Latest news with #PaulaKerger
Fast Company
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
PBS chief Paula Kerger warns public broadcasting could collapse in small communities if Congress strips federal funding
As Congress moves to make massive cuts to public broadcasting this week, Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), gives an unflinching look at the organization's financial reality if its federal funding is stripped, and how she's battling to protect the network's iconic programming—from Frontline to Sesame Street. Kerger shares the role of corporate philanthropy in PBS's future, its relationship with streamers like Netflix, and how she handles allegations of public media bias. Whether or not you're an avid Nova or Ken Burns viewer, PBS's challenge captures critical lessons about focus, mission, and the need to evolve or die trying. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. A lot of people, I guess, misunderstand what PBS is. You mentioned these 300-some local member stations that control their own programming. So what's the role of PBS in that system? Since I've been in this job, I've spent a lot of time on the road visiting stations. I came into it from our station in New York. I was the station manager there, and I knew a lot about public broadcasting from the lens of WNET. I worked on an island off of the coast of North America, and so when I first took this job, I went on the road. I went to every state across the country, and I wanted to see what public broadcasting really looked like at the ground level because people do misunderstand. We're not a network. We're not like CBS or NBC. We don't control any of these stations. We were built by the stations themselves to be able to deliver at scale the things that individual stations wouldn't be able to do by themselves. Even my old station in New York would not have been able to produce a NewsHour and a Sesame Street and a Masterpiece and a Great Performances and a Nature and a Nova. But if you put all of the resources together and people sort of shared in program acquisition and also shared in an ability to move content in between stations, you actually have something that is. Actually, the S in PBS represents the service that we provide for our public broadcasting system. And so, each station is independent. They make the decision what they air. I always say if you want a lesson in humility, run a federated organization because you have a lot of responsibility, but you absolutely don't have ultimate authority over a whole series of things that people assume you do. Federal funding accounts for a portion of your budget, right? Yes. There are legislative challenges to that underway. There's an executive order that you've sued to block. I know you're hoping none of this comes to pass, but do you have to prepare now in case the funding goes away? So in aggregate, the amount of federal money that comes into public broadcasting is about 15%. The federal money that we're talking about, that's under debate in Congress, 70% of that actually goes directly to stations, and then a little bit of it comes to us. So 15%, someone just said to me a little while ago, well, that doesn't sound like a lot. Maybe you could make that up. For us, the amount of money that we would lose would be significant, but if you're sitting in a small community and 40% of your budget is the federal support, you probably can't make that up. And this is actually why we fight so hard to try to hold onto that funding. You mentioned the name of that hearing, and the impression is like, oh, PBS and this funding is a conduit for a certain kind of content to be infiltrated into some of these smaller communities as well as larger ones. Do you think there's anything you could do to sort of change the impression of PBS from this administration, change the programming, change the talent, anything? Do you think about that? We've always had really passionate supporters all across the political spectrum. . . . I think in some ways, perhaps we're a talking point. I don't know. During the hearing, some of the programs I was asked about are more than 10 years old, and I think someone just looked through a list and pulled some titles rather than actually understanding what it is that we have on the air. And I'll tell you, Bob, I actually just got a note from someone over the weekend that said, 'I think there may be some bias in what you do.' And I said, 'Well, can you give me an example of what you're talking about?' And many times they can't. Usually I think at that point they're talking about news, which is a piece of what we do. It's an important piece. We do the news every night. And then, we also have Frontline, which I often say is the most important series we have on our air. So few media organizations are doing investigative journalism anymore, and I know those programs have been heavily used by legislators and policy makers as well as the general public. So to me, all of this feels not exactly what people have represented. I don't know. The brand of PBS, you mentioned the historical bipartisan support, and it's almost like the brand has been turned into meaning something different than it meant in a very short period of time. Well, we've done a lot of surveys, and we do all the time. I take to heart our obligations to serve all of America. And I feel in this moment, people have put themselves into these little bubbles where they're only getting information or interested in information that reflects back their own perspectives. And I think the role of any media organization should be to challenge people to understand that people have different perspectives. We can agree that we may not agree with someone's point of view, but we can accept the fact that that's a legitimate point of view. We seem to have lost all of that. Everything has devolved into 'I'm right and you're wrong.' But at our heart, I think we agree with a lot of key ideas and principles. And so, how do we get back to that again? How do we get back to helping people understand information that is going to be important for them for their lives? And that's what we do. And when you choose to take legal action against the Trump administration, against the executive order, how much do you worry that there's a certain part of the country that's just going to say, yep, that confirms that they're against our president? I mean, those are tough decisions, right? Yeah. This was a really tough decision, and I had people that were very anxious that we file immediately, 'Why haven't you filed yet?' And I had others that said, 'Just make sure that you really have looked at this carefully.' I mean, the decision to file was not one that we took lightly, and frankly, we filed with a great amount of sadness. And it was sobering to look at the first draft of our complaint that begins PBS v. Donald J. Trump, to the fact that we would ever be in a position where we would be involved in legal action against the president of the United States is nothing that I ever thought we would be in, but the executive order was one we had to respond to. It made it illegal for any federal money to come into public broadcasting. This executive order would've restricted any of our stations from using any money that they received from the government. I mean, it would basically unwind our system. So we then made the decision that we were going to go forward, but it is not anything that I wanted to do.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PBS sues Trump administration in wake of calls to strip funding
PBS is suing President Trump's administration on First Amendment grounds, arguing the president is trying to pull funding the from the broadcaster because of editorial coverage he disagrees with. The suit filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., accused the president of trying to 'upend public television' and argues the law 'forbids' him from pulling funding to it and other public broadcast outlets. PBS's suit follows a similar lawsuit filed earlier this week by NPR, which similarly argued Trump's executive order targeting funding to public media 'violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause by disregarding Congress's express commands.' In a statement to The Hill on Friday, a spokesperson for PBS said, '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.' Trump and his allies have long attacked NPR and PBS over their funding, some of which comes from taxpayer dollars but a larger portion of which is derived from private donations and member stations. On Capitol Hill, a push among Republicans to strip federal funding from public broadcasters is gaining steam, though some lawmakers expressed skepticism. At a hearing last month, PBS president Paula Kerger defended the outlet's editorial strategy and funding model, arguing the network provides vital services to Americans and particularly children through educational programming. But Trump, in his executive order that has now sparked a pair of lawsuits, argued PBS and NPR are biased against his agenda in their news coverage and are undeserving of federal dollars. 'No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize,' his executive order on the matter reads. 'Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax paying citizens.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Axios
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
PBS sues Trump administration over funding cuts
The nonprofit Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and one of its local affiliates on Friday said they sued the Trump administration over the executive order seeking to cease all federal funding to National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS. Why it matters: The lawsuit follows a similar complaint filed by NPR earlier this week. PBS CEO Paula Kerger had alluded to the broadcaster's willingness to take legal action in an interview with Axios last month, saying she would would "vigorously" defend PBS' board from any political interference. State of play: The complaint, which was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., argues the president doesn't have the authority to serve "as the arbiter of the content of PBS's programming, including by attempting to defund PBS." It argues the president lacks the power to influence funding decisions made by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a non-government entity. (CPB allocates around $535 million in federal funding annually to NPR and PBS.) It also says the president's executive order violates PBS' First Amendment rights. With the complaint, PBS is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from Trump's executive order and asks the court to declare that the order violates the Constitution. What they're saying:"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 spokesperson said. Catch up quick: Last month, the CPB sued Trump and several administration officials for attempting to fire three of the five members of its board and asked a judge for a temporary restraining order. A District Court judge ordered both sides to file arguments in response to CPB's request for a temporary restraining order that would pause the firings while the case was deliberated, per NPR. By the numbers: PBS receives around 15% of its total revenue from the federal government. The rest comes from public support and corporate sponsors. Yes, but: Like NPR, PBS' local member stations are generally more reliant on federal funds than the national PBS organization. PBS, in its lawsuit, argues stripping federal funding would ultimately "upend public television."
The Hill
30-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
PBS sues Trump administration in wake of calls to strip funding
PBS is suing President Trump's administration on First Amendment grounds, arguing the president is trying to pull funding the from the broadcaster because of editorial coverage he disagrees with. The suit filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., accused the president of trying to 'upend public television' and argues the law 'forbids' him from pulling funding to it and other public broadcast outlets. PBS's suit follows a similar lawsuit filed earlier this week by NPR, which similarly argued Trump's executive order targeting funding to public media 'violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause by disregarding Congress's express commands.' In a statement to The Hill on Friday, a spokesperson for PBS said, '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.' Trump and his allies have long attacked NPR and PBS over their funding, some of which comes from taxpayer dollars but a larger portion of which is derived from private donations and member stations. On Capitol Hill, a push among Republicans to strip federal funding from public broadcasters is gaining steam, though some lawmakers expressed skepticism. At a hearing last month, PBS president Paula Kerger defended the outlet's editorial strategy and funding model, arguing the network provides vital services to Americans and particularly children through educational programming. But Trump, in his executive order that has now sparked a pair of lawsuits, argued PBS and NPR are biased against his agenda in their news coverage and are undeserving of federal dollars. 'No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize,' his executive order on the matter reads. 'Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax paying citizens.'
New York Times
30-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
PBS Sues Trump Over Order to Cut Funding
PBS sued President Trump on Friday to block an executive order that would cut federal funding for public television and radio, arguing that it was unconstitutional. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington by PBS and a public TV station in Minnesota, says that Mr. Trump's order violates laws that 'forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS's programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.' 'The executive order 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,' the lawsuit says. 'That is blatant viewpoint discrimination.' The White House had no immediate comment. Mr. Trump signed an executive order this month demanding that the taxpayer-backed Corporation for Public Broadcasting cut federal funding from NPR and PBS, arguing that those organizations were politically biased. Both organizations pushed back vehemently: NPR sued to block the executive order this week, and Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, called it 'blatantly unlawful.' The order, PBS says, will 'upend public television,' which has aired shows like 'Sesame Street,' 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' and 'Frontline' for decades. About 16 percent of PBS's budget of $373.4 million annual budget comes directly from grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which spends more than $500 million each year on public media. PBS's lawsuit says that Mr. Trump's order also jeopardizes the roughly 61 percent of its budget that comes from local station dues, arguing that the White House ban on indirect funding of PBS would apply to local stations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives its funding from Congress two years in advance to insulate it from short-term political priorities. A PBS spokesman said in a statement that the network '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.' In its lawsuit, PBS argues that Congress — not Mr. Trump — has the power to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The lawsuit also says that the First Amendment prohibits the president from deciding which organizations should receive funding based on the views they express. Mr. Trump's executive order is one of several efforts taken by Republicans to weaken public media. The White House has signaled that it will ask Congress to rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and it has attempted to fire members of the corporation's board of directors. There are also efforts underway in Congress to pass bills that would take away funding for NPR and PBS.
