The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has announced its plans to cease operations after 58 years of funding public broadcasting in the United States. The entire U.S. public media system is being shaken up amid the budget-cutting trends of President Donald Trump.
According to reports from the Associated Press and other media on the 2nd (local time), CPB officially notified employees the previous day of the plan to end operations. Most operations will cease with the end of the fiscal year on September 30, and a small acquisition team will remain to finalize outstanding tasks until January of next year.
The remaining tasks include legal settlement work necessary for securing music copyrights, which are essential for public media operations.
CPB stated, "Despite millions of American citizens petitioning Congress to protect federal funding, we have ultimately faced the difficult reality of ceasing operations."
Last month, the U.S. Congress passed a budget bill that cuts $9 billion (approximately 12.5 trillion won) in international aid and public broadcasting funding. Of this, the full budget of $1.1 billion (approximately 1.5 trillion won) allocated to CPB for two years was eliminated.
This decision aligns with Trump's stance, which has been critical of public broadcasting being "biased to the left." He has criticized NPR and PBS, stating that they are "not fair, accurate, or impartial" in their news coverage to taxpayers, repeatedly advocating for budget cuts.
CPB was established as an independent nonprofit organization by the U.S. Congress in 1967, distributing its budget annually to PBS, NPR, and more than 1,500 local public TV and radio stations across the nation.
NPR expressed concern in a statement, saying, "The closure of CPB will have a severe impact on all public media institutions and, above all, on the communities across the nation that have relied on public broadcasting."