\n<\/p>\n
\n\tPresident Donald Trump took a victory lap after Congress formally passed his measure to claw back $9 billion in previously approved funding, including $1.1 billion for PBS and NPR \u2014 which public media execs have said could force dozens of local stations to shut down.<\/p>\n
\n\tEarly Friday, the House gave final approval to Trump\u2019s rescission package by a 216-to-213 vote, after the Senate a day earlier had OK\u2019d the measure in a 51-to-48 vote. The bill cancels about $8 billion in foreign aid and $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which provides funding to NPR and PBS) over the next two years. It now awaits Trump\u2019s signature to go into effect.<\/p>\n
\n\tTrump proudly noted that his effort to eliminate federal funding from PBS and NPR comes after decades of attempts by conservative lawmakers to do the same. The White House has alleged that public media outlets have \u201cspread radical, woke propaganda disguised as \u2018news\u2019\u201d and that \u201cNPR and PBS have zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED,\u201d Trump posted on his Truth Social platform late Thursday night. \u201cREPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED\u2026.BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTrump and other Republicans have cited cost-cutting as a justification for zeroing-out funding for PBS and NPR. Meanwhile, the massive Trump-backed spending bill that was just approved by Congress is\u00a0forecast to increase federal deficits by at least\u00a0$3.4 trillion\u00a0over the next decade,\u00a0according to the Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n
\n\tMost Americans support publicly funded media, according to surveys. About 53% of U.S. voters oppose eliminating all federal funding for public media, compared with 44% who support defunding it, according to an online poll conducted online by Peak Insights from June 29-July 1 among 1,000 likely voters, per the CPB. In addition, the survey found that 53% of respondents agreed that public media outlets report news \u201cfully, accurately and fairly\u201d compared with only 35% who said the same about media in general.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe rescission package slashes $535 million annually for the CPB for a two-year period starting in October.<\/p>\n
\n\tPBS CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement Thursday that the cuts \u201cwill significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas.\u201d She added, \u201cMany of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNPR CEO Katherine Maher, in a statement after the final House vote, called the defunding \u201can unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.\u201d Maher said, \u201cParents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities \u2014 all will bear the harm of this vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tPBS and its member stations receive about 15% of their revenue from CPB\u2019s federal funds. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, PBS reported $721 million in total revenue, investment gains and other support. According to NPR, about 2% of its annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments. For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2024, NPR reported $336.6 million in revenue, gains and other support.<\/p>\n
\n\tHowever, smaller local NPR and PBS stations rely far more on federal funding for their operating budgets. An internal NPR report from 2011 estimated that up to 18% of its approximately 1,000 member stations would be forced to shut down if they lost federal funding and that up to 30% Americans would lose access to NPR programming, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n
\n\tRepublicans criticized PBS and NPR for a perceived left-wing and \u201cwoke\u201d bias. \u201cAmerican taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize programming that glorifies radical gender ideology in schools or pushes to defund the police,\u201d Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\n\tPrior to the Senate vote approving the package, Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, said the funding cuts would devastate rural stations in his state and threaten children\u2019s programming like \u201cSesame Street\u201d and \u201cDaniel Tiger\u201d that would not be viable on commercial television. \u201cFor many families, public television is one of their only early childhood education tools,\u201d the senator said.<\/p>\n
\n\tCPB was established by Congress via the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The private, not-for-profit corporation\u2019s mission is \u201cto ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services,\u201d according to its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump took a victory lap after Congress formally passed his measure to claw back $9 billion in previously approved funding, including $1.1 billion for PBS and NPR \u2014 which public media execs have said could force dozens of local stations to shut down. Early Friday, the House gave final approval to Trump\u2019s rescission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4580,3879,4579,4581,4584,4582,4583,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-11274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-approving","9":"tag-celebrates","10":"tag-congress","11":"tag-npr","12":"tag-package","13":"tag-pbs","14":"tag-rescission","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}