Public broadcasting

NPR and PBS stations targeted by group involved in Carr’s news-distortion probes.

Sesame Street float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, on Thursday, November 23, 2023 Credit: Getty Images | tarabird

A conservative group yesterday urged the Federal Communications Commission to take licenses away from NPR and PBS stations and let other entities use the spectrum. The request came from the Center for American Rights (CAR), a nonprofit law firm that has played a prominent role in the news-distortion investigations spearheaded by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

“In the wake of the wind-down of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the end of federal funding for NPR and PBS, the Center respectfully suggests that the Commission open an inquiry that looks at the future of ‘public’ broadcasting in that new environment,” a Center for American Rights filing said.

The CPB is set to shut down after Congress approved President Trump’s request to rescind its funding. The Center for American Rights said the CPB shutdown should be used as an opportunity to reassign spectrum used by NPR and PBS stations to other entities.

“If PBS and NPR cannot prove a viable long-term business model as national networks—and if their individual affiliates cannot show long-term business models in each market—then this Commission needs to consider whether those channels (i.e., that spectrum) will become available in the near future for other potential licensees or uses,” the group said.

Suggesting that PBS and NPR stations aren’t serving the public interest, the CAR filing said the FCC “should ask whether PBS (and NPR) stations are fulfilling their public-interest obligations as licensees when the public’s elected representatives have just chosen to cut off public funding because of their failure to serve the public well.”

Republicans cut off funding

The Republican-led votes to eliminate CPB funding were criticized by Democrats. “Republicans once again bent the knee to their wannabe King Donald, rubber-stamping his cruel and callous cuts while robbing kids and communities of free, high quality public programming,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the time.

The White House claimed that NPR and PBS “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’” Republican lawmakers agreed, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) saying during debate that public broadcasting “has long been overtaken by partisan activists” and that “taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize” NPR and PBS.

The Center for American Rights urged the FCC to “require PBS and NPR and their member stations to provide transparent financial information, to give the Commission a viable long-term business model, and to tell the Commission how they plan to increase donor support while maintaining editorial independence. If in fact many local stations will ‘go dark,’ PBS and NPR need to provide wind-down or transition plans and those stations need to give the Commission adequate notice to protect the public.”

The group alleged that “PBS sends out consistently liberal news, entertainment, and education programming,” letting down “millions of potential viewers of PBS affiliates in red states.” It further argued that “if PBS does not have a viable long-term business model in many markets, the Commission needs to consider what will become of its historic role as a provider of daytime children’s programming.”

Although revoking broadcast licenses in the middle of a term is difficult legally, Carr has used the prospect of license revocations to threaten broadcasters. Licenses can also be taken away from individual stations when they’re up for renewal.

We contacted NPR and PBS and will update this article if they provide any comments.

CAR and Carr on the same page

CAR and Carr generally seem to think alike when it comes to the FCC punishing broadcasters for alleged liberal bias. During last year’s election campaign, CAR filed complaints echoing Trump’s claims of bias regarding ABC’s fact-checking during a presidential debate, the editing of a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, and NBC putting Harris on a Saturday Night Live episode.

The CAR complaints were dismissed in January 2025 by then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and then revived by Carr after Trump appointed him to the chairmanship. Carr has continued making allegations of news distortion, including when he threatened to revoke licenses from ABC stations that air Jimmy Kimmel’s show.

During the Kimmel controversy, Carr said he was trying “to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of the local communities.” The FCC subsequently opened a proceeding titled, “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations to Meet Their Public Interest Obligations: Exploring Market Dynamics Between National Programmers and Their Affiliates.”

The FCC invited public comments on whether to adopt regulations “in light of the changes in the broadcast market that have led to anticompetitive leverage and behavior by large networks.” This could involve prohibiting certain kinds of contract provisions in agreements between networks and affiliate stations and strengthening the rights of local stations to reject national programming.

FCC criticized for attacks on media

The “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations” proceeding is the one in which the Center for American Rights submitted its comments. Besides discussing NPR and PBS, the group said that national networks “indoctrinate the American people from their left-wing perspective.”

“The consistent bias on ABC’s The View, for instance, tells women in red states who voted for President Trump that they are responsible for putting in office an autocratic dictator,” the Center for American Rights said.

The FCC proceeding drew comments yesterday from the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), which criticized Carr’s war against the media. “The Public Notice frames this proceeding as an effort to ‘empower local broadcasters’ in their dealings with national networks. But… recent FCC actions have risked using regulatory authority not to promote independent journalism, but to influence newsroom behavior, constrain editorial decision-making, and encourage outcomes aligned with the personal or political interests of elected officials,” the NHMC said.

The group said it supports “genuine local journalism and robust competition,” but said:

policies that reshape the balance of power between station groups, networks, and newsrooms cannot be separated from the broader regulatory environment in which they operate. Several of the Commission’s recent interventions—including coercive conditions attached to the Skydance/Paramount transaction, and unlawful threats made to ABC and its affiliate stations in September demanding they remove Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the airwaves—illustrate how regulatory tools can be deployed in ways that undermine media freedom and risk political interference in programming and editorial decisions.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.