As a kid, Liberty parent Geneva Phillips and her father listened to the National Public Radio every Sunday morning. They bounced around the Midwest most of her childhood, so it became a weekly ritual to tune into whatever local station they were closest to.
Today she finds herself tuning back into these familiar stations on her way to work, and sometimes, on Saturday mornings, her daughter, senior Lily Phillips, joins her. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me; Morning Edition; All Things Considered; they have all come to mean more to all 3 generations of their family than just a news station.But as of October of 2025, it might be gone.
Well, maybe not gone, but $1.1 billion poorer.
In May of 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14290—“Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media”—which instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease all government funding for PBS and NPR.
In 1967, the Public Broadcasting Act was passed, which established the CPB to provide the American public with high quality informational and cultural content. NPR was incorporated in 1970, with their first broadcast in 1971. Since its debut, NPR has grown to include almost 300 local affiliated stations across the US, and hosts a variety of radio shows and podcasts in addition to local news broadcasts.
These range from informational shows like All Things Considered, Consider This, and, State of the World, to culture and entertainment programs like Wait Wait.. Don’t Tell Me, Wild Card, and, iconically, Tiny Desk. It has maintained a massive listener base since its inception.
“My parents always listened to NPR, whether it was the news or things like Prairie Home Companion,” Phillips said. “That was a really big thing where I grew up.”
For many listeners, NPR has long served as a bridge between rural communities and global topics.
“I grew up in a rural area, and being able to listen to NPR and hear world news or hear BBC made you think about the world in a bigger way,” Phillips said. “It made me realize it was bigger than just me and my immediate neighbors.”
Some people start listening to NPR in adulthood, but many more, including senior Elizabeth Buck, have grown up with the station.
“In my childhood, I watched the news. Before I had a cell phone, if I wanted to know more, I just watched King 5 online,” Buck said.
Even those who haven’t tuned into the news their whole lives may have interacted with NPR through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which many recognize for PBS Kids and their myriad of different children’s shows—Sesame Street, Wild Kratts, and Arthur, just to name a few.
“I watched Arthur as a kid, and it’s weird that kids shows connected to these programs are being shut down,” Buck said. “Why are we now caring what kids watch?”
PBS’s programs teach kids about life–from colors and numbers to compassion and respect. Potentially losing that platform is concerning for some people, young and old.
“Those shows teach kids compassion through real world examples, not a magical fairy tale, so it’s sad that kids aren’t consuming media in a way that could shape them to be better humans when they grow up,” Buck said.
PBS has long been trusted by parents as well, as a channel to put on while making dinner or doing the dishes to keep a hyperactive kid entertained.
“I didn’t have to worry about a whole bunch of violent stuff on PBS, so I put on things like Ruff Ruffman or Wild Kratts,” Phillips said.
So is this goodbye for so many childhood characters?
In the short-term, it seems that NPR and PBS as institutions will survive these funding cuts; they have received a massive influx in public donations since the order was signed. Their local stations, however, are a different story.
Smaller stations rely heavily on government funding, and without the money to keep up operations, many are facing risk of shutting down.
“I expect you’ll see nearly immediate loss of universal coverage in hard-to-reach parts of the country, as well as layoffs of journalists covering local and state news,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in an interview with Oliver Darcy.
For local communities, this could mean losing access to music, news, and other entertainment services.
On a larger scale, CPB has announced that they plan to lay off the majority of their staff and keep only a small team to “focus on compliance, fiscal distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations.”
So why was NPR defunded in the first place?
The executive order reasoned that, in the diverse modern media landscape, having a government funded news program didn’t make sense.
When NPR was founded in 1970, it was one of the very few informational channels available, but in a world bursting with information, putting tax money into news was deemed unjustifiable. Why should NPR get funding when hundreds of other news stations exist without it?
But some listeners, including history teacher Amy Cooke, disagree, insisting the excess of modern news media is precisely why having a government funded program is necessary.
“NPR is one of the only primarily publicly funded news stations, so they had a duty and an obligation to be objective, unbiased, and fact based,” Cooke said. “Most media corporations are owned by a company that has financial interests.”
In a world of endless media, NPR acted as a north star for some, trusted to tell the truth. Inevitably, when a corporation has obligations to sponsors, they will be biased towards information that benefits them. In fact, this conflict was the idea behind having a government-funded news station to begin with.
But Trump claims that CPB violated their terms of funding by supporting NPR and PBS.
“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens,” Trump said in Executive Order 14290.
Since funding was coming from American taxpayers, the order made the case that it was a violation of people’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech to force them to fund a corporation deemed “biased.”
But many see a news station effectively being shut down as a violation of the First Amendment too.
“Losing NPR as a news organization and educational resource affects folks’ freedom of the press; it takes away a valuable resource that is easily accessible and free for everyone,” Cooke said.
Buck agreed, predicting that without NPR, the political divide will become more prevalent:
“NPR gave you the facts and let you decide what you believe. The more that gets taken away, the more divided it will become.”
More than just losing NPR itself, many are worried about the implications behind the government being able to silence a news station so easily. While it is perfectly within the bounds of an organization to self-censor, it becomes a lot more uncomfortable when the government steps in.
Some, like Cooke, are reminded of the recent incident with Jimmy Kimmel’s being taken off air (If you are interested in learning more, you can consult page 23). Although he was quickly put back, the ease with which the government was able to silence him has worried some people.
“Without NPR and similar programs, you’re getting what’s sanctioned by the people in charge,” Phillips said. “I think it impacts all generations not having that accurate information.”
If the only news people get is from those in charge, who’s to say they wouldn’t say exactly what they needed to get what they want?
“I listen to a lot of different things, and as an adult, you have to think across all the different sources of information that you’re getting, and look for the commonality,” Phillips said. “Are they reporting on the same information? Are you hearing contradictions?”
Public media has long been at the forefront of the fight for free speech. Since written information became widespread, people used it to educate themselves and others. Almost as quickly, written words were used to fight oppression: the Magna Carta, the 95 Theses, the Declaration of Independence, all made out of defiance for injustice.
Regardless of bias, NPR and PBS have played a role in informing the public of things from natural disasters, to dinner recipes, to the ABC’s, and many feel like they are saying goodbye to an old friend. Phillips believes that this is far from the end of free speech though.
“People are creative. I think freedom of speech is going to continue. I think people are going to still have that programming, it’s just going to come through different channels,” Phillips said.
Sources:
- https://www.npr.org/2025/08/01/nx-s1-5489808/cpb-shut-down-public-broadcasting-trump
- https://niemanreports.org/local-trusted-defunded-public-media-federal-funding-npr-cpb/
- https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-14290-ending-taxpayer-subsidization-biased-media
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2025/07/19/why-congress-defunding-npr-and-pbs-isnt-as-misguided-as-you-think/