We are living through dangerous time. Pundits, critics, and historians have warned about dangers to the free press for decades with some degree of validity, but it has never been so valid as it is today. In 2025 during the second administration of President Donald Trump, funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was cut. And now the Corporation itself has gone from facing a shutdown to ceasing all operations.
If you watched PBS or listened to NPR at some point across the last 58 years, you’ve heard “This program is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting…” The reason for that is because 58 years ago, the CPB was founded to help fund stations and programs that served local areas all across the country. This way, a remote station in Nebraska would have a means of providing educational and informative programming, just like a larger station in a major metropolitan area would.
There are some who will claim this is about saving the tax payer money. That logic doesn’t hold water when only .01% of tax payer funds actually go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Cutting that is not going to save the tax payer much of anything, but it is going to heavily impact what the CPB can do to fund operations.
It’s not about money and its never been about the money. What it’s actually about is silencing an organization that promotes learning, education, and information in general. Proof of that comes from Trump’s Executive Order 14290, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.” It’s not ending “unprofitable” or “financially unfeasible” media, it’s about “Biased Media.” But the definition of bias in this administration is basically anyone that doesn’t agree with what they do.
So, the CPB is shutting down. “A dormant and defunded CPB could have become vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse, threatening the independence of public media and the trust audiences place in it, and potentially subjecting staff and board members to legal exposure from bad-faith actors,” their statement read.
Effectively, they’re concerned without the necessary funding to stay independent, it defeats the purpose of their existence. By proxy, the stations and programs that rely on those funds are now in jeopardy of shutting down.
