once volunteered for a Biden campaign. The head of the CPB used to co-chair the RNC. Neither is, nor should be, involved in editorial decisions.
Berliner insists he doesn’t want NPR defunded, but his complaints have been seized upon by those who seek to defang or destroy public media. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of attacking NPR personnel on trumped-up charges of bias.
There is another path. Instead, Congress should take this moment of crisis in local journalism as an opportunity to talk about how to rebuild and expand the public-media system to meet the real needs of local communities.
Congress should take this moment of crisis in local journalism as an opportunity to talk about how to rebuild and expand the public-media system to meet the real needs of local communities.
There’s much common ground to explore on this topic. At the hearing, I found myself in agreement with Howard Husock of the American Enterprise Institute, who also argued that more public-media resources should be devoted to local journalism to replant news deserts.
With changes to the law, this could go beyond broadcasting to support emerging nonprofit news outlets that are providing in-depth and (as of this week) Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. Right now, the United States spends a pittance per capita on public media when compared to other healthy democracies. That’s just $3.16 per capita a year in public funding compared to $75–$100 per capita or more annually in countries like England, France, Germany and Norway. That’s literally pocket change.
Instead of cutting back even further, Congress should increase funding for public media and ensure that locally engaged outlets—and those reaching the diverse audiences NPR hasn’t—can receive more support. This should not be a partisan debate about right versus left, but rather one about returning the public airwaves to local hands, lifting up diverse local viewpoints, amplifying community affairs and playing local music over the airwaves.
I imagine many members of Congress remember a time when there were multiple local outlets covering their campaigns and accomplishments—actually telling people back home what they do in Washington.
A renewed and vibrant public media system focused on local voices is possible. But it requires a different approach, one that builds on public media’s founding purpose, quoting President Lyndon Johnson, to use the public airwaves, “which belong to all the people … for the enlightenment of all the people.”
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