The Knight, MacArthur, and Ford Foundations are among the liberal organizations backing local broadcasters as Trump slashes funding to public media over left-wing bias
Major liberal philanthropies are pledging $50 million to keep NPR and PBS member stations afloat after President Donald Trump pulled $1.1 billion in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the primary source of federal support for NPR and PBS, according to a Monday report.
“The Knight Foundation is committing $10 million to the fund, which aims to disburse the money before the end of the year,” the New York Times reported. “Together with Knight, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, Pivotal Ventures and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have already committed nearly $27 million for the effort, called the Public Media Bridge Fund.”
In May, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end all direct and indirect federal funding to PBS and NPR. Two months later, Trump signed another bill to reduce the corporation’s federal funding by $1.1 billion over the next two fiscal years, leading the company to announce that it is laying off most of its employees and plans to shut down by next year.
The public broadcasters, in turn, are reeling from Trump’s funding cuts, with NPR slashing its budget by $8 million and PBS by 21 percent. The networks have long faced scrutiny over left-wing political bias in their coverage, even as they have received federal funding for decades, including around $535 million in the current fiscal year alone.
Many of the philanthropic groups pledging support have come under fire for bankrolling controversial left-wing causes over the years. The Knight Foundation, for example, is a major backer of liberal media watchdog NewsGuard. The foundation also donated $5 million to establish a journalism chair at Howard University filled by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the Times‘s widely criticized 1619 Project. The Ford Foundation, which has given more than $2 million to Chinese universities, also donated to the chair.
The MacArthur Foundation—which is contributing $10 million to support public media outside the joint fund, according to the Times report—provided a $625,000 grant in 2021 to activist Ibram X. Kendi, who has argued that race-blind policies are racist and that the United States is an inherently racist country.
Both the MacArthur and Ford Foundations have also donated millions to HistoryMakers, a nonprofit where Elias Rodriguez, the anti-Israel activist accused of murdering two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., worked until 2024.
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