Donald Trump signed a decree asking for the federal investment manager in public audiovisual (CPB) on Thursday to finance two American public media, PBS television and NPR radio, which he accuses of being biased.
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“I give investigation to the Board of Directors of the CPB and to all the departments and executive agencies to stop the federal funding of NPR and PBS”, according to the text, which adds that “no media enjoys a right to public financing guaranteed by the Constitution”.
The CPB budget has already been approved by the congress until 2027, making a doubt on the effective scope of the decree which requests the Board of Directors of the CPB “to cancel the direct funding existing to the maximum extent authorized by law and to refuse to provide future financing”.
Donald Trump had asked Congress at the end of March to put an end to the public funding of these two media, “horrible and completely biased networks”, according to him.
More broadly, the decree claims that if the federal media funding was justified when the CPB was created in 1967, it is today, “in a rich, diverse and innovative media landscape”, which has become “outdated, not necessary” and “corrosive for the appearance of journalistic independence”.
More than 40 million Americans listen to the public radio NPR and 36 million every week, watching local television from the PBS network every month, according to estimates by these media.
The director of NPR Katherine Maher estimated in March that the radio would receive around $ 120 million from the CPB in 2025, “less than 5 % of her budget”.
This desire for the American administration is part of its commitment to drastically reducing public spending, and in the media, this has made it possible through its commitment to dismantling the external public audiovisual of the United States and its Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty radios.
The French NGO Reporters Sans Frontières denounced on Friday a “worrying degradation” of press freedom in the United States.
