After years of resisting pressure from some Republicans on Capitol Hill to defund it and most recently efforts by the Trump White House to discredit as well as defund it, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) on Jan. 5 announced that it is shutting down.
The private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress to steward the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting, announced that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization after 58 years of service to the American public.
With Republicans in control of Congress, all of CPB’s federal funding was pulled. CPB’s Board described “sustained political attacks that made it impossible for CPB to continue operating as the Public Broadcasting Act intended.”
Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB said, “When the Administration and Congress rescinded federal funding, our Board faced a profound responsibility: CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”
Ruby Calvert, chair of CPB’s Board of Directors said, “After nearly six decades of innovative, educational public television and radio service, Congress eliminated all funding for CPB, leaving the Board with no way to continue the organization or support the public media system that depends on it. Yet, even in this moment, I am convinced that public media will survive, and that a new Congress will address public media’s role in our country because it is critical to our children’s education, our history, culture and democracy to do so.”
First authorized by Congress under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, CPB helped build and sustain a nationwide public media system of more than 1,500 locally owned and operated public radio and television stations. Through CPB’s stewardship, public media delivered programming like ”Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and ”Sesame Street” that helped generations of children learn and grow, providing lifesaving emergency alerts during natural disasters and crises, and supporting rigorous, fact-based journalism that uncovers issues impacting people’s daily lives, connects neighbors to one another, and strengthens civic participation.
CPB’s Board determined that without the resources to fulfill its congressionally mandated responsibilities, maintaining the corporation as a nonfunctional entity would not serve the public interest or advance the goals of public media. It was concerned that a dormant and defunded CPB could have become vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse, threatening the independence of public media and the trust audiences place in it, and potentially subjecting staff and board members to legal exposure from bad-faith actors.
CPB said that as part of its orderly closure, CPB will complete the responsible distribution of all remaining funds in accordance with Congress’s intent. CPB will also provide support to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting to continue digitizing and preserving historic content, and CPB’s own archives dating back to the organization’s founding in 1967 will be preserved in partnership with the University of Maryland and made accessible to the public.
