Trump Calls NPR And PBS 'Biased And Partisan,' Signs Executive Order To Stop Funding

• President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting funding for NPR and PBS on Thursday
• The order cited the outlets' "biased" and "partisan" news coverage as the reason for the decision
• NPR and PBS have both issued statements saying they intend to challenge the order

Federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast Service was halted on Thursday, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to halt the outlets' funding.

The order said the decision was made because both NPR and PBS publish news that is "biased" and "partisan."

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"Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options," the order read. "Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage… neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens."

A separate statement put out by the White House said that NPR and PBS are "entities that receive tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.'" 

The statement cited several examples of stories the Trump administration considered "trash that passed for ‘news'" or intolerant of "non-leftist viewpoints," including a "Sesame Street" segment that addressed racism during the Black Lives Matter movement and several NPR stories that dismissed the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab.

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Previously, the public broadcasters have received half a billion dollars each year in public funding through CPB, according to CNBC. 

Both PBS and NPR responded to the executive order on Friday.

PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger issued a statement saying, "The President's blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years.  We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans."

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In a lengthier post, Katherine Maher, NPR's president and CEO, said, "We will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public. We will challenge this Executive Order using all means available."

Patricia Harrison, the president and CEO of CBP, also made a statement on Friday that shared similar sentiments with NPR and PBS. "CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President's authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government," it read. "In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors."

The executive order can be challenged in court.

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