National Public Radio and PBS — along with rural outlets in Wyoming — face uncertain futures under a plan by the Trump administration to cut federal support to public broadcasting.
The New York Times reported Monday that the White House plans to soon ask Congress to pull back more than $1 billion in public broadcasting funding, a move that could eliminate nearly all federal support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which helps fund NPR and PBS.
CPB is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting and the largest single source of funding for public radio, television and related online and mobile services.
Wyoming Perspective
Ruby Calvert, a Riverton resident and chair of the national CPB board, said although these public media organizations may not be flawless, pulling their funding would decimate public broadcasting, particularly in rural America where public media stations have much less funding.
President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted NPR and PBS because of a Republican perception that the media outlets report with an unfair liberal bias.
When asked by reporters in March if he would be interested in defunding NPR and PBS, Trump responded that, "I would love to do that. I think it's very unfair, it's been very biased — the whole group... the kind of money that's being wasted, and it's a very biased view."
Government money accounts for a small, but critical part of the budgets at NPR and PBS, which also generate revenue through sponsorships and donations. Most of this federal funding goes to local station branches rather than the national station.
Rural Broadcasting
Calvert, the former general manager and director of programming for Wyoming PBS for decades, said CPB gives stations in Wyoming nearly $2 million a year in federal funding. This funding makes up a significant portion of overall revenue for small and rural stations, a hit that she said would be “devastating” for them.
“Either Public Radio or public television, to have to raise a $1 million, it just couldn’t happen,” she said.
Christina Kuzmych, general manager of Wyoming Public Media, offered a smaller, but still significant estimate, saying her station would lose about $400,000 for 2026. This makes up 13% of her station’s overall budget, a hit she said would result in “serious cuts.”
Bigger stations, Calvert said, likely wouldn’t be nearly as affected.
Calvert also points to the value that PBS’ children’s programming like “Sesame Street” provides.
“There’s so much understanding and information in those children’s shows, for those not to be on the air anymore it would just break my heart,” she said. “I think it’s so important.”
State Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily the issue of funding these organizations is important to Wyoming residents and a fine-toothed comb should be used in analyzing the spending.
“If we are allocating funds to organizations that ultimately end up giving information to the public, it’s essential these programs are non-biased and not taking biased political views,” he said.
Some Bias Inevitable?
Calvert, the sister of longtime Wyoming legislator Eli Bebout and the daughter of the legendary Shoshoni postmaster Dessie Bebout, declined to directly comment on the funding risk, but believes NPR and PBS have been unfairly targeted by their critics.
Last month, a fiery hearing took place in the U.S. House where some Republican members accused these organizations of reporting with an “anti-American” slant, something Singh said many Wyomingites would be concerned about if true.
“If those tax dollars are going to be used toward pushing the narrative that those living a Christian lifestyle are bigoted, that’s a bad use of my tax dollars,” he said.
Singh said it’s impossible for a media outlet to completely avoid all bias, but at times NPR and Public Radio may go a little too far.
“I think doing this is good to put these organizations under the microscope,” he said.
In 2023, a study found that congressional Republicans saw 85% negative coverage while congressional Democrats saw 54% positive coverage on PBS’s flagship news program. Media bias rating agency AllBias — which surveyed nearly 24,000 readers — found NPR’s bias aligns with “liberal, progressive or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.”
In a Monday press release, the White House accused PBS and NPR of performing “grift” at the taxpayer’s expense. They also highlighted a list of stories they believe exhibited unfair bias including:
• In 2024, NPR ran a Valentine’s Day feature around “queer animals,” in which it suggested the make-believe clownfish in Finding Nemo would’ve been better off as a female, that “banana slugs are hermaphrodites,” and that “some deer are nonbinary.”
• In 2024, PBS produced a documentary making the case for reparations.
• In 2022, NPR educated the nation on the “whole community of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts” and “trans-ceratops.”
• In 2021, a PBS station aired a children’s program that featured a drag queen named “Lil’ Miss Hot Mess.”
• In 2021, NPR suggested doorway sizes are based on “latent fatphobia.”
• In 2021, NPR lamented that “animals deserve pronouns, too.”
• In 2022, NPR ran a feature titled “What ‘Queer Ducks’ can teach teenagers about sexuality in the animal kingdom.”
• In 2020, PBS show Sesame Street partnered with CNN for a town hall aimed at presenting children with what it believes was a one-sided narrative to address racism amid the Black Lives Matter riots.
Calvert said it’s inevitable that there will be bias of some kind in stories when considering the quantity of news that NPR produces.
“Are there going to be stories that slant right or left? Yes,” she said. “I think you have to keep everything in perspective with the claims of NPR and PBS.”
She also pointed out that the 2021 drag queen instance was produced by a single station in New York and did not air throughout the country.
“It was not fed by PBS as a program and most stations did not carry it,” she said. “That was just one of those huge distortions during that period that PBS and most of the stations are not guilty of.”
She also noted the fact that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich chose to air his “Journey to America” immigration documentary on PBS despite previously calling for defunding the organization.
Fighting Back?
Calvert said CPB stations should be given more opportunity to respond to accusations like these, mentioning how the FCC puts specific standards on them as a non-commercial educational broadcast station, which blocks them from airing extreme violence or gratuitous sexual activities.
“If people are doing their jobs, that’s what they're doing,” she said. “They’re providing news and informational programming that meets the standards of their community.”
The uncertainty of the situation, she said, has also left members of these organizations “on pins and needles” and worried.
In anticipation of potential cuts, Calvert believes many stations are putting together promotional packages that highlight the work they’ve done for their communities to show to their members of Congress in order to convince them against defunding them.
Kuzmych said her organization already does this on a frequent basis, and will do the same when urging against public broadcasting cuts. Wyoming Public Media has already lobbied its audience to do the same in an email a few days ago.
“We must give substantial credit to our listeners,” she said. “They are the fervent lobbyists who contact our delegation via letters and personal contact to communicate the value of public broadcasting to Wyoming.”
Although defunding public broadcasting has been a target of conservatives for decades, no president has expressed as clear of desire as Trump to make it happen, and never has Congress been so supportive of such a measure either.
“It’s much more serious than in the past,” Calvert said. “We’re definitely, definitely a target.”
Wyoming’s Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis however were noncommittal when asked by Cowboy State Daily last month if they would support a House bill that would cut all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Problems Identified
Calvert said bias is an issue in today’s media environment and that some of the individual charges brought against her organization may be true.
She questions if young journalists are being trained with the same basic principles as they were in the past and credits longtime Wyoming Public Radio host Bob Beck for moving into teaching after retiring from his broadcast career.
“I think that’s just the highest service to our media today, to have more interns coming out of college who know what bias is and know journalism integrity means,” Calvert said. “We’ve just got to get there.”
Along this vein, she said blatant rightwing bias shouldn’t be any more acceptable than liberal bias and believes finding well-trained, veteran reporters is the ultimate solution to the bias problem.
“Do other stations have the same issues? I think they probably do but they just don’t have the microscope on them right now,” she said.
But Trump has also mounted attacks on commercial stations as well, limiting some outlets’ access to the White House while hitting others with lawsuits and directives.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
