A renewed and intense focus on public media funding, particularly on NPR's funding, has some audience members questioning whether NPR's on-air descriptions of those sources of money are adequately transparent.
President Donald Trump and his administration are scrutinizing at least two sources of NPR funding. First, Trump has threatened to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent company that was created and funded by Congress to support public media in the United States. To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) asked the heads of both NPR and PBS to appear before her subcommittee on government efficiency to answer questions about how their organizations inform the American public.
Second, new FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opened an investigation that questions whether NPR and PBS are complying with rules that govern the language of sponsorship messages. Public media are allowed to run messages that acknowledge financial support from corporations. When a company or donor underwrites an entire show (which doesn't happen with NPR), public media are required to reveal that information to the audience.
But sponsor messages can't cross into advertising, which is meant to entice the audience to purchase something, sway opinions on public issues or support a political candidate. That rule is set by the FCC, which licenses all broadcasters and reserves a portion of the broadcast spectrum for public media. Sponsor messages can convey information, but they cannot shout out a price or compare one product or service to another. And corporate sponsor messages cannot tell the audience to do something, like "buy now."
All this scrutiny has people asking a lot of questions about NPR funding.
One audience member wrote in to ask why NPR points out some sources of money, but not others. At the same time, a group of NPR fans and critics debated the benefits of government funding on Reddit. With these questions in mind, we asked experts far and wide to explain how these funding sources relate to one another.
Listeners seek clarification on NPR funding
David Palmer wrote on Feb. 16: Just curious when you feature your cut-ins of who funds you: “Funded by listeners like you” and “Funded by member stations” etc. etc., you never mention “Funded by the US Government” or even “Funded by (disguised) commercial sponsors.” Are you ashamed to be the lone government funded media? And why do we have ANY government funded media, isn’t that sort of an anathema to a free and open government? Are you ashamed to be funded by commercial sponsors no matter how you try and parse that? Why not just circumvent the inevitable and turn down ANY government funding or end ANY commercials? … Can’t your listeners just support you fully?
Reddit users on Feb. 4, in response to a post about Elon Musk suggesting that the U.S. government should "defund NPR," made the following critiques:
HeavyElectronics wrote: The right is arguing in bad faith. NPR gets only about 1% of their funding from the federal government. … Yes, NPR stations generally get much more funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and some individual state funding, but they are independent of NPR, and most also air a great deal of content that isn’t from NPR.
TruthorFacts wrote: I like NPR, I value their content, but like … why do we have to lie about the funding status? It just discredits all of us to do this double speak nonsense.
wndsofchng06 wrote: I think less than 1% of NPR funding is federal government. If you want to keep them going, sign up as a sustainer! I am more worried about them suing and dragging all the news outlets through the muck and using the FCC as a weapon against any station. The 1% funding won’t crush them, but they could be sued out of existence.
Unsurprisingly, there is a fair amount of misinformation and mischaracterization of exactly what public media is and how it operates. NPR listeners hear these messages at the beginning and the end of shows. But those messages don't explain the entire funding picture.
Public media is, by definition, media that is funded by the government. Public broadcasting systems exist in almost every democracy. The strongest democracies, as measured by the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, have strong public media systems.
Researchers don't know if public media fuels democracy or vice versa. But where you find one, you find the other, said Victor Pickard, a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication. He co-authored a study in 2022 that documented this relationship.
"It's always hard to nail down causation, but there is a correlation between strong public broadcasting systems and higher levels of political knowledge, greater levels of civic engagement, lower levels of extremism," he said. Still, he pointed out, extremism is on the rise in lots of countries, even strong democracies.
"It doesn't suggest that it's a cure all for all of our social pathologies," Pickard added. "But I do think it's safe to say that a strong democracy requires a strong public broadcasting system."
Governments around the world created publicly funded media systems to fill information needs that would not be met by commercial media, including:
- Delivering news to regions that are so remote, small or rural that it would not be profitable for a commercial newsroom.
- Covering topics like public affairs programming and international news, that are not reliably attractive to advertisers or subscribers.
- Covering communities that have been traditionally ignored by mainstream news organizations.
In the United States, Congress created and funded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1967, to support a system of local radio and television stations, who would in turn support PBS and NPR, which would create national content that could be distributed to the local stations.
But that funding was never enough to sustain the whole system. Where the British government spends close to $100 a year per citizen on the BBC, the United States spends $1.50 per citizen on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Pickard said.
As a result, American public media turns to three other funding sources: corporate sponsorships, large philanthropic organizations and "donors like you." NPR strives to be transparent about where its money comes from and where it goes, as it should be. It's not hard to find this page on the NPR website that explains the network's funding and expenses:
- 36 percent of its annual $279 million budget comes from corporate sponsors.
- The next biggest chunk—30 percent—comes from the program fees that stations pay for NPR shows.
When required by the FCC, NPR discloses funders on its airwaves. Corporate sponsors that provide financial support are acknowledged with messages crafted to be descriptive, without being promotional, said Scott Davis, NPR senior vice president for sponsorships.
This is specifically permitted by Congress. "The purpose of sponsorship messages is to identify sponsors which provide financial support, rather than to promote their products or services," Davis wrote in an email.
And whenever one of those sponsors is in a news story, their status is disclosed. The language for doing so was recently updated. Now, rather than describing corporate sponsors as funders, you will hear NPR journalists say that a company "provides financial support" or "is a financial supporter."
NPR Managing Editor for Standards Tony Cavin told me it was merely a coincidence that his guidance came out less than two weeks after the new FCC chair announced that his agency was investigating NPR and PBS.
"Traditionally we have used 'funders' but please use the new language which is more accurate instead," Cavin wrote to the staff on Feb. 10.
With this context in place, it's easier to address the questions and comments that prompted this column:
Does NPR disclose all three of its primary funding sources on the air? Yes. Listeners frequently hear that NPR is funded by "financial supporters," "the Corporation for Public Broadcasting" and "listeners like you." Listeners hear messages from sponsors throughout the programming. Those messages are delivered by a dedicated staff, not the journalists delivering the news.
Could NPR exist on individual donors alone? No. If it did, it wouldn't be considered public media; it would be private nonprofit media. And that wouldn't solve the root problem that drives this conversation. There's a growing group of local nonprofitmedia companies across the country. Most have extensive policies to ensure that the news serves the needs of the audience, not the funders, whoever they are. That's because the lines get blurry between small individual donors, large individual donors, philanthropies and corporate donors. NPR's policies have served as a model in this area.
Even though it's a small amount, taking the government money out of NPR could actually backfire and make NPR less moderate, said Paul Haaga Jr. He's a Republican who has served on NPR's board and as its interim CEO. In that role, he's lobbied Congress for support. He wrote a guest opinion column in The Washington Post last year that argued in favor of preserving government funding for NPR.
"You're not going to punish the inside-the-beltway liberals that you think you're punishing," he said, adding that taking the public money out of public media would undermine the mission.
"I think it's a small amount of money for a healthy reminder. First of all, we need the money; secondly it's a reminder that we serve the public, not just the sponsors and the funders," he said.
I've seen no evidence that NPR hides or misrepresents where its money comes from. It has systems for annual financial reports, processes to comply with FCC rules, and internal language to disclose financial supporters who are in the news.
The "less than 1 percent" claim is an accurate but incomplete description of NPR's government funding. The member stations that license NPR's content receive an average of 10 percent of their funding from the CPB.
The FCC investigation is intended to determine if NPR is complying with the restrictions on corporate messaging. I have listened for obvious violations and not found any myself. But if there are violations, or if the regulations are adjusted, NPR will have to adjust as well.
The arguments fueling the current administration's scrutiny of public media are at times rooted in opposition to the idea of public media itself. Public media is supposed to document the stories that no one else is telling, and it's supposed to reach communities not well-served by commercial outlets.
In the Project 2025 document, conservatives argue that "All Republican Presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake." It goes on to say that, after its creation, "Public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism."
Overshadowed by the debate about NPR is the debate is about the mission of public media in a democracy. Should the government support a safety net that ensures that journalists document the stories of people, places and topics not covered by commercial news? Should we guarantee that quality news and information is available to communities not served by commercial newsrooms, because those audiences are not considered financially profitable?
It's a mistake to conflate the Republican critique of NPR with their larger objective of eliminating public media. NPR is the most visible manifestation of public media. But they are not the same thing.
There is no way to eliminate the small amount of government money that supports NPR without causing significant harm to the whole public media system. Undermining public media would weaken the entire information ecosystem, which would ultimately lead to a less informed American public.
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute
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