The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which has been responsible for distributing federal funding to public media since it was established by Congress in 1967, has announced it will shut down next January. The move comes after President Donald Trump signed a bill rescinding the $1.1 billion in funding that had been committed to CPB for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.
“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life,” said CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison in a press release. She added, “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations.”
Best known for its support of PBS, NPR and their member stations, CPB also provides grants to other public radio and television stations. While CPB’s loss will undoubtedly be felt by public stations in large cities, it’s stations in rural areas and tribal communities that will be most impacted. According to CPB, rural stations depend more on federal funding than urban stations, and have a significantly harder time raising money from individual donors and funders.
To make matters worse, in rural communities and tribal nations, public news outlets often act as hubs for emergency alerts. Without these stations, millions of people may lose access to critical, life-saving information.
“Public media isn’t just about educational programs and documentaries. It’s about infrastructure. It’s about having a trusted voice and a signal that reaches nearly every household in America — especially in rural areas where there may be no local news station and where cell coverage is spotty at best,” wrote Craig Fugate for Protect my Public Media.
Numerous philanthropic funders have pledged to continue their support for public news, though as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation notes, philanthropy cannot “fully replace the critical role of public funding in keeping people informed and communities prepared.” Still, given the cuts and the upcoming end of CPB, philanthropic support will be important for the survival of public news.
We recently looked at which funders support PBS and its treasured TV programming on a national level. Now, we’ll take a look at public news funders.
Who’s funding PBS NewsHour and NPR?
Unsurprisingly, there’s a fair amount of crossover between who funds PBS NewsHour and NPR. They both receive funding from stalwart journalism funders including the MacArthur Foundation — which names journalism and media as one of its “enduring commitments” — and from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has continued to support PBS and NPR because, as it notes, “everyone deserves access to clear, credible health information.”
Not only is the Carnegie Corporation of New York a longtime funder of public media, including PBS and NPR – it published the “Public Television: A Program for Action” report in 1967, recommendations that led to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which established the CPB.
PBS NewsHour and NPR also receive support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, perhaps the most important journalism and media funder in the U.S. While Knight isn’t listed as one of NPR’s funders in 2023 or 2024, it has been a funder in previous years. Knight’s support helped fund NPR’s “digital transformation,” its election coverage in 2020, and an initiative to create a series of linked local news test sites.
While the Mellon Foundation has awarded a handful of grants to NPR over the years, it has also supported PBS NewsHour, particularly its coverage of arts and humanities, as well as its “Race Matters” series.
Both PBS NewsHour and NPR have also received support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
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More public news funders who back either NPR or PBS NewsHour
Although PBS NewHour and NPR share a lot of the same funders, there are some grantmakers that concentrate their support on one of the two outlets.
For instance, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has provided almost $2 million for core support for PBS NewsHour, and the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation has not only provided it with direct support; it has also offered to match donations to PBS NewsHour up to $100,000.
PBS NewsHour receives additional support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation and Laurie M. Tisch Foundation.
NPR, meanwhile, has the backing of the William T. Grant Foundation, which supports research to improve the lives of young people in the U.S., and the STEM research and education funder Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. NPR also received support from Stand Together Fellowships through its Music Journalism Fellowship. Stand Together, founded by Charles Koch, previously funded news media and journalism through its now concluded media fellowship program.
Billionaire donors Eric and Wendy Schmidt committed $5.5 million to NPR last year to expand its Collaborative Journalism Network. The funding will help public radio stations expand their reach and serve more communities with local, multi-platform public service journalism. The Schmidt Family Foundation awarded an additional $4.7 million in 2020 to establish two other regional newsrooms in California and the midwest as part of the Collaborative Journalism Network.
“Local news organizations are essential to our communities, providing not only a sense of identity and connection but also a spotlight on local challenges like land rights, voting abuses, the impact of extractive industries and air and water quality,” said Wendy Schmidt, cofounder and president of the Schmidt Family Foundation. “Eric and I believe deeply in investing in NPR’s work to strengthen our democracy, protect human rights, expose wrongs and uplift voices that deserve to be heard.” Schmidt is a former journalist and also supports other nonprofit news media outlets.
Other NPR funders include the Skoll Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Melville Charitable Trust, Kresge Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts, among many others.
Is it a good thing if private funding looms larger as public funding shrinks?
With the shutdown of CPB comes the end of an era in which the federal government helped bring radio and television to 99% of Americans. Public media has long been in the crosshairs of Republican efforts to reduce spending, but since Trump’s election, attacks against journalism in the U.S. have spiked, including from the president himself. Trump has filed lawsuits against several news outlets, including CBS News, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal and the Des Moines Register. Despite the supposed protections offered by the First Amendment, both CBS and ABC settled the suits, paying $16 million and $15 million to Trump’s presidential library, respectively.
Meanwhile, the loss of federal funding means public news media will be even more reliant on philanthropy. While private funders have, on one hand, helped stave off the death of many local news outlets formerly reliant on long since dried-up ad revenue, the end of CPB further highlights a concern that applies across all philanthropy-backed media: the influence donors may have on which news is reported, and how, especially those who support news related to their businesses.
“Obsevers of the industry… are concerned about a new era in journalism in which a limited class of grantmakers is defining narratives and the flow of information,” wrote Bill Lascher for Nonprofit Quarterly.
The future of public news remains uncertain, but with the correct safeguards in place, donors and foundations can save stations that are in danger of shuttering. Whatever happens with federal funding in the coming years, it’s critical for philanthropy to continue its support of efforts to keep Americans informed, which is crucial to a functioning democracy.
