California Public Media Reacts to Trump Administration's Attempt to Cut CPB Funds
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, how California public media stations are reacting to President Trump's efforts to pull federal funding. The latest came in an executive order last week barring funds to PBS and NPR, claiming ideological bias. Here's NPR CEO Catherine Marr. We have an independent newsroom and we will always have an independent newsroom. The administration is also trying to claw back already appropriated funds, leaving public media stations bracing for a new pandemic.

For Fallout, tell us, why do you listen to NPR or watch PBS? Forum is next, after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

After President Trump's executive order last Thursday instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease federal funding to NPR and PBS, the networks are vowing to fight back. Here's PBS CEO Paula Kerger on Face the Nation Sunday. Because what's at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.

This hour, we talk with public television and radio stations, big and small, across California to better understand the current and potential impact of ending federal funding.

And we're beginning with our own station. Joining me now is the President and Chief Executive Officer of KQED, Michael Isip. Michael, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much, Mina. Good morning. Good morning. So I'm sure you've been asked, as many of us who work at KQED have been, how KQED will be affected if federal funding goes away? How much do we rely on federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? So federal funding from CPB is a

about 8% of our budget, $8 million. So a material part of our budget, but of more consequence is the fact that the system is intertwined.

and the programming that we get from PBS and NPR is supported by member station dues. So what we don't know is if federal funding goes away to stations, stations disappear, what the impact will be on our programming and services, and that programming drives our audiences and financial support. What is KQED doing to prepare in case federal funding goes away? Well, like all stations, we are looking at different budget scenarios with or without federal funding.

We're talking about our responsibility should the system collapse, what we can do to fill gaps in local communities around the state.

We are having conversations on the state level, hoping to pursue state funding. California is one of only 14 states that does not receive federal funding. We are engaging our community, our members, just making them aware of what is at risk, which is our service to the community and the implications for our communities, and trying to mobilize our supporters. It's not just about financial support. Of course, that is important.

critical, but really making the case for public media, contacting lawmakers and sharing to them why public media matters to them and their communities. In a way, last Thursday's executive order is the tip of the iceberg. Michael, what are the other ways that the Trump administration has tried to target public media funding that's on your mind?

So this is different this time around. Federal funding, threats to federal funding is not new. But the intensity, the number of actions coming at us all at once on multiple fronts, that is different. And so we could talk about the different ways. There's executive order that you talked about at the top of the show, which is designed differently.

to stop all funding to PBS and NPR. In the backdrop is a potential White House proposal to claw back or take back previously congressionally authorized funds to public media over the next two years.

And then if we're able to successfully protect, defend our funding from those actions, we then, of course, have the federal budget process, which lasts over the summer. And we have seen that the president has zeroed out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And that's why small stations are worried. They're thinking that the money that they thought was appropriated to them could be

pulled away. You said this is different. You've worked in public media for, what, three decades at this point, Michael? You've never seen anything like this? Never seen anything like this. When I first got into public media, it was on the heels of the Contract for America, Newt Gingrich Contract for America, the legislative agenda to pull funding from public media. But this is totally different. Again, in the number of actions, the intensity, just last week what happened, but also the backdrop against which we work. We are so divided

so polarized. And I believe we're in a crisis of trust, declining trust in public officials, public institutions, and public media. But one thing I want to say, Mina, is we talk about what's different. I want to underscore what remains the same, and that is our public service. The work that you do, our journalists do at PBS and NPR in a time where

When we face such exceptional challenges from international crises to public health people, communities are looking for clarity, for answers, for solutions. And the reporting that you do every day to keep our communities informed and connected, you are demonstrating every day the value of public media.

And can you talk about the value of a network of big and small stations across California, how we rely on each other and work together? I remember when we relied on small stations in areas affected by a wildfire to better understand what was going on and even broadcast from small station KRCB during the Napa-Sonoma fires. Well, let me just say generally, so this interdependent national local service network

does three things. We keep people informed. We keep people safe. We keep people educated, informed in that the current federal funding, $535 million, 70% of that goes to support local stations.

And if that goes away, you're going to see local stations, particularly in small rural communities. And by the way, 20% of Americans don't have a source of local information. And we know what happens when local information goes away. People are less informed, less engaged, and voter turnout drops. We keep people safe because we reach 97% of American households. So this interconnected broadcast infrastructure...

not only important for delivering our programming, but also important for emergency communications, whether it's earthquake warnings or AMBER alerts. And we keep people educated. This is primarily on the PBS side. PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting administer the Ready to Learn program.

program of the Department of Education. And those funds go to the development, production of the preschool programming on PBS and the research that goes into the development of those programs to ensure those programs develop social, emotional, cognitive skills of kids. And by the way, about 52% of three to four-year-olds

three to four-year-olds do not attend formal preschool. So these are free and accessible programs. And this was not widely reported, Mina, but late Friday night, the Department of Education informed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that the Ready to Learn grant is immediately terminated moving forward. So that's the impact. You asked me about how we work with other stations. So we are in a local news crisis.

Even in California, the fourth largest economy, there are growing news deserts. And one of the things that we do is we have the California Newsroom, which is an editorial management team that coordinates coverage and statewide investigations for 14 public radio stations around the state, many in smaller communities. And the idea is we can't give more capacity to

But if we can support them with editorial management, then the journalists can focus on the services to the community. So that is how we're filling gaps in communities around the country.

There is, of course, the argument that the government generally just should not be funding media organizations. When you hear that, what do you say? And do you agree, given just how stressful it can be for our station as well, wondering whether the government will continue to fund us, whether we'll still get that 8% delegation, for example, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, if it's worth it to try to continue to get federal funding? It is worth it. I mean, it is an incredible...

public-private partnership. On average, stations rely on federal funds for 17% of their budget, but for every dollar that is given to a station—by the way, the federal appropriation is 0.01% of the federal budget—for every federal fund given to a local station, we raise $7.

So only 8% of our budget, the vast majority of our support comes from members, individual contributors. But yeah, this partnership, I mean, funding independent non-commercial media that exists to serve our community is not accountable to shareholders. Absolutely worth it. It is the bedrock of an informed, healthy democracy.

Well, listener Vijay on Instagram writes, no need for the government to use taxpayer dollars, provide services that private enterprises can do better. Noel on Discord writes, of course, the government should provide funds for public media with the end of the Fairness Doctrine, wholesale for profit, media consolidation and more.

The quality of news has really gone down. The BBC and CBC give examples of high-quality government-funded media. The culture programs on PBS and NPR are also important so we don't have to watch mindless entertainment that just makes a profit. Private enterprise can do it better, Michael? Private enterprise is part of the funding model, right? And let's look at...

Companies support us because they believe in our impact and our mission. Foundations support us because they're mission aligned. People put us in their state and wills because they want us to serve future generation. And individual contributors support us because of our overall value, whether it's our journalism, our educational services, the quality programming that we provide. It is a diverse portfolio.

that supports, that makes this public service, this treasured institution that serves our country, our nation, it's part of the model.

We're talking with Michael Isip, president and CEO of KQED, about the role that public media plays in our communities. Michael, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you very much, Mina. You, our listeners, are invited to join the conversation. We're talking about how public media stations are responding to efforts to pull federal funding from NPR networks.

and PBS with President Trump's executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end its financial support for NPR. You can join us at the number 866-733-6786 at the email address forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Tell us, listeners, why do you listen to NPR or watch PBS? Does public media give you something that other news sources don't? Do you think the government should provide funds for public media? Why or why not?

And what questions do you have about this administration's efforts so far to pull federal funding from public media stations? And I want to play a clip from NPR CEO Catherine Marr on The Daily Show on April 29th about the potential impacts on local news coverage nationally if federal funding were to go away.

Let's listen. When you think about your local radio stations, those may not be able to provide the same sorts of services. And the first thing that's going to go, I have to tell you, is going to be local reporters' jobs. We have news deserts. 20% of Americans live in a place where they have no local news coverage other than public radio.

What that means is that when we lose public funding, we are no longer going to be able to cover things like what matters in the statehouse. We're not going to be able to cover natural disasters. We're not going to be able to cover issues of local politics, issues of what's happening in your local sports team.

We know that the existence of local news and public radio in particular contributes to lower rates of polarization, higher rates of civic engagement and higher rates of civic trust. This is foundational infrastructure for our country. Even when we disagree, this is the sort of thing that can start to heal some of those disagreements and bring us back together. We'll have more of Forum after the break. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking this hour about the current funding threats to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting against other uncertainties that public media is facing. And you, our listeners, are invited to join the conversation. Tell us, do you think the government should provide funds for public media? Why or why not? Why do you listen to NPR or watch PBS? Does it give you something that other news sources don't? And what questions do you have about the administration's efforts so far to provide funds for public media?

To pull federal funding from public media stations, you can call 866-733-6786, email forum at kqed.org, or find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. We'll be talking with large and small stations across the state today, but joining me first is David Folkenflik, media correspondent for NPR. Hi, David. Thank you so much for coming back to talk with us.

Pleasure always. And just to be clear for our audiences, you're a journalist for NPR who covers the media, which sometimes means covering your own organization. You are not here today as a spokesperson for NPR. And I appreciate that. That's exactly right. So the CEOs of NPR and PBS say they are going to fight these efforts that the Trump administration is making to pull federal funding. How? What are they saying?

I would say they're actually being pretty cagey about what they're intending to do. Not clear. They obviously are reserving the right to sue. I think there's some exploration of...

You know, who has the best case to make, who has the standing to make it? But it's uncertain. For example, when this particular executive order was issued late Thursday and into Friday, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in some ways is more directly instantaneously affected by it by NPR because that's where the money flows through, said,

essentially made clear they felt this was illegitimate. You know, it was almost as if they were saying, yeah, that's great. And the guy from the who owns the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner also says he's going to deny us the ability to send money to stations that then decide to pay NPR. But it has about as much as authority. They essentially didn't recognize it.

Now, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is currently in court against the Trump administration on his executive order, which claimed to have the authority to dismiss three of their five board members that control the corporation.

But in this case, they didn't issue a legal threat. And so I'm very interested to see what plays out. What you are seeing public media chiefs do, both on the national level and at the local level, is to try to flag this issue vocally and visually for their audiences, to encourage them to contact lawmakers on this and to, as I understand it, behind the scenes, be in touch with members of the House, particularly members of the Senate,

to try to flag why in states both blue and red, this could have blowback for them and why they believe it serves an important public service. So just remind us when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established as the distribution mechanism for NPR, PBS, and other public media stations, and sort of essentially the funding distribution mechanism, what was its mandate in 1967? Yeah.

So this was signed into law, LBJ, you know, sort of kind of a great society endeavor, if you will, to create non-commercial broadcasting, both for really a twofold desire as I look back on it. Perhaps there are more that listeners would share with us. But

There's a desire very much to offer an alternative to the big three commercial networks, which were seen as corporatists. This was happening. It was in some ways reflective of its era, a distrust of the consolidated corporate power. But there weren't a ton of alternatives back then. And there's also a desire to make sure there was more equity.

educational and cultural programming that wasn't simply looking for a bottom line payoff. And, you know, PBS in particular was, you know, created in a way designed to

And in its first years unfolded in a way designed to tend to parents of young children, particularly who did not have preschool or other kinds of educational material who were essentially being ignored in terms of their their intellectual nourishment because parents had to work and because they didn't have the capacity to do that at that time. What was interesting in some ways, if you look back on the history of this as a little footnote, initially, this was just about television.

And as the story goes, late at night, you know, you had essentially two congressional aides at the behest of a lawmaker sticking little carrots by hand, ballpoint pen saying and radio, sticking that into the type type text of the bill before it goes before lawmakers to vote for that. That radio was sort of literally a bit of a of an afterthought and edit in. And what a difference that has made over the decades to the creation of your station and this network.

But, you know, the idea was that there could be other facets of life, educational, cultural, journalistic ways in which the soul could be nourished. The mind could be engaged. Horizons opened for people that went beyond the ways in which folks in the corner offices at ABC, CBS and NBC were engaged.

were doing at that time and since. And the other key piece of this is that they tried to establish a funding mechanism that would be independent from the government, even if the government was funding it, right? And that was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It gets to make the decisions about who it distributes the funding to.

Absolutely. A very interesting creation. It chartered by Congress. So in that sense, a creature of Washington. Its board members appointed by the president, but only in consultation with leaders of both parties of the Senate. And so there is this and basically fully funded by Congress itself. And yet there are, as you say, in the originating statute and in

subsequent policies and laws that were passed, a series of attempted insulations from political pressure. Nobody who's a federal employee or official can serve on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Nobody by law can be considered to be a government employee or official by virtue of serving on that board. Right. They

Several times literally talk about the idea that no employee or official of the government can pressure public media by law over what they what public media outlets put on the air in terms of its news coverage or cultural decisions, even as those things get reviewed as Congress think about future funding. And here's this one other element that was added some years later.

later after the founding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they decided to forward fund it, which is to fund it in advance in a two-year cycle expressly so that the people considering the budget at that moment would not be looking at coverage at that moment and having sort of a stimulus response. I don't like what you said about a buddy of mine. I don't like what you said about this party or that party. I don't like what you said about me. So I'm going to withhold funding. So right now, Congress has this month, a Republican-controlled Congress

Excuse me, this year, Republican controlled Congress passed a budget approval fully funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through the end of September 2027. And what you just heard Michael, your chief executive talk about is that there's an effort now to claw that back, that the president has refused.

Although he's not formally requested through the means that he would have to do to start that process. Exactly. That's what's interesting. So, yes, the executive order targets Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding to PBS and NPR. PBS has said it's about 15 percent of their budget. NPR says it's about 1 percent of their budget.

But smaller stations are worried, even though they are not necessarily directly named as losing CPP funding, because there is this broader effort to actually rescind, take back the money that has already been allocated. Right.

Well, and there's also some real ambiguity there in what the executive order is. Leaving aside, we can talk in a minute about whether the president even has the legal authority to make these orders and to make these things happen, which it's very contested and unclear that he does. But leaving that aside, it's a little unclear from the wording of what the president's decree was, whether it's saying that public records

Radio stations and public television stations simply can't use federal funding to pay for NPR or PBS programming. And we do get a significant chunk of money from stations for that.

At NPR and PBS does as well, or whether it's saying no funds can go from those local stations, regardless if they receive any federal dollars, they can't use any of their funds for that. And that's you know, that would be huge if stations could not receive funds from the federal government.

and still get stuff from NPR and therefore decided not to get stuff from NPR. That is every station's choice. I believe that in South Carolina, the major public radio system there decided to do that of late. But if you do that, you have to replace hours and hours of programming.

And programming and the two major costs, whenever I talk to public radio officials, they say their two biggest costs are paying for their local staffs and local journalism is really expensive. What you guys do at KQED costs a real investment of money to cover the news for the Bay Area.

And it's also expensive to pay for NPR, but you get hours of programs as a result. Well, how are you going to fill that time? How are you going to serve those audiences? There are other places to go, but, you know, it's a real choice. And those are often shows on which from which stations have great success in raising money on the air. So there's there's implication upon implication. My question.

concern as a journalist would be local coverage, because I think that local stations provide so much value, particularly in this era of diminished newspaper ambitions and diminished newspaper presences. And yet, you know, it would really affect the entire system in a broader way as well.

Well, I want to bring into the conversation now Dina Polkinghorne, Interim General Manager at KZYX in Mendocino County, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting. Dina, welcome to Forum. Hi, thank you. Well, first, tell us about the area KZYX serves geographically, demographically. What's it like?

Sure. It's a very rural county, although it's oddly adjacent to what we call the North Bay. It's a different world. I had an aunt visiting me recently from Southern California, and she pulled up and she said, Dina, you are in the country.

It is a 4,000 square foot county with about 90,000 people. So a rather unpopulated county. It's an economically depressed county. Our median income is lower than the national average and our poverty rate is a little bit higher than the national average. What sense do you have about how much the community relies on KZYX?

Oh, a real sense. I mean, we are in fire country. We were, you know, part of all those horrible wildfires that happened in Northern California over the last decade. And we're also a coastal county and we get pretty treacherous winter storms. So just from natural disaster standpoint, um, you know, people rely on us for that sort of breaking news, um, to keep them safe and informed. Um,

There's no television station that serves Mendocino County. We, you know, we get Bay Area stations, but there's none that serve this county. So radio is really it. And our community station, KZYX, is the only community station that covers the entire county. I heard that people even won't decide what they're going to wear that day till they hear your weather report.

It's true. It's true. We have a very, very small staff. We're a tiny station with an operational budget, you know, around $750.

$50,000. And so the one of the ways we compensate for that is we pre schedule our weather reports and every once in a while the wrong one goes in. And we have a listener, an elder who will call us up and tell us please don't do that. I listened to the weather report every day to figure out what clothes to wear. Hmm.

So tell me, Dina, how reliant is KZYX on money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Yes, it's huge. So, you know, I was listening to your, you know, the KQED general manager who spoke earlier, 8% of KQED's funds come from CPB and it's in the millions of dollars.

For us, it's 25% of our revenue and it's $174,000. Yeah. It's a huge part of our budget. So then talk to me about how worried you are about it going away and what would happen if it did? Oh, I'm extremely worried about it. I've never...

seen community radio in such a perilous situation. I mean, just so your listeners understand, and the previous guest talked about these two-year chunks. So we are currently in the last year of the current two-year phase, and we have that money and we've spent that money. But next year, the next two years are being, they're in the treasury, but these are the ones that are being tried, that Trump is trying to claw back.

in the- budget process that's impacting the two years after that and then there's an appropriation process that has a longer view but in the short term that's the next four years for us and I have to pass an agency budget July one and I you know right now like other you know small stations we're trying to figure out how to navigate that in terms of budgeting so we'll have you know

you know, a couple different scenarios based on breaking news and what happens in Washington, D.C. So I want to ask you how your listeners are reacting. Are they hearing about the efforts to pull back federal funding? And what are you hearing from them about it? We are hearing, you know, interestingly, we're in the middle of a pledge drive right now, our spring pledge drive. And this topic is coming up when people call in to donate.

you know, we, we have a pretty strong membership. We, we, I was speaking with a colleague in a, in a far wealthier County than ours. And it turns out our pledge drives bring in twice as much as there. So this, this is definitely a community invested in the station and wants to keep it going. And we, I had a, a gal come in the other day. She's an artist, but she, she's sort of low income and she can't contribute to the pledge drive. And,

and can't keep her membership going because of that. And so she made a piece of art for us to use in the pledge drive, and she just sort of burst out in tears, you know, about the current situation. And, you know, rural counties, like Mencino County, we have a lot of people in isolated pockets on their own. And when these storms happen and fires happen, we have power outages, especially on the coast.

So that means for people no Wi-Fi, that means no cell service, and all they have is a terrestrial radio in their house. So our community relies on this service to keep them safe, and they respond strongly during pledge drives with their support.

Well, listener Pam writes, I would like to know if there's a list of the rural public radio stations that will likely be hurt most by the cuts. I bet I'm not alone in wanting a way to support those stations, along with KQED, of course. Thanks, Pam. Another listener writes, I listen to PBS and NPR for news because they provide the most balanced, in-depth reporting not found in any other media. They provide a diversity of programming without mindless commercials. How are people in remote areas going to learn about the greater world around them without these two resources? So,

Your testimony is having an effect, Dina. I really appreciate you coming on to talk with us. Sure, you bet. Dina Polkinghorn of the station KZYX in Mendocino County. Let me go to caller John in Pleasanton. Hi, John, you're on.

Good morning to you. I am a great supporter and fan of PBS and NPR. It's my go-to news source right up at the BBC. However, I would like to just play devil's advocate for a second, if I may, with claims by, say, the administration that the news organization is too biased and therefore not deserving of public funds. There are a number of really good independent survey organizations

companies on the web that do bias in the media. And I'd just like to sort of average these for you if I can. Let's show you where NPR, PBS sits here. So you have the centrist organizations with no bias, BBC, The Economist, the wire services, Reuters. Then you have Leaning Right, Wall Street Journal. You have the bias right, Fox News.

You have the loony right, Breitbart, etc. On the left, you have leaning left, CNN. You have biased left, MSNBC magazine segments. And then you have the extreme left on that. So where does PBS NPR fit on this? The good news...

The good news is these surveys, and please go and look at these to yourself. They're independent websites. The good news for public broadcasting is your mainline news is judged as centrist. But unfortunately, your magazine segments

are judged as leaning left. Magazine segments will be it. Yes. I'm so sorry to interrupt you just because we're coming up on a break and I do want to give David a chance quickly to just talk about how NPR has responded to concerns about it leaning left and I appreciate you bringing it up.

Well, I would say that, you know, Catherine Marr, CEO in her testimony before Congress, talked about some of the actions taken to install a whole a whole new layer of editorial review done in part with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that was

designed not only to look at whether all perspectives are looked at by a whole cadre of ways, including ideological outlook, but also whether the sheer volume of coverage was fair and commensurate with the kinds of stories being done. Another way of trying to look at, are we handling the stories fairly? We'll talk more with David Folkenflik and with you listeners right after the break. Stay with us. This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

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This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Here's NPR CEO Catherine Marr on The Daily Show on April 29th, responding to accusations that NPR's coverage is biased. So we invite people from every party onto the air, but not everyone comes. I don't think that it's a question per se of us being biased in terms of our actual reporting. What I do think is that we're missing some voices. And so I would just take this opportunity to extend again an invitation to conservative voices who feel like they're not being heard.

I also -- I think that we can't shirk from our responsibility to serve all Americans. And so another criticism that we see is that, you know, we're too woke. But the reality is, this is a very diverse nation. And our mandate under the Public Broadcasting Act is to serve everyone, including the unserved and the underserved. And we can't pull away from that either. We have to be able to represent America

in all of its diversity, even when that makes us sometimes uncomfortable. That means expanding the tent to be as big a tent as possible rather than sort of moving the tent around the country to accommodate different groups.

We're talking this hour about how public media stations are responding to efforts to pull federal funding from NPR and PBS, President Trump's executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end its financial support for those two networks claiming ideological bias affects public media stations in California. And I want to bring another one into the conversation now, Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR in the Inland Empire. Connie, really glad to have you with us. Good morning.

Good morning, Mina. Thank you so much for having me on. So in your case, you receive federal funding for your TV side, not your radio side. So how might this affect your PBS programming? What are you thinking about with your PBS programming right now? Well, what I'd first like to say, Mina, is that we have such a diverse group of people that we serve, our constituents.

We are known collectively as the Inland Empire for over 70 years here. We have 27,000 square miles with a population of more than 4.6 residents. And we are their main source of TV and news, 12% living below the poverty line and about 63 cities, 11% rural, and 9 tribal communities. With, I think this is key, 54% of our residents identify as Hispanic and 34% of our households speak Spanish as their primary language.

So when we do our programming, we're very cognizant of all of this. What I worry about if we lose this funding is our children's block and the children's programming that we do from 6 a.m. to 3 o'clock every day.

This is where you can tune in and you know what your children are watching is pure. You don't ever have to wonder if they're being exposed to something they shouldn't be. They see shows like Daniel Tiger, Wild Kratts, Arthur, where they learn to be kind, to be good citizens, and they get some educational value too. Sue, what perspective...

What percent of your TV budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? For us, it's about 6% or $540,000. So how are you thinking about how you might have to proceed without that money if it goes away? How big a hit would that be for you, Connie? That would be a big hit for us, Mina. We'd have to think about how is it that we serve our children because that's our biggest chunk of programming is our children's block. I heard your previous caller talk about having to replace children

Programming would be, you'd have to have hours of that. So that would mean we'd have to go into production ourselves and make these shows, create these shows. And that would be very, very expensive. We'd have to raise money to do that. I heard that there was a small protest in Riverside in response to news about the executive order. Were you involved in that at all?

You're right about the protest. No, I was not. And I love a good protest. But people were sending me pictures and people just spontaneously showed up on a corner in Riverside with signs that said, save my PBS, save my NPR. So, you know, that made my heart happy knowing that people really do value the service that we provide. Yeah, my mom actually lives in your listening area. That's right.

listens to Forum. Thank you. So thank you for also providing that to my English as a second language mom. It really is, as you say, one of the sources within that region that really does try to address the needs of such a broad swath of the diversity of California. Connie, really appreciate you coming on to talk with us. Happy to be here. Thanks, Mina. Connie Leyva of

KVCR and the Inland Empire. Let me go to Debra in San Jose next. Hi, Debra, you're on. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to talk again about rural areas, including Endocino. I have family there, and we're up there a lot, and we're familiar with the fire department, and also in, actually, the Inland Empire, down in

And there are certain areas that are very radio-dependent for survival. And our NPR stations, that's where we get all our community calendars, knowing when the fire department's having their fundraisers, kids get information about – parents get information about schools and when to go sign up, medical information. And there's no –

There's no television in a lot of these areas. There's no Internet. And we don't get cellular. So the way to get our information is through our radio. It's there when there's fires. It's there when there's storms and our roads are closed. We really need our NPR radio. Well, Debra, thanks for sharing how much you need it.

where you are in rural areas. David, you were mentioning earlier that we should get into whether or not the president really can rescind funding. Talk about what you've reported with regard to that. So the president, early last week, said he was going to fire, as I think I mentioned, three of the five board members, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which...

proceeded to sue him, saying he doesn't have... There's nothing in the statute that allows him to do that. And it doesn't say, for example, the board members serve at the pleasure of the president, which it does in many bodies to which he appoints members. Corporation Public Broadcasting is a 501c3. Then he said essentially that he's trying to decree by fiat that

Nobody who receives money from CPB can use that money, possibly any money, to pay for things from NPR or PBS. There are things actually written into the law, as we've said, that specifically say no government official or employee can pressure the recipients of funds from CPB about what they can do with it. That there's specific things in there saying no one can tell the recipients of those funds what programming they buy.

Presumably that includes NPR or PBS programming. And there's strictures in there that essentially

make it very evident that the idea of political pressure because of coverage that a government official judges to be insufficiently fair to him, her or anyone else is not grounds for their ability to pressure the recipients of that money. That it's, you know, CPB is supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but CPB itself is supposed to be a kind of firewall that further insulates the actual recipients of that federal money who make the programming choices.

And the president is just saying, essentially, I am the head of the executive branch and I have the power to do this. And so there's real question whether he has the standing to do it, particularly if CBB ignores him. What happens then? Does he sue them? Does he take it over as he did with the U.S. Institute for Peace or excuse me, U.S. Institute of Peace? Well, that was an institution that's also kind of this weird hybrid. I described it in an earlier piece as

kind of duck-billed platypus where technically it's a corporation, but its members are appointed by the president. But in that case, two of its board members are just by virtue of what office they hold are on that board. And one of them is secretary of defense and the other is secretary of state. So that's clearly an outfit that envisions strong executive government oversight.

differently, as I mentioned earlier, in this case, Corporation for Public Broadcasting says no government employee or official can serve on its board and no one can pressure it. So this would look on its face. It would be very interesting to see if this goes to court, what a judge might say. On its face, it would seem to violate the spirit and letter of the statutes that have been written to try to insulate public media from political pressure.

Well, the other thing that's been happening, and if federal funding goes away, then that would mean that stations would have to rely on private funding more. The other thing that's happening is that the stations are being investigated, right, by the FCC for their underwriting practices, which, of course, is a really important way that stations end up attracting private dollars. Can you tell us more about where that is? Yeah, I think that you're absolutely right to look at this as sort of a

a 360 look at what's happening here, because there's the effort to discredit public media as illegitimate from the president's rhetoric and some of his allies on Capitol Hill in the administration and outside. There's an effort to goad Congress into rescinding

funding for public broadcasting, although the president has not formally made that request, despite his claims that he would earlier this spring. There's the effort to pressure corporations for public broadcasting, in a sense, try to take it over by firing or by claiming that he has the authority to fire its members, but also by

decreeing that people can't put money into NPR and PBS. And then there's this effort by the president's chief broadcast regulator, Brendan Carr, who has launched an investigation of NPR and PBS stations for the corporate underwriting spots that you hear on KQED and other stations around the country that essentially he is arguing are indistinguishable from commercials. They do sound a bit like commercials, but

But there are some key distinctions. And I think one of the most important one is public broadcasters are forbidden on the airwaves.

from broadcasting what's called a call for action. So you can say, Hey, you should learn more about the Toyota Corolla and you can go to, you know, something.com and look it up, but you can't say, Hey, go on down to Dave's Toyotas and you should buy yourself a Toyota Corolla. You can't make that kind of call for action. And there are, there are limits into how far you go. It's why the spots tend to kind of be burnishing of the presence of, uh, you know, uh,

A studio or a car dealer or whatever might say that they are an underwriter to NPR, to KQED, to support what they do in the coverage you hear here. But that's about as far as it goes.

And that's a difference. What Carr is doing is essentially through this investigation is calling into question the non-governmental funding for public broadcasting. Now, what the heads of PBS and NPR and what member stations will tell you anytime you ask is, hey, look, we have been encouraged for decades to find private sources of funds for what we do apart from the government. We're doing it.

But also, we are in constant conversation with people who work for the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, to make sure that we're on the right side of the line on this. And if at any time they say, "Well, this veers a little bit off the line," we will go back. We will be more restrictive. But we are in constant conversation. They claim to have reams of paperwork showing

that they are following the guidance the FCC has given. And they would argue, how is this something that we should be investigated for when it's something that we're constantly seeking guidance on and trying to observe very carefully because we want to be on the right side of the law? So it's not certain where this investigation will go, but it does seem designed to call into doubt this private source of revenue, very important for NPR, very important for its stations.

At the same time, it's trying to knock out the pillars of public support for these institutions. And further, if they were to find and make a determination that these were commercial ads, they could then use that to call for a stripping of commercial

public media licenses, which are, you know, have a very different, you know, the costs are different, the benefits are different, the, you know, being done under what's called an educational license, confers not, you know, you've got not for profit status, there's all these things that accrue to that, that could be jeopardized were the FCC to continue pressing forward in this for in this front. So it's a, you know, it is an attempt, really to try to strike at

most of the pillars undergirding the way public media operates at the moment. We're talking with NPR's David Foggenflick, and you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

The sister writes,

A listener on Blue Sky writes, early Berliner scathing essay published a year ago documented NPR's liberal bias. None of the NPR editors in D.C. are Republicans. Why should 100 percent of the population fund a platform for views held by only 26 percent of the country? Eloise writes, NPR or PBS should stop advertising itself as independent. It takes a pro-vaccine stance and its coverage of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is biased, hardly independent. Another listener writes, how does poll—

How does pulling funding from public broadcasting pull with the right? Are they fans of PBS and NPR? If not, how could this be bridged? I love you guys and appreciate the connection I feel with NPR. Do you know the answer to that, David?

Well, there are a lot of questions packed in there, right? But I think what you would find and what I've found over the years in polling is that there's been a decline in trust, as your chief mentioned at the top of this hour, and that media definitely, trust has gone down. There has been an increased polarization in trust in public media and NPR and PBS, but that...

NPR is broadly seen as trustworthy and offering trustworthy news coverage and reliable and respected news coverage in some of these same polls. And that you would find in a lot of red states, in a lot of rural areas that NPR,

you might code as Trump country or as deeply conservative or Republican that these are places that actually place a high value on public media because there often isn't a lot of commercial media there and that public media offers voices of people who are familiar to them that sound like them that reflect their interests and values and concerns that reflect disparate voices across those communities and do so in a civil setting like like what KQED forum does and

But for, you know, reflecting the concerns of Alabama or Wyoming or Alaska, you know, in ways that are really important for people and that people all over the ideological spectrum, as this argument goes, deserve that kind of support.

So, you know, I think that the reality of how people feel about it is more complex than people think. Even people I find who may ascribe a liberal bias to it.

Not everybody does on the right, but some do, to what they hear on NPR are often appreciative of what they are listening to, even as they take issue with this story or that. If I might add one thought about Uri Berliner, who one of our listeners wrote in about, Uri wrote a very powerful

impassioned and I think a piece that he truly believed for the free press while he was still on staff at NPR and left subsequently in sort of the tumult of the controversy that his essay engendered. He's a guy who I worked with for basically two decades. I consider a friend. And he and I have had discussions about some of these issues. Not everything he said, I think, is utterly dismissed inside the four walls of NPR by all of its staff. I think the way in which he made some of these criticisms and the

The broad brush with which he painted a lot of his conclusions, I think, uh,

was taken amiss by a lot of my colleagues and that I think some of his specific conclusions don't hold up. But that said, you know, journalism is more of a rolling conversation than a scientific experiment done with a test tube that yields a specific result. Like you're constantly offering pieces of the puzzle or tiles in a grander mosaic trying to offer a full picture compiled over time. And I think that what

What NPR does and what journalism is, speaking as somebody who's worked here and is paid by it and respects it, but nonetheless has critiqued it many times over the years, is that you have a mortal endeavor to

Not everybody at NPR is a Democrat. Not everybody at NPR is a liberal from what I can tell. And Uri's survey of 80 some people in the District of Columbia was what he could find voter records for. But hundreds, many, many hundreds more at NPR headquarters live and work in Maryland and Virginia and aren't based there. Regardless of all those specifics,

You know, it's always fair to say, are we doing things completely? Are we being fair? Did that story strike it right? Did we do too many pieces that are sort of look at things from the same perspective?

What you're really seeing is a mortal endeavor play out as people are doing the best they can to offer truth, to offer fact, to offer varied perspectives and to hold power in all of its formulations and manifestations to account. We just have 30 seconds. The last time we had you on, David, we were talking about the broader assault the administration has made generally, you know, against the media since 2008.

the administration took office. We talked about the AP being barred, for example, from covering certain things and so on. Do you see this as part of that broader effort or do you see this as separate?

You have to see this as part of broader effort against public media. That's part of a broader effort to really to put the media itself on its back foot and to make it less willing to go after the administration. And all of this is part of a broader effort to go after independent sources of criticism and information, universities, law firms, research centers and the like. Thank you, David. And thank you, listeners. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support for KQED podcasts come from Berkeley Rep, presenting Aves, an intriguing new play about memory, forgiveness, and unexpected transformation.

playing May 2nd through June 8th. More info at berkeleyrep.org. Greetings, Boomtown. The Xfinity Wi-Fi is booming! Xfinity combines the power of internet and mobile. So we've all got lightning-fast speeds at home and on the go. That's where our producers got the idea to mash our radio shows together. Xfinity!

Hey.

I'm Jorge Andres Olivares and I'm hosting a new show, Hyphenacion. I'm like many other hyphenated Latinos in the U.S. Our cultures and our communities inform our choices, like with money. We had that pressure to be the breadwinner. Religion. I just think Jesus was what we would now define as Christ.

and family. We're not physically close and we're not like that emotionally close either. So join me and some amigas as we have easy conversations about hard things. Catch Hyphenación from KQED Studios wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.