NPR is against Trump’s executive order cutting funding for public broadcasting

The Colorado Public Broadcasters, the NPR and PBS Divisions, and Trump’s Early May Executive Order: a First-Principles Study

A team that includes noted free speech lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous filed the lawsuit for NPR and the Colorado stations jointly in the District of Columbia. The suit calls Trump’s early May executive order “textbook retaliation” and an existential threat to the public radio system “that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

“It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. ‘ The legal brief for the public broadcasters said that this wolf comes as a wolf. “The Order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased.'”

The differing profiles of the three stations joining in the suit capture the appeal and reach of the broader public radio system: the statewide Colorado Public Radio, which is based in Denver; Aspen Public Radio which broadcasts throughout the Roaring Fork Valley; and KSUT, originally founded by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and now serving four federally recognized tribes in the Four Corners region in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

The board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting received a directive from Trump on May 1st, which ordered them to distribute more than half-billion dollars to public broadcasters. By statute, three quarters of that money is devoted to television, one quarter to radio.

NPR’s Maher rejected such ideological characterizations, pointing to such statements by Trump to argue he was seeking to exact illegal retribution for their news coverage.

The NPR/PBS Pipeline: Claims Against the Donald Trump White House Over a Newly Created Commission for Public Broadcasting

In the statement, Harrison noted that the statute Congress passed to create CPB “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.”

Harrison and CPB have effectively ignored Trump’s orders – retaining, for now, its board members, as the case works through the federal courts – and taking no actions to withhold money from NPR and PBS or the hundreds of stations that send funds to the two national broadcasters.

Public radio is looking at an interdependent system, and its relationship is closely intertwined. NPR’s weekly audience for its programs, articles, podcasts and other offerings exceeds 43 million Americans, according to the network, including through its local stations.

NPR receives about 1 percent of its revenue. Local stations are more dependent on it, receiving 8 to 10 percent of their annual revenues from the corporation. PBS receives roughly 15 percent of its revenue from CPB.

Trump’s Republican allies in the U.S. House held a hearing at which Maher was assailed for both personal social media posts showing a liberal tilt years before she joined the network, and journalism published before her arrival. NPR has policies that prevent executives from making editorial decisions for the newsroom, according to her testimony. Paula Kerger, the chief executive officer of PBS, was questioned about a video posted on a New York City public television’s website featuring a drag queen. Kerger claimed that it never ran on television and was taken down.

Congress doesn’t fund NPR or PBS directly, instead allocating money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which then distributes funds to public broadcasters. CPB — a private corporation authorized by congressional statute — receives funding two years in advance.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp, Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. No corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted.

NPR and three Colorado public radio stations filed suit Tuesday morning in federal court against the Trump White House over the president’s executive order purportedly barring the use of Congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS.

The president doesn’t have authority under the Constitution to take such actions. “On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress.”