The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a cornerstone of US culture for three generations, announced on Friday that it would take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by US Congress — marking the end of a nearly six-decade era in which it fueled the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and even emergency alerts.
The demise of CPB is a direct result of US President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the US should be espousing. The closure is expected to have a profound impact on the journalistic and cultural landscape — in particular, public radio and TV stations in small communities across the US.
CPB helps fund both PBS and NPR, but most of its funding is distributed to more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the country.
Photo: AP
The corporation also has deep ties to much of the nation’s most familiar programming, from NPR’s All Things Considered to, historically, Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the documentaries of Ken Burns.
The corporation said its end, 58 years after being signed into law by then-US president Lyndon B. Johnson, would come in an “orderly wind-down.”
In a statement, it said the decision came after the passage through Congress of a package that clawed back its funding for the next two budget years — about US$1.1 billion. Then, the Senate Appropriations Committee reinforced that policy change on Thursday by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said.
Democratic members of the Senate Appropriations Committee made a last-ditch effort this week to save the CPB’s funding.
CPB said it informed employees on Friday that most staff positions would end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Federal money for public radio and television has traditionally been appropriated to the CPB, which distributes it to NPR and PBS. Roughly 70 percent of the money goes directly to the 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country, although that is only a shorthand way to describe its potential impact.
Trump, who has called the CPB a “monstrosity,” has long said that public broadcasting displays an extreme liberal bias, helped create the momentum in recent months for an anti-public broadcasting groundswell among his supporters in Congress and around the country.
It is part of a larger initiative targeting institutions — particularly cultural ones — that produce content or espouse attitudes that he considers “un-American.” The CPB’s demise represents a political victory for those efforts.
His impact on the media landscape has been profound. He has also gone after US government media that had independence charters, including the Voice of America, ending that media outlet’s operations after many decades.
Trump also fired three members of the corporation’s board of directors in April. In legal action at the time, the fired directors said their dismissal was governmental overreach targeting an entity whose charter guarantees it independence.
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