The Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which steered federal funds to PBS, National Public Radio and its affiliates across the country for nearly six decades — formally shut down Monday, months after Republicans in Congress voted to strip taxpayer money from the organization.
The CPB’s board of directors opted to shut down the agency completely rather than keep it in existence as a shell until a future Democratic administration could potentially reverse the cuts.
“CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks,” said the organization’s president and CEO, Patricia Harrison.
This past July, the House and Senate voted to cut approximately $9.4 billion in spending on public media and foreign aid — axing around $8.3 billion previously allocated to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and $1.1 billion meant for CBP.
The White House had requested the clawback — known as a “recissions package” — in a memo citing CBP’s “lengthy history of anti-conservative bias”.
The White House memo noted that NPR CEO Katherine Maher once called Trump a “fascist” and a “deranged racist” — statements that Maher told Congress in March she now regrets making — and cited two recent PBS programs featuring transgender characters.
NPR and PBS remain in operation thanks to their diverse revenue streams, including major foundation grants, advertising and voluntary viewer and listener donations.
