US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for all federal funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) to be blocked.
Trump alleged that both organisations have engaged with “biased and partisan news coverage”.
The order instructs the board of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), who distributes funding to PBS and NPR stations, to “cease direct funding” to the “maximum extent allowed by law”.
PBS called the order “blatantly unlawful”, while CPB said the organisation is not “a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority”.
The White House has said that funding of news media is “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence” and that the media landscape has become more “diverse”.
However, the CPB budget has already been approved by Congress through 2027.
Patricia Harrison, CEO of the CPB, said the organisation is not “a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority”.
“Congress directly authorised and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” she said.