The Public Broadcasting Service on Friday sued President Donald Trump to block his attempt to cut off its federal funding, and accused the president of retaliating against the public broadcaster over “perceived political slights in news coverage.”
Trump’s executive order targeting PBS’ funding “will upend public television,” lawyers for the broadcaster behind “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street” wrote in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Constitution and the half-century-old law governing public television forbid Trump from attempting to defund PBS or “serving as the arbiter” of its programming, PBS argued.
The lawsuit from PBS and one of its member stations in Minnesota came three days after National Public Radio, or NPR, filed a similar suit against Trump and his administration.
“After careful deliberation, PBS reached the conclusion that it was necessary to take legal action to safeguard public television’s editorial independence, and to protect the autonomy of PBS member stations,” a PBS spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
The nonprofit public media outlets both want the courts to invalidate Trump’s May 1 executive order commanding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, and all executive agencies to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”
The White House said after PBS’ lawsuit was filed that the CPB was “creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.”
“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS,” spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement Friday evening. “The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”
Trump’s order declared that the idea of the government funding the news media is “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” It also accused both PBS and NPR of failing to present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
Lawyers for PBS said they dispute Trump’s assertions “in the strongest possible terms.” But regardless, the president is legally barred from meddling with the broadcaster’s funding or its content, they wrote.
They cited a federal telecommunications law’s dictate that no “department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States” may “exercise any direction, supervision, or control over public telecommunications, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees.”
That also applies with respect to “the content or distribution of public telecommunications programs and services,” the law states.
Trump’s order also violates the Constitution’s protections of speech and press freedom, PBS argued. It “makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is cutting off the flow of funds to PBS because of the content of PBS programming and out of a desire to alter the content of speech.”
“That is blatant viewpoint discrimination and an infringement of PBS and PBS Member Stations’ private editorial discretion,” lawyers for the broadcaster wrote.
They added that the order “smacks of retaliation for, among other things, perceived political slights in news coverage.”
The CPB was created when then-President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 into law. The private, nonprofit corporation is tasked with disbursing federally allocated money to public broadcasters.
The CPB’s operating budget for fiscal year 2025 totaled $545 million, the majority of which was allocated to local public TV and radio stations. That funding covers some, but not all, of those stations’ own budgets — which include buying national programming from PBS and NPR.
“PBS News Hour” gets about 35% of its annual funding from a combination of CPB appropriations and station dues, while the rest is generated from donations, foundation grants and corporate sponsorships, PBS said.
NPR said that 30% of its funding comes from local member station fees, while just 1% of its revenue comes directly from the federal government. The largest share of its funding, 36%, comes from corporate sponsorship, NPR said.
