Trump targets NPR funding

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a high-stakes showdown between National Public Radio and the Trump administration.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: This month, the president issued an executive order to cut off federal funding for public media, and last week, NPR sued to keep the money flowing.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

ANGIE WITT: I think around here, is it 90.3 FM, I think, or 90.1 close to that.

MARY MUNCY: In Sioux Center, Iowa, Angie Witt gets her news from the radio. She’s concerned about President Donald Trump’s order.

WITT: I'll lose listening to programs that I really enjoy, and then I really trust Public Radio, and so then I'll have to search for some other news source that isn't going to be skewed or biased one way or another.

But not everyone believes Public Radio is unbiased.

JACKIE: I, you know, take everything with a grain of salt.

Jackie listens to National Public Radio, or NPR, when she’s driving.

JACKIE: I think it'd be sad, but I mean, I get most of my news from internet so … and I don't have a TV so I'm kind of irregular that way. But I don't think the government should be funding things like that.

And Trump agrees. His order is called “ending taxpayer subsidization of biased media.”

For the past few years, Congress has appointed more than $500 million dollars to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB. CPB puts money toward TV and radio programming, and stations can apply for grants. They also pay for music licenses and provide system support.

The executive order says CPB must stop funding NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS.

NORMAN: We're about 18% funded from CPB.

Heather Norman is the president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council and the general manager of Tri States Public Radio in Macomb, Illinois, a university town.

NORMAN: So you could use them for salary support. You could use them to pay for national programming. You know, it's really up to you what you do.

Norman’s station uses CPB funding for national programming. That’s things like a jazz program out of Indiana, classical music out of Chicago, or national news from NPR. In other words, a lot of the station’s programming.

So, if Norman doesn’t get the grant money from CPB, they’ll have less to spend on their own local reporting and maintaining their infrastructure. Infrastructure that’s important in emergencies.

NORMAN: All the public radio stations are part of a federal system, so if there was ever a national emergency, it is our system that that information would first go out on.

After Trump’s order, public media stations started fundraising to fill the gap. So far, Norman says it’s been going well, but:

NORMAN: Our grant is about 18% of our budget. Are they going to be able to make up that 18%? Likely not.

Norman sees that as a reason to keep government funding coming. Others think that means people don’t actually value it as much as they say they do.

SAUL: If a news organization can't stand up on its own, then I don't think the government should just supplement it.

Isaac Saul runs an independent newsletter called Tangle. He’s written about fairness in the media and how to incentivize accurate journalism.

SAUL: 80% of our revenue comes from memberships. The other 20% comes from advertising donations, the occasional event. And that membership revenue allows us to really stay true to our mission.

In other words, Tangle doesn’t have to worry about an investor, an advertiser, or the government pulling their funding over something they say. Instead, they have to deliver on their promises to their audience.

SAUL: News organizations jobs, generally speaking, especially in the world of politics and government, are to cover the agencies that are now funding them. So there's an inherent conflict of interest there.

Whether the government should stop funding public media is one thing. But what about whether it can? David Gibbs is the general council for the National Center for Life and Liberty.

GIBBS: NPR and a number of their stations in Colorado have sued and argued that that is an illegal act for a number of reasons.

NPR’s case cites a few reasons why it believes the order shouldn’t stand.

GIBBS: One reason is just that it was authorized through Congress, and under our Constitution, the Congress is the one that is to control programs and funding.

So, the question is: can the executive branch reverse what Congress has done? Gibbs says probably not.

GIBBS: But then a major issue that is being raised by NPR and others is that it is a violation of the First Amendment free speech under the Constitution.

In the executive order, Trump specifically calls out NPR and PBS for being biased. NPR says Trump is punishing them because he doesn’t like what they say, calling it viewpoint discrimination.

GIBBS: And when you go to specific government actions attacking the viewpoint of a speaker or a media outlet, the judges and the courts tend to give that the highest level of First Amendment protection.

Gibbs says the government will likely argue that it's not censoring, it's just taking away funding. Something that it has every right to do.

GIBBS: The government is very protected in how they handle discretionary spending. The government runs into great limitation when they start targeting individual institutions or people because of their viewpoint.

Gibbs says if Congress had acted to reduce or eliminate funding as part of its budget cuts, it would be a lot harder for NPR to make a viewpoint discrimination case.

Trump’s order says “which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” only that they inaccurately portray current events. But Gibbs says Trump calling out those platforms on social media may stymie his plans.

But, for now, the order stands, and if NPR loses, CPB will stop funding NPR and PBS by the end of the month.

GIBBS: Certainly, as people of faith, want good speech, healthy speech, wholesome speech. But when you start protecting speech based on whether you like it or not, you do begin down a slippery slope that could have consequences that no one truly intends.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.