Earlier this month, President Donald Trump sent a package of spending cuts to Capitol Hill that the House of Representatives recently voted to pass that would cut federal funding for NPR and PBS.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
National Public Radio (NPR), and three of its local stations, have sued President Donald Trump and his administration over an executive order they filed to cut funding for public media.
NPR, which is a 246-station network, has claimed that this order violates their free speech and is dependent on an authority that the president does not have.
According to reports, the lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington by NPR as well as three Colorado bodies – Colorado Public Radio, KUTE Inc., and Aspen Public Radio.
“By basing its directives on the substance of NPR’s programming, the executive order seeks to force NPR to adapt its journalistic standards and editorial choices to the preferences of the government if it is to continue to receive federal funding,” Katherine Maher, NPR’s CEO, said.
The lawsuit is alleging that Trump is working to contravene the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to allow for political interference. The CPB is a private nonprofit corporation that is meant to distribute federal funding to NPR and PBS. Congress has devoted $535 million annually to CPB for 2025, 2026, and 2027.
White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields stated that CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime,” in response to the lawsuit.
“The president was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective,” Fields said, according to the Associated Press.
While both NPR and PBS have reacted to Trump’s executive order, PBS is not involved in this particular lawsuit, however, they are likely to take legal action themselves.
“PBS is considering every option, including taking legal action, to allow our organization to continue to provide essential programming and services to member stations and all Americans,” PBS spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.
The lawsuit cited that 11% of Aspen Public Radio’s budget is provided by the CPB. For Colorado’s Public Radio it’s 6%, which is a network of 19 stations, and they provide 19% of KUTE’s budget.
In the lawsuit, NPR noted that the order filed is attempting to prohibit individual stations within the NPR system from using any federal money to buy programming.
“[The order] directly interferes with editorial independence by requiring them to seek programming elsewhere,” according to the lawsuit.
“Public broadcasting is an irreplaceable foundation of American civic life,” Maher stated.
“At its best, it reflects our nation back to itself in all our complexity, contradictions and commonalities and connects our communities across differences and divides.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
NPR will no longer post on its 52 Twitter accounts after Musk categorized the private news organization as “U.S. state-affiliated media.” The move equated NPR, which receives less than 1% of its funding from the government, with Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua propaganda outlets.
NPR, which stands for “National Public Radio,” issued a statement on Wednesday saying the mislabeling damages the media organization’s credibility with readers.
“NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent. We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence.”
In a letter to staff on Wednesday, NPR CEO John Lansing commented on the risks posed by Twitter’s decision.
“Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent.”
After being questioned by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn on how NPR functioned, Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion last fall, admitted that he may have gotten it wrong. The Twitter account for NPR was then recategorized as “government-funded media.”
The news organization asserted that this new label was still misleading since NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. Less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Musk also applied the “government-funded media” label to the BBC Twitter account. Later, in an interview with the broadcaster, he shared that he may change the label to “publicly funded” media.
Right-wing and conservative commentators have long claimed that NPR and its affiliates’ content is biased toward the left and more progressive ideologies. Meanwhile, Musk has also been accused of allowing the proliferation of far-right extremists on Twitter.
Musk, who describes himself as a free-speech absolutist, removed the New York Times’ blue check mark earlier this month after the paper refused to pay for one.
Formerly, the badges indicated that Twitter had confirmed the identity of a news outlet, government agency or public figure. They are now available for a subscription fee once a month.
“We aren’t planning to pay the monthly fee for check mark status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the New York Times said in a statement. “We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes.”
In his new interview with the BBC, Musk said he hoped to make information on Twitter as accurate as possible, but acknowledged that media companies are often critical of him.
“I’ve been under constant attack. It’s not like I have a stone-cold heart or anything. If you’re under constant criticism or attack and that gets fed to you, including through Twitter – it’s rough, you know.”
BBC also asked Musk if he was concerned about the spread of misinformation due to longstanding media organizations, such as the New York Times, being stripped of their verification badges.
“I must confess to some delight in removing the verification badge from the New York Times,” Musk said. “Anyway, they’re still alive and well so they’re doing well.”
NPR is the first major news organization to stop using the platform. In an email to NPR employees, Lansing stated that it was ultimately up to them to decide if they would like to keep using Twitter on their personal accounts.
“It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.