By Zehra Nur Celik
The US nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which oversees National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has rejected an executive order by US President Donald Trump aimed at eliminating federal funding for public broadcasting, according to local media reports.
Emphasizing that its funding is determined by Congress and not the president, Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the CPB, said in a statement on Friday: “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President's authority," according to ABC news.
"Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government," Harrison noted.
"In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade 'any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over (CPB) or any of its grantees or contractors'," she added.
Trump signed the executive order Thursday, directing the CPB to eliminate federal funding for the NPR public radio organization and public broadcaster PBS "to the maximum extent allowed by law."
The order escalates Trump’s long-running criticism of public broadcasters, which he has accused of political bias.
Posted on the White House website, the order claims the publicly-funded networks “use taxpayer dollars to produce left-wing propaganda,” specifically citing their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden and a popular target for conservatives.
"Cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law," the order reads, further instructing all federal agencies to halt any indirect support for programming affiliated with NPR or PBS.