MTPR reporter Aaron Bolton reported this story, which was not reviewed by anyone other than the MTPR News Director before it was published.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday telling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, to stop funding NPR and PBS.
Trump’s order calls NPR and PBS’ coverage biased. Trump also says Americans have plenty of news options and government funding for NPR and PBS is outdated and unnecessary.
Yellowstone Public Radio General Manager Ken Siebert says this order is mostly directed at both national outlets, but it would restrict how local public radio stations spend CPB funds.
“It is saying that they cannot use them to directly or indirectly support National Public Radio.”
Siebert says the station does use its CPB funding to pay for NPR news shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered.
CPB and NPR in public statements questioned Trump’s authority to restrict how CPB spends funds appropriated by Congress.
Richard Painter is a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He says that CPB was created to be separate from those in political power.
“CPB is an independent corporation created by Congress, and there’s nothing I see in the statute that would give the president of the United States the authority to dictate how the money is spent,” Painter says.
Anne Hosler oversees Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS employees at the University of Montana. She’s waiting to see how CPB and NPR respond to Trump’s latest order. In a separate proposal, Trump is asking Congress to claw back CPB funds.
“This is just a continuation of a series of efforts that we’ve seen recently to defund public media at the federal level,” Hosler says.
Congress hasn’t weighed in on the proposal yet. But Hosler says that would have a much larger impact on the station. CPB funding accounts for about 11% of Montana Public Radio’s budget and 8% of YPR’s budget.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by MTPR's Health Care and Flathead correspondent Aaron Bolton. It was edited by MTPR News Director Corin Cates-Carney. No other MTPR staff or University of Montana officials reviewed this story before it was published.
