By Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr has launched an investigation into NPR and PBS, raising concerns about whether their underwriting practices comply with federal law. This move has renewed debates over public broadcasting’s reliance on taxpayer funding and the fine line between corporate sponsorships and commercial advertising.
Carr sent letters to NPR President Katherine Maher and PBS President Paula A. Kerger questioning whether public broadcasters have crossed legal boundaries by airing underwriting announcements that resemble traditional advertisements.
In a letter obtained by CNN, Carr said he was worried that NPR and PBS were violating federal rules.
“In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements,” Carr wrote in the letter, which was sent to NPR chief executive Katherine Maher and PBS president and chief executive Paula Kerger.
NPR and PBS programming is aired to a network of around 1,500 member stations, all of which choose which programs to broadcast. The stations require licenses approved by the FCC to operate, and these licenses limit them as non-commercial educational broadcast stations, which are prohibited by federal law from airing advertisements. The FCC’s investigation will probe the underwriting announcements and policies of NPR and PBS, as well as their broadcast stations.
Carr also sent the letter to congressional lawmakers, noting the investigation “may prove relevant to an ongoing legislative debate” over whether “to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming.”
“To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars,” he wrote.
Both NPR and PBS have pushed back against Carr’s claims, asserting that they fully comply with FCC regulations, reported The New York Times. “Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, said in a statement that the organization’s practice of using sponsorships, also known as underwriting, “complies with federal regulations.”
‘We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR’s adherence to these rules,’ Ms. Maher said.
‘We have worked for decades with the F.C.C. in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States.’
PBS said in a statement that it was proud of ‘noncommercial educational programming,’ and worked ‘diligently to comply with the FCC’s underwriting regulations.’”
Carr’s investigation has reignited the long-standing debate over whether public broadcasting should continue receiving federal funding.
Last year, NPR’s senior business editor, Uri Berliner, published a critique of the organization’s handling of major news events, arguing that its editorial direction had become significantly biased after Donald Trump’s 2016 election. Berliner highlighted how NPR had aligned itself with figures like Adam Schiff and had neglected journalistic balance, ultimately transforming into what he described as a left-leaning propaganda outlet. He pointed to a dramatic shift in NPR’s audience demographics, noting that from 2011 to 2023, the percentage of conservative listeners had dropped from 26 percent to just 11 percent, while liberal listeners had grown to 67 percent. He attributed this decline in viewpoint diversity to a lack of internal ideological balance, citing his discovery that NPR had 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and zero Republicans. When he had raised this issue in an all-staff meeting, he was met with indifference rather than concern.
One of Berliner’s most striking claims was that NPR had deliberately ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story because it could have harmed Joe Biden’s election chances against Trump. He recalled a meeting where a colleague had openly admitted that avoiding the story was beneficial because it would not help Trump. Berliner argued that this lack of journalistic integrity, along with the broader trend of suppressing dissenting viewpoints, had significantly damaged NPR’s credibility.
He also noted that when he had tried to address the absence of ideological diversity within the organization, a senior executive had admitted to being wary of even discussing the topic publicly. Despite his long tenure at NPR and his own opposition to Trump, Berliner condemned what he saw as a shift toward advocacy journalism rather than objective reporting. His revelations came at a time when President Biden had proposed nearly $600 million in federal funding for NPR, raising concerns about the role of taxpayer money in supporting what Berliner described as an increasingly partisan outlet.
Berliner later resigned from his position.
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