Contributor: NPR faces a real threat in defunding fight that's coming

Yahoo

14-03-2025

In February, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency put the nation's public radio network on notice. 'Defund NPR,' he wrote on X. 'It should survive on its own.' Musk's tweet was the latest indication that the Trump administration intends to alter the way the broadcaster operates. In January, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced an investigation into the legality of underwriting — the public media equivalent of advertising. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense ordered NPR and other news organizations to give up their offices at the Pentagon. Breitbart News will occupy NPR's space.
During its 55-year history, NPR's funding scares have come almost on schedule, heralded by the arrival of a new Republican administration (Ronald Reagan, 1981), a rightward shift in the Congress (Newt Gingrich, 1995) or a decision by network executives that angers conservatives (the firing of commentator Juan Williams, 2010).
The previous threats have been serious, but none as serious as what's unfolding now.
The network is vulnerable. In 2024, former NPR business editor Uri Berliner posted an essay on the Free Press substack site accusing the organization of adopting a left-wing stance in which 'race and identity' were 'paramount.' NPR pushed back, but the 'bias' allegations received extensive coverage. Simultaneously, the network has been losing its audience. It started during the pandemic, as commuters who had tuned into 'Morning Edition' and 'All Things Considered' abandoned drive-time for radio-free walks down the hall to home offices. Listenership dropped — from an estimated 60 million in 2020 to 42 million in 2024.
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In mounting its defense, NPR should look back at its earlier wins and losses.
By far the worst incident sprang from the recommendation of a Reagan-appointed panel to cancel the entire budget of the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the agency that oversees both NPR and PBS. Although David Stockman, Reagan's budget czar, ultimately opted for a less drastic 25% cut, Frank Mankiewicz, then president of NPR, viewed even the lower amount as potentially ruinous.
In 1982, Mankiewicz tried to free NPR from government funding altogether by monetizing a number of embryonic online delivery systems that would beam stock reports, sports scores and news headlines to handheld devices while transmitting NPR shows to home computers and inventory and pricing information to business customers. The technology, however, had yet to be fully developed. Within a year, Mankiewicz was gone and NPR was $9.1 million in debt.
The CPB bailed out NPR, but not before extracting concessions. Since the network's founding in 1970, it had received grants from the agency to pay for programming. Now, the grants would go to NPR stations, enabling them either to continue buying 'Morning Edition' and 'All Things Considered' from the network or shows such as 'Marketplace' from independent suppliers.
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NPR executives bemoaned the change but the advantage of giving federal money to the stations became apparent in 1995 after Gingrich, the newly elected speaker of the House, announced plans to 'zero out' the CPB. Where in the past this proposal would have been seen as a threat to NPR and PBS, it was instead seen as endangering beloved local stations. 'If you were attacking NPR,' a network executive later said, 'you were attacking your own community.' When an amendment to eliminate CPB funding came up in the House, it lost by a two-to-one margin.
By 2010, when NPR dismissed Williams, the media world was beginning to fracture in ways that anticipated the current environment, and the firing of a conservative commentator became a litmus test. NPR's rationale for letting Williams go, which was that he'd made what it considered Islamophobic remarks while appearing on Fox News, fell flat. Fox lambasted NPR and handed Williams a $2-million contract. NPR investigated the executive who fired Williams and she resigned. Jon Stewart mocked the network on 'The Daily Show' with a reference to a gentler public radio commentator: 'NPR, you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight.'
In 2011, the Republican-controlled House — responding to the firing of Williams and to a later controversy involving a right-wing video sting that captured an NPR executive seemingly agreeing to publicize shariah law — voted 228 to 192 to defund the network. The Democratic-controlled Senate, however, did not go along. President Obama, who signed the bill that kept the funding alive, nevertheless aimed a barb at NPR during that year's White House Correspondents Dinner: 'I was looking forward to new programming like 'No Things Considered.' '
The defunding effort shaping up in 2025 promises dangers harder to joke about. During his first term, Trump stated that the CPB should be defunded. In his second term, he is unleashing an assault on the very idea of public agencies.
NPR's defense will likely be that since it now gets just 1% of its budget from the government, it presents no threat to the national purse. But it's not that simple. According to its own reporting on 'All Things Considered,' while the stations indeed get more government money than does NPR itself, they end up spending a lot of it for NPR programs. With a president who openly despises the mainstream media, and with all branches of government in Republican control, the CPB will not be coming to the rescue.
Yet there are reasons to hope that NPR will survive. First, regardless of Berliner's critique, NPR has always been a source of ground-breaking journalistic practices and superb reporting. It has established a solid foothold in American culture.
In 1972, NPR named Susan Stamberg host of 'All Things Considered,' making her the first woman to front a national news show. In 1973, NPR assigned reporter Josh Darsa to the Russell Senate Office Building to cover the Watergate hearings. No other broadcaster had a reporter in the room each day. In 2003, NPR was the only American broadcast network to keep a correspondent (Anne Garrels) in Baghdad during the aerial assault that launched the Iraq War. NPR's current efforts are similarly strong, whether they be dispatches by Jerusalem reporter Daniel Estrin about the conflict in Gaza or those by Berlin reporter Rob Schmitz about threats to NATO. Ari Shapiro, now the cohost of 'All Things Considered,' recently contributed a thorough piece from Panama about reaction to Trump's stated hopes to reclaim control of the Panama Canal.
Another reason for hope is that as opposed to 1995 — or even to 2011 — the American media landscape is in such poor shape that NPR is more necessary than ever. Across the country, print journalism has imploded. Commercial TV and radio news operations are also in decline. Especially in red states, NPR is sometimes the only source of local news. True, people everywhere now get information from cable channels, random websites or social media, but many still want what NPR offers.
As Bill Siemering, the creator of 'All Things Considered,' put it in the organization's 1970 mission statement:
'In its journalistic mode, National Public Radio will actively explore, investigate, and interpret issues of national and international import. The programs will enable the individual to better understand himself, his government, his institutions, and his natural and social environment.'
This is as good an idea now as it was more than half a century ago. Today's political climate, however, is even harsher than that during Richard Nixon's embattled presidency. In the coming fight, NPR will not only need more than a tote bag of David Sedaris books. It will need to rally support at the national and local level. It will need to bring a knife.
Steve Oney is a Los Angeles-based journalist and the author of 'On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR,' published this week.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.