Reading Between the Lines (on Sesame Street)
On May 1, 2025, President Donald J. Trump released EO 14290 titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.” Within this executive order, President Trump stated that the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will no longer receive federal funding.
The opening sections of the executive order state, “Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options. Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”
Historically, the funding of public news services has always been contentious, and it continues to regress with each passing day. However, it’s notable that journalistic independence can often rely on public funds.
Yet, government funding doesn’t account for all of these organizations’ public broadcasting funds. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting only contributes to 16% of PBS’s annual budget, and the majority comes from local station dues. This executive order could block PBS from receiving its indirect funding. Similarly, the federal government only accounts for 1% of NPR’s revenue, and 30% of its funding comes from local member station fees, and 36% from corporate sponsorship. But don’t be fooled by small percentages. These crucial stations need every bit of funding; independent and federal.
While NPR advocates for the public to understand the severity of the current political situation and the constitutional overhaul that’s occurring, PBS is experiencing a different level of financial unrest. When targeting these public broadcasting stations, Trump is also targeting kids’ programming like PBS’s Sesame Street. President Trump’s recent executive order is merely another hammer to PBS’s educational programming.
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Education gave the CPB and PBS a Ready to Learn grant, which funded the organizations’ effort to build “comprehensive multi-media learning and station engagement initiatives, which will connect children’s media and learning environments to build key skills for success.” This five-year grant was given to ensure that educational programming was built with children in mind and allowed for programs such as “Sesame Street,” “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” and “Reading Rainbow” to flourish. However, this grant was set to expire at the end of September 2025. The loss of the Ready to Learn grant, in addition to President Trump potentially slashing even more of the PBS budget, may leave public news and educational channels without federal support.
Furthermore, the order questions NPR and PBS' adherence to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)’s main principle, impartiality, due to the organizations’ failure to “present a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”
NPR is recognized as a longstanding, prominent journalistic organization that prides itself on its ethics code and moral responsibility to citizens. Current CEO, Katherine Maher, released a statement on May 27 in response to President Trump’s executive order, claiming that the declaration is a “clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment protections of free speech and association, and freedom of the press.” This is dangerous, public broadcasting is important, as this spans educational to news programming and affects everyone. Free speech is an essential part of upholding democracy, even when government-funded.
President Trump’s EO uses specific language: biased, partisan, fair, and accurate. This politically cautious environment calls for people to pay close attention to word choice. Bias is a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment that can relate to prejudice. Close textual analysis is critical to understanding the nuance that is being used in various government and news writing. This is especially important when assessing the validity of President Trump’s judgment toward targeting organizations whose foundations are based on providing accessible, educational content for all.
To insinuate that NPR—an organization whose ethics require it to uphold its democratic responsibility, to hold influential forces accountable, to remain transparent with its audience, and report the accurate, transparent, contextual truth—provides the American public with a falsifiable, prejudiced representation of current events is absurd.
Federal intervention in the public distribution, reporting, and funding of news that informs present-day citizens on issues relevant to them should be concerning. This administration has been targeting agencies, organizations, and institutions that seek to provide the public with historical context for unjust actions. The fear has always been about whose truth gets reported on, and whose doesn’t. By failing to prevent the government from controlling which media outlets receive the funding needed to continue speaking to their audience, we fall into political and ideological censorship in mainstream media.
The institution of journalism (including and often upheld by public broadcasting stations) seeks to make those overt, seemingly indescribable happenings make sense for everyday people. Public investment in news media is necessary for programs that seek to educate citizens about the political affairs and consequences that are less overt to the average eye. Taking away or heavily regulating the messages these organizations must deliver is a problem. President Trump’s executive order is testing the public’s understanding of their freedom of speech rights, and silencing journalists from intervening if they can’t.
“Public media was established to inform the American public and uphold American democratic values. The President’s Executive Order is directly counter to Congress’s long standing intent, as expressed in the Public Broadcasting Act, to foster vibrant institutions that achieve that mission, serving all Americans independent of political influence. The Order threatens the existence of the public broadcasting system, upon which tens of millions of Americans rely for vital news, information, and emergency alerts...”