PBS Slashes Budget by Over 20 Percent After Trump Cuts Federal Funding: Report

PBS is reportedly cutting its budget by 21 percent after President Donald Trump signed legislation pulling $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the primary source of federal support for PBS and NPR, over left-wing bias.

PBS chief executive Paula Kerger announced the budget cut, approved Wednesday by PBS’s board, in a staff memo obtained by the New York Times. The public broadcaster will also take in less revenue as the board voted to reduce local station dues by $35 million, the Times reported.

NPR, which was already facing financial difficulties and has been cutting jobs for years, announced plans to reduce its budget by $8 million in response to Trump’s federal funding cut.

The announcement comes after Trump in July signed a bill to reduce the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s federal funding by $1.1 billion over the next two fiscal years. The corporation has since announced plans to lay off most of its employees by the end of September as part of an “orderly wind-down of its operations.” In May, Trump also signed an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end all direct and indirect federal funding to PBS and NPR.

PBS and NPR, America’s two biggest public broadcasters, have long faced public scrutiny over left-wing political bias in their coverage, even as the networks have received federal funding for decades. In the current fiscal year alone, NPR and PBS received around $535 million from the federal government.

PBS is likely to follow NPR’s footsteps in laying off staffers, according to public media analyst Alex Curley. “PBS hasn’t gone through substantial layoffs since 2020, unlike NPR,” Curley said, according to the Times. “It’s hard to imagine they’ll be able to avoid them with a budget reduction this large.”

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