RSF - Reporters sans frontières
RSF - Reporters sans frontières
05/02/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/03/2025 05:49
USA: Trump cuts public media, uses taxpayer funds for propaganda instead
President Donald Trump marked World Press Freedom Day 2025 by announcing his intention to drastically cut funding for public media in the United States. Meanwhile, the same week, his administration launched the White House Wire, a taxpayer-funded propaganda site. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges Congress to reject any attempt by the Trump administration to eliminate duly appropriated funds for public media while using public funds to produce its own politically biased propaganda.
President Trump has made public media a target throughout his first months in office in 2025. On May 1, two days before World Press Freedom Day, he took matters further by signing an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease all direct funding for National Public Radio (NPR)and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the country's two national public broadcasters. The same week he signed the order, Trump unveiled the "White House Wire," a website that looks like a news outlet yet only publishes Trump's talking points as part of the White House's strategy to bypass or replace professional journalism.
The executive order also stipulated that local affiliate radio and television stations that receive grants from the CPB could no longer purchase programming from NPRor PBS, an attempt to control the content these stations can air. The order likely exceeds the president's authority, given that the CPB is a private nonprofit which, by statute,receives federal funding but remains editorially independent. It is not a government agency that reports to the president. Local, independent affiliate stations' ability to make their own programming decisions is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Earlier the same week, Trump tried to fire three CPB board members, prompting the CPB to suein response, arguingthe president has "no power to remove or terminate CPB's Board members."
"Donald Trump is celebrating World Press Freedom Day by expanding his war on the press, trying to eliminate the funding for independent, reliable public media while using taxpayer dollars to fund his propaganda narrative on a government website. This one-two punch makes it clear that Trump's main motivation here is to control the press. He has shown a longstanding pattern of punishing independent outlets that cover his administration objectively, while rewarding the voices that parrot his talking points. Copying the aesthetics of the news media to disguise state propaganda is a common tactic of authoritarian regimes. If Congress values the American people's First Amendment right to a free press, it will not stand for the president's despotic tactics.
Clayton Weimers
Executive Director, RSF USA
In March, Trump saidhe "would love to" cut funding for NPRand PBS. His budget director later confirmed the administration's intention to request a rescissionof the funds Congress appropriated to the CPB this year. Trump is also trying to eliminate the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government entity that distributes funding to international public broadcasters with a global weekly audience of 427 million. RSF has brought a lawsuitagainst the US government to save the USAGM-funded outlet Voice of America (VOA),which is one of the only reliable sources of information reporting from countries under strict authoritarian regimes.
The United States ranks 57th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index.
Published on02.05.2025
RSF - Reporters sans frontières published this content on May 02, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on May 03, 2025 at 11:49 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io