Public Media Takedown

With an FCC investigation and a bill in front of Congress that could strip funding, NPR and PBS are fighting for their lives

(From the Journalism Monday Memo, my weekly Substack about media, tech, and the ever-shrinking space between them.)

The government is coming for your favorite tote bag suppliers. Last week, amid the blizzard of executive orders, targeted firings, crazy rants, unfounded accusations, and hurtful tariffs, the Federal Communications Commission notified the country’s two public broadcasting organizations, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), that they are now the subjects of an investigation into their underwriting practices.

In a letter to NPR’s president and CEO, Katherine Maher, and her PBS counterpart Paula Kerger, newly appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr claims that the roughly 1,500 public radio and TV stations are breaking the terms of their operating licenses—which is a big deal that comes with some potentially serious consequences.

OK, we’re going to get technical here for a second. Under Section 397 of the Communications Act, all NPR and PBS affiliate stations are noncommercial educational broadcast stations—NCEs in government speak. That means they must be publicly owned or operate as a nonprofit private foundation. They have to be free to use. They can’t support political candidates. And they can’t run commercials—which is what Carr is accusing NPR, PBS, and their affiliates of doing.

If you flick on your local public radio or TV station it won’t be long until you hear what has Carr so worked up: an underwriting announcement. Plenty of charity organizations, corporations, and local businesses donate money to public broadcasting. In return, that underwriting support is often mentioned between news segments or TV shows. Carr is contenting that these announcements cross a very specific line.

“The FCC has long held that these underwriting announcements are for identification purposes only,” he writes. “These announcements should not promote the contributor’s products, services, or businesses, and they may not contain comparative or qualitative descriptions, price information, calls to action, or inducements to buy, sell, rent, or lease.”

Basically, underwriting announcements can’t be commercials—which, in a statement, Maher assured they aren’t.

“NPR programming and underwriting messaging complies with federal regulations,” Maher writes, “including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters, and Member stations are expected to be in compliance as well.”

Carr isn’t so sure. He’s tasking the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau and Media Bureau to dig into the issue, and he plans to pass along their findings to Congress, which could be a big issue for both NPR and PBS. Both indirectly receive federal funding. Let JMM explain. In 2022, the Consolidated Appropriations Act allocated $525 million for fiscal year 2024, which wrapped up last June, to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the parent organization of both NPR and PBS. That money is then split into a few pieces, most notably $267 million goes to local PBS stations and $83 million to local NPR stations. That money, along with cash raised during fund drives, as well as from underwriting gifts and charitable donations, is then paid back to the national organizations as licensing fees for things like NPR’s “All Things Considered” and whatever historical documentary Ken Burns is cooking up for PBS. In his letter, Carr said he doesn’t believe either deserves that federal help.

“For my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS,” he writes.

Carr isn’t alone. Despite being rated as one of the closest to neutral news organizations in the country, many Republicans believe NPR is liberal propaganda. As proof, they point to last spring, when NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner wrote a diatribe about what he claimed was unchecked bias at the news organization. He detailed what he saw as deliberate attempts to slant the news in favor of Democrats, from burying the Hunter Biden laptop story to interviewing Democratic lawmakers over Republicans. NPR pushed back against Berliner’s accusations, of course, but it was “Morning Edition” host Steve Inskeep who went further, countering each of Berliner’s points in a mic drop of a Substack post.

But that didn’t matter to NPR’s critics. To them, the news organization is woke media. Many have clamored to cut its funding, most notably back in 2022, right before that $525 million was allocated. That push is now back, two legislators, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), introducing the “No Propaganda Act” into each chamber of Congress in December. The bill would strip the CPB of any funds, effectively cutting off NPR and PBS from any federal dollars.

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting refuses to provide Louisianians and Americans with fair, unbiased content. It wastes taxpayer dollars on slanted coverage to advance a leftist political agenda. The No Propaganda Act would save taxpayer money by putting an end to Big Brother’s propaganda outlet,” Kennedy said in a statement on his website.

So, Carr’s threats to send any findings of wrong-doing to Congress have some real ramifications. While the No Propaganda Act—technically known as Senate Bill 5427—was introduced during the last congressional session, nothing stops Kennedy and Perry from rolling the bill out again. And this time, with Republicans controlling all levers of power in Washington D.C., it would likely pass.

And losing funding would be devastating for some stations. According to Protect Our Public Media, it could severely limit services. It would cut educational programming. It would eliminate jobs. It could result in stations shutting down, leaving many rural areas in the country without a local source of news and weather.

But with Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency actively looking for any program to cut, there’s plenty of worry that the CPB’s allocation will end up chopped anyway. If it does, stations will have to scramble to stay alive, hoping NPR’s 42 million listeners will buy enough socks and tote bags to make up for the funding loss. But if the FCC cuts NCE licenses of affiliate stations, then many will have to go dark all together, ending the storied run for America’s only public news organization.