Executives at New Hampshire’s taxpayer-subsidized media outlets are responding to President Donald Trump’s attempts to end federal funding by claiming he’s attacking “all independent reporting.”
And the head of New Hampshire Public Radio denied suggestions his programming has a left-of-center political bias, claiming the outlet can “ensure editorial integrity, balance and objectivity.”
On Friday, Trump released an executive order headlined “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”
“Today, the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” the order reads. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.
“At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies.”
The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and other federal agencies to stop direct and indirect funding to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to the maximum extent allowed by law. It also requires the CPB to revise its 2025 General Provisions to prohibit funding to NPR and PBS and directs federal agencies to review existing grants and contracts for compliance.
In a statement responding to Trump’s order, NHPR President and CEO Jim Schachter posted a statement decrying the attempts to end taxpayer funding and accusing the president of waging war on “all independent journalism.”
Headlined “The Independence of Public Media Cannot be Compromised,” Schachter made the legal argument that the president cannot unilaterally end funding for public radio and TV or ban the CPB from funding it. He also said public media’s paid lobbyists say there doesn’t appear to be enough votes in the GOP-controlled Congress to write their funding out of the budget.
Calls to end government subsidies for NPR and PBS are nothing new. For decades, some Americans have been asking why, in the era of constant streaming news content available on every screen, taxpayers are still funding radio and TV stations. Even notably moderate Republicans like former President George W. Bush and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney have called for the spending to end.
But according to Schachter, Trump’s support for ending the funding is “part of the administration’s campaign against press freedom – against all independent reporting, whether by for-profit or nonprofit newsrooms, that asks uncomfortable questions or tries to dig out uncomfortable facts.”
Critics of public media respond there’s little evidence NPR or PBS are “independent,” and they point to the outlets’ less-than-aggressive coverage of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during the 2024 campaign and refusal to report on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in 2020.
According to a Pew Research report in March, about a third of Democrats regularly get their news from NPR or PBS, while just 10 percent of Republicans do.
And a Pew poll taken in 2019 found “about nine-in-ten (Americans) who name The New York Times (91 percent) and NPR (87 percent) as their main political news source identify as Democrats.”
The head of NPR, CEO Katherine Maher, testified before Congress that she knows of no liberal bias at NPR. She also told Congress she now regrets publicly calling Trump a “fascist” and a “deranged racist sociopath.”
Schachter also denies any liberal tilt at NHPR.
“We are dedicated to accountability and engage in regular reviews of practices and standards to ensure editorial integrity, balance, and objectivity,” Schachter told NHJournal.
Asked to name a program or host currently broadcasting on NHPR who is center-right, Schachter declined to do so.
According to Schachter, about six percent of NHPR’s annual budget and 18 percent of NHPBS’ would be on the chopping block if Trump’s executive order is enacted.
“A free press is essential to a healthy democracy,” Schachter said in his criticism of the spending cuts.
But NHPR and NHPBS aren’t free to the taxpayers, unlike the massive amounts of radio, TV, newspaper, and streaming news content Americans can already access. Asked why taxpayers should keep paying for any media, he replied, “Public media provides a trusted window to the world.”
According to Pew, only 12 percent of Republicans trust NPR.
